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