Books
Running list of books read by year since college.
Author | Year First Published | Title
- Ongoing
- These books fall into three buckets: They have value as a reference, they have value as a source of continual inspiration, or they are best enjoyed slowly.
- Steven Pressfield | The War of Art
- Marcus Aurelius | Meditations | Note: Someone gave me the good advice to buy the Gregory Hays transation, heed it
- Fernando Pessoa | The Book of Disquiet
- Seneca | Letters from a Stoic
- Hamilton Helmer: The 7 Laws of Power: The Foundations of Business Strategy
- Peter Attia, MD | Outlive
- Nasim Taleb | The Bed of Procrustes
- J.D. McClatchy | Sweet Theft
- The Paris Review | Interviews Vol. 1
- Robert Greene | The 48 Laws of Power
- Michael de Montaigne | The Complete Essays
- Peter Bevelin | Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger
- 2025
- Brad Stone | 2013 | The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
- Patrick Rothfuss | 2007 | The Name of the Wind
- Frank Herbert | 1965 | Dune
- Pierce Brown | 2013 | Red Rising
- Anthony Horowitz | 2014 | Moriarty: A Novel
- Ken Kocienda | 2018 | Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
- John McPhee | 2018 | The Patch
- John L. Parker Jr. | 1978 | Once A Runner: A Novel
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | 1917 | His Last Bow
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | 1905 | The Return of Sherlock Holmes
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | 1894 | The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
- Ken Segall | 2012 | Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success
- Daniel Yergin | 1991 | The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power
- Samuel C. Florman | 1976 | The Existential Pleasures of Engineering
- Alexander McCall Smith | 2004 | The Sunday Philosophy Club
- Richard Feynman | 1995 | Six Easy Pieces: The Essentials of Physics Explain by its Most Brilliant Teacher
- John McPhee | 1973 | The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
- John McPhee | Encounters with the Archdruid
- John McPhee | 1989 | The Control of Nature
- Vacliv Smil | 2023 | Size: How it Explains the World
- Alec Wilkinson | 2022 | A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age
- Brad Williams | 1970 | The Anatomy of an Airline
- Peter Thiel | 2014 | Zero to One
- Barbara W. Tuchman | 1984 | The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
- Will and Ariel Durant | 1968 | The Lessons of History
- Larry Hedrick | 2006 | Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War
- Adam Smith | 1776 | The Wealth of Nations: Books 1-3
- Charles Mackay | Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds: The Mississppi Scheme, The South Sea Bubble, The Tulipmania
- Thucydides | The Peloponnesian War | Note: Buy the Landmark Thucydides Edited by Robert B. Strassler—this version is a true gift to mankind.
- Kevin Kelly | 2010 | What Technology Wants | Note: Despite loving everything I have ever read on on The Technium, I ran out of steam about halfway through this one.
- Publius Syrus | The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus
- B.H. Liddell Hart | Why Don’t We Learn from History
- François de La Rochefoucauld | Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
- Yvon Chouinard | Let My People Go Surfing
- J.M. Coetzee | Waiting for the Barbarians
- John McPhee | 1966 | A Roomful of Hovings
- David Allen | Getting Things Done
- James Gleick | The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
- Phillipe Petit | On the High Wire
- Tiago Forte | Building a Second Brain
- Michael S. Malone | 1985 | The Big Score: The billion dollar story of silicon valley
- 2024
- Clayton M. Christensen | 1997 | The Innovator's Dilemma
- Jared Diamond | Guns, Germs, and Steel
- John McPhee | Giving Good Weight
- John McPhee | Looking for a Ship
- Herodotus | The Histories
- Ann Patchett| These Precious Days
- Charlie Munger | Poor Charlie's Almanac
- John McPhee | Coming into the Country
- Ian Frazier | Travels in Siberia
- Roland Lazenby | Michael Jordan: A Life
- Kevin Guilfoile | A Drive into the Gap
- Ann Patchett | The Dutch House
- Ann Patchett | Bel Canto
- Annie Proulx | The Shipping News
- Moshin Hamid | The Reluctant Fundamentalist
- Denis Johnson | Tree of Smoke
- Daniel Immerwahr | How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
- Jack Weatherford | Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
- 2023
- John McPhee | Draft No.4
- Olga Tokarczuk | Flights
- John Kennedy Toole | A Confederacy of Dunces
- Fleur Jaggy | Sweet Days of Discipline
- Peter L. Bernstein | Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
- Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein | Nudge
- Sonia Shah | Crude: The Story of Oil
- Tess Gunty | The Rabbit Hutch
- Elif Bautman | The Idiot
- Paul Harding | Tinkers
- Donna Tartt | The Secret History
- George Orwell | 1984
- Christopher McDougall | Born to Run
- Mark Sullivan | Beneath a Scarlett Sky
- Walter Isaacson | The Innovators
- David McCullough | The Wright Brothers | Note: Probably the most underrated biography that I have read.
- Hesiod | Works and Days
- Niccolo Machiavelli | The Prince
- Tom Wolfe | The Bonfire of the Vanities
- Paulo Coelho | The Alchemist | Re-read
- Robert Greene | The 48 Laws of Power
- 2022 and earlier
- Marty Cagan | Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
- Denis Johnson | Train Dreams
- Henry Mulish | The Assault | Re-read
- Jonathan Weiner | The Beak of the Finch
- Elizabeth Strout | Olive Kitteridge
- William B. Irvine | A Guide to the Good Life | Note: Good starting place for those interested in Stoicisim
- Stephen King | On Writing
- Annie Proulx | Barkskins
- Herman Hesse | Siddhartha
- Steven Pressfield | The War of Art | Note: The book I have gifted the most to family and friends
- Herman Melville | Moby Dick
- Seneca | Letters from a Stoic
- Donna Tartt | The Goldfinch
- Walter Issacson | Leonardo da Vinci
- Naism Taleb | Fooled By Randomness
- Naism Taleb | The Black Swan
- Naism Taleb | Anti-fragile
- Ayn Rand | The Fountainhead
- Ayn Rand | Atlas Shrugged
- Richard Powers | The Overstory
- Richard Rhodes | The Making of the Atomic Bomb
- Richard Rhodes | Energy
- William Finnegan | Barbarian Days
- Chard Harbach | The Art of Fielding | Re-read
- Edward O. Wilson | Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
- Hanya Yanagihara | A Little Life
- Doris Kearns Goodwin | The Bully Pulpit
- Amor Towles | Rules of Civility
- Amor Towles | A Gentleman in Moscow
- Amor Towles | The Lincoln Highway
- Walter Isaacson | Steve Jobs
- Cormac McCarthy | The Road
- Bob Spitz | The Beatles
- Robert Penn Warren | All the King’s Men | Note: Read it and watch the movie after
- Colson Whitehead | Nickel Boys
- Colson Whitehead | The Underground Railroad
- Hamilton Hemler | 7 Powers
- Yuval Noah Harari | Sapiens | Note: One of the few books I have read multiple times
- Michael Lewis | The Fifth Risk
- Anthony Doerr | All the Light We Cannot See
- Albert Camus | The Stranger