I enjoy browsing others’ lists of favorite books and their bookshelves, so I decided to build my own here. To the extent I can recommend books in the abstract, I flagged below the ones that were exceptional in bold. This list is evergrowing and not intended to be exhaustive.

  • The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley (2010)

  • King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist by Mark Stevens (1993)

  • Slices and lumps by Lee Ann Fennel (2019)

  • How the World Really Works: How Science Can Set Us Straight on Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil (2022)

  • Lying by Sam Harris (2013)

  • Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford (2009)

  • The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff (2018)

  • Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World by Vaclav Smil (2020)

  • What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami (2007)

  • Lost & Found: A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz (2022)

  • Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly (2023)

  • The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010)

  • The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich (2020

  • Norwegian wood by Haruki Murakami (1987)

  • Men, machines, and modern times by Elting E. Morison (1966)

  • How to read a book by Charles Van Doren, Mortimer J. Adler (1972)

  • The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016)

  • The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks (2019)

  • The Gervais Principle by Venkatesh Rao (2013)

  • Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012)

  • The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction by Matthew Crawford (2016)

  • The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (1978)

  • Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2012)


  • Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (1997)

    Book by Jared Diamond

  • Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by René Girard (1978)

  • 12 rules for life by Jordan Peterson (2018)

  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger (2005)

  • The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility by Robert Zubrin (2019)

  • The art of war by Sun Tzu (5th century BC)

  • Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (1946)

  • The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian C. Muraresku (2020)

  • Quantum Computing Since Democritus by Scott Aaronson (2013)

  • Of Anger by Seneca (AD c. 45)