Favorite books by subject. Most of these fit into more than one so I had to pick one.
Have a recommendation for one that should be on this list? Drop me a line!
| Human Brain, Group Psychology, Networks | |
|---|
| Wisdom of Crowds, The | James Surowiecki |
| Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst | Robert M. Sapolsky |
| Brain that Changes Itself, The | Norman Doidge |
| Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, The | Oliver Sacks |
| Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, The | Florence Williams |
| Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century | Howard Bloom |
| Musicophilia | Oliver Sacks |
| Psychology of the Digital Age | John Suler |
| Imp of the Mind: Exploring the Silent Epidemic of Obsessive Bad Thoughts, The | Lee Baer |
| Ketamine for Depression | Dr. Stephen J. Hyde |
| This Naked Mind | Annie Grace |
| How to Take Smart Notes (my notes) | Sönke Ahrens |
| Life, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality | |
|---|
| When Breath Becomes Air | Paul Kalanithi |
| Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion | Alain De Botton |
| Wisdom of Insecurity, The | Alan Watts |
| Course of Love: A Novel | Alain de Botton |
| Modern Romance | Ariz Ansari |
| Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality | Donald Miller |
| How to Win Friends & Influence People | Dale Carnegie |
| Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell | Aldous Huxley |
| How to Change Your Mind | Michael Pollan |
| God’s Debris | Scott Adams |
| Courage to be Disliked | Ichiro Kishimi |
| Finite and Infinite Games | James Carse |
| Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys | James Fadiman |
| Attached | Amir Levine |
| LSD: My Problem Child | Albert Hofmann |
| Politics & Social Sciences | |
|---|
| Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World | Rutger Bregman |
| Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power | Shoshana Zuboff |
| Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other | Sherry Turkle |
| Amusing Ourselves to Death | Neil Postman |
| Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible | Peter Pomerantsev |
| Master Switch, The | Tim Wu |
| On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century | Timothy Snyder |
| Behavioral Economics | |
|---|
| Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman |
| Influence | Robert B. Cialdini |
| Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions | Dan Ariely |
| Fiction | |
|---|
| Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer | Neal Stephenson |
| Stories of Your Life and Others | Ted Chiang |
| Three Body Problem, The | Cixin Liu |
| Dune | Frank Herbert |
| A Gentleman in Moscow | Amor Towles |
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | Philip K. Dick |
| Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition | Joseph Heller |
| Cryptonomicon | Neal Stephenson |
| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley |
| Devil in the White City | Erik Larson |
| Nineteen Eighty Four | George Orwell |
| I, Robot | Isaac Asimov |
| Manifold: Time | Stephen Baxter |
| Martian, The | Andy Weir |
| Catch-22 | Joseph Heller |
| Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury |
| Hobbit, The | J.R.R. Tolkien |
| Artificial Intelligence | |
|---|
| Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology | Ray Kurzweil |
| Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World, The | Pedro Domingos |
| Startups, Business, Career, Institutions | |
|---|
| Zero to One | Peter Thiel |
| Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World | David Epstein |
| How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big | Scott Adams |
| Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win | Gene Kim |
| Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World | Cal Newport |
| Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, The | Jon Gertner |
| Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed | Ben R. Rich |
| Masters of Doom | David Kushner |
| One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com | Richard L. Brandt |
| Hatching Twitter | Nick Bilton |
| Smartest Guys in the Room, The | Bethany McLean |
| Innovators | Walter Issacson |
| Space Barons, The | Christian Davenport |
| Skygods: The Fall of Pan Am | Robert Gandt |
| Finance and Economics | |
|---|
| Richest Man in Babylon | George Clason |
| Rich Dad Poor Dad | Robert T. Kiyosaki |
| Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life | Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
| Economics in One Lesson | Henry Hazlitt |
| Memoris & Bibliographies | |
|---|
| Educated: A Memoir | Tara Westover |
| Remains of the Day | Kazuo Ishiguro |
| Ghost in the Wires | Kevin Mitnick |
| Andrew Carnegie | David Nasaw |
| Countdown to Zero Day | Kim Zetter |
| Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman | Richard Feynman |
| Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus, The | Richard Preston |
| Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage | Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, Annette Lawrence Drew |
| Total Recall | Arnold Schwarzenegger |
| Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future | Ashlee Vance |
| Hillbilly Elegy | J. D. Vance |
| On the Move: A Life | Oliver Sacks |
| Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | Hunter S. Thompson |
| Big Dead Place | Nicholas Johnson |
| Short Stories & Novellas | |
|---|
| Understand | Ted Chiang |
| Last Question, The | Issac Asimov |
| Egg, The | Andy Weir |
And some books which really shaped me as a kid:
| Title | Author |
|---|
| Pendragon (series) | D. J. MacHale |
| Artemis Fowl (series) | Eoin Colfer |
| Supernaturalist, The | Eoin Colfer |
| Airman | Eoin Colfer |
| Starclimber (series) | Kenneth Oppel |
| Alex Rider (series) | Anthony Horowitz |
| C.H.E.R.U.B. (series) | Robert Muchamore |
| Hunger Games | Suzane Collins |
| Lone Survivor | Marcus Luttrell |
| Boy in Striped Pajamas | John Boyne |
| Roar, The (series) | Emma Clayton |
| Tuesdays with Morrie | Mitch Albom |
| Book Thief, The | Markus Zusak |
| Where the Red Fern Grows | Wilson Rawls |
| Tunnels (series) | Roderick Gordon |
| Wool (series) | Hugh Howey |
| Sigma Force (series) | James Rollins |
| A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L’Engle |
| A Series of Unfortunate Events | Lemony Snicket |
| Tomorrow Code, The | Brian Falkner |
| Holes | Louis Sachar |
| Giver, The | Lois Lowry |
| Ender’s Game | Orson Scott Card |