Books
A list of books I’ve been reading. I tend to update it a few times a year. For my current stacks, see my Goodreads (opens in a new tab).
- ⭐ Favorites - added at end of year
- 🎧 Audiobooks
- 🔁 Rereads
2023
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linus and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary - Eric S. Raymond.
- Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength - Steven Low
- Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
2022
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Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change Marx, W. David - W. David Marx
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Continuous Discovery Habits - Teresa Torres
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
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Living in Data: A Citizen’s Guide to a Better Information Future
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Stay True: A Memoir - Hu Hsu
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The Trail Runner’s Companion - Sarah Lavender Smith
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Heat 2 - Michael Mann
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Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software - Nadia Eghbal
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⭐ This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race - Nicole Perlroth
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The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
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Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused - Melissa Maerz
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⭐ Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players - Stefan Fatsis
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What About the Rest of Your Life - Sung Kim
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Exercised: How We Did Not Evolve to Exercise and What to Do About It - David E. Lieberman
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A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
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The Feral Detective - Johnathan Lethem
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Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman
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Searching for the Sound - Phil Lesh
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The Duel - Anton Chekhov
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Sweat: A History of Exercise - Bill Hayes
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The Idiot - Elif Batuman
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Endurance - Alfred Lansing
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Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
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Seven Games: A Human History - Oliver Roeder
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Islands of Abandonment - Cal Flyn
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A Year with Swollen Appendages - Brian Eno
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Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism - Amanda Montell
2021
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⭐🎧 Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty - Patrick Radden Keefe
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The History of Bones - John Lurie
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Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects - Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
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Leave Society - Tao Lin
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⭐ Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking - Bill Buford
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🎧 The Goal - Eliyahu M. Goldratt
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Blood, Sweat, and Pixels - Jason Schreier
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The Infinite Machine - Camila Russo
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Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World - Jane McGonigal
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Ask Iwata - Satoru Iwata
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Yearbook - Seth Rogen
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The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality - Blake Harris
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The Art of Thinking Clearly - Rolf Dobelli
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Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - David Kushner
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Beloved - Toni Morrison
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The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance - Ron Chernow
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Higher Love: Climbing and Skiing the Seven Summits - Kit DesLauriers
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Underland: A Deep Time Journey - Robert Macfarlane
2020
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Sweat! The Illustrated History and Description of the Finnish Sauna, Russian Bania, Islamic Hammam, Japanese Mushi-Buro, Mexican Temescal, and American Indian & Eskimo Sweatlodge - Mikkel Aaland
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The PayPal Wars - Eric Jackson
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Payments Systems in the U.S. - Carol Coye Benson, Scott Loftesness, Russ Jones
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Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World - Oliver Bullough
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Wenger: My Life and Lessons in Red & White - Arsène Wenger
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Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno und die Wende - Felix Denk, Sven von Thülen
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Are Your Lights On? - Gerald Weinberg
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7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton W. Helmer
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Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games - Sid Meier
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Duveen: The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time - S.N. Behrman
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⭐ Getting High in the Himalayas - James Ramsey
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⭐ A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Burton G. Malkiel
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The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self - Charles Eisenstein
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🎧 How to Be an Antiracist — Ibram X. Kendi
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Becoming Ageless - Strauss Zelnick
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Consider This - Chuck Palahniuk
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The Master Game: Pathways to Higher Consciousness - Robert S. de Ropp
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Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing - David S. Evans, Richard L. Schmalensee
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Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor - Layla F Saad
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Life, on the Line: A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat - Grant Achatz, Nick Kokonas
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The Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner
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🎧 You May Also Like - Tom Vanderbilt
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🎧 Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America - Christopher Leonard
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Fragrant Harbour - John Lanchester
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Gamelife - Michael Clune
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Agency - William Gibson
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Imaginary Museums - Nicolette Polek
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The Quiet American - Graham Greene
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⭐ Uncanny Valley - Anna Wiener
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The Extraordinary Adventures of Arséne Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar - Maurice Leblanc
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⭐ Acid for the Children: A Memoir - Flea
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Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America - Christoper Wylie
2019
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The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
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🎧 Loserthink - Scott Adams
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Capital - John Lanchester
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⭐ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - Robert Caro
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Autumn - Ali Smith
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The Wall - John Lanchester
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Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models: Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann
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Cherry - Nico Walker
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Normal People - Sally Rooney
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Fooled By Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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⭐ The Debt to Pleasure - Jonathan Lancaster
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Machines Like Me - Ian McEwan
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Finite and Infinite Games - James Carse
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Hippie - Paulo Coelho
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Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins
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The Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan Watts
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🎧 Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport
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⭐ Less: A Novel - Andrew Sean Greer
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Small Fry - Lisa Brennan-Jobs
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🎧 On the Move: A Life - Oliver Sacks
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Factfulness - Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and Ola Rosling
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⭐🎧 Arbitrary Stupid Goal - Tamara Shopsin
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Creative Selection - Ken Kocienda
2018
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🎧 Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
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Lessons for the 21st Century - Yuval Harari
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⭐️🎧 Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke
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Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang - U-God
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Beyond Jogging: The Innerspaces of Running - Mike Spino
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⭐️ Killing Commendatore - Haruki Murakami
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Draft No. 4 - John McPhee
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It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work - Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
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Thinking in Systems - Donella H Meadows
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Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs - Bill Cunningham
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The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit - Michael Finkel
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The Courage to be Disliked - Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
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High Growth Handbook - Elad Gil
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Bruce Lee: A Life - Matthew Polly
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Springfield Confidential - Mike Reiss
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⭐️ Mother American Night - John Perry Barlow
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⭐️🎧 How to Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan
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Prediction Machines - Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb
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⭐️ Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change - Tao Lin
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🎧 Let My People Go Surfing - Yvon Chouinard
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Total Running - Jim Lilliefors
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The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life - Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson
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Gut - Giulia Enders, Jill Enders, and David Shaw
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⭐️ By The Smoke and The Smell - Thad Vogel
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The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu
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Pot on the Fire: John Thorne
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🎧 Vacationland - Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches- John Hodgman
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⭐️ Endurance - Scott Kelly
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From Here to Eternity - Caitlin Doughty
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Polishing the Mirror - Ram Dass
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Sneakers - Howie Kahn
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Silence: In the Age of Noise - Erling Kagge
2017
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A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
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🎧Porcelain: A Memoir - Moby
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A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life - Waldman, Ayelet
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The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World - Scott Galloway
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🎧 Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III - Greenfield, Robert
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Life is Not an Accident - Jay Williams
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Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
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⭐️ Do No Harm - Henry Marsh
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The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
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Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West
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Why Buddhism is True - Robert Wright
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⭐️ Open - Andre Agassi
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Deep thinking - Gary Kasparov
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⭐️ Insomniac City - Bill Hayes
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Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice - Matthew Syed
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⭐️ Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
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Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick
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Catching the Big Fish - David Lynch
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Moonglow - Michael Chabon
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Black Edge - Sheelah Kolhatkar
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⭐️ Happy City - Charles Montgomery
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The Attention Merchants - Tim Wu
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Algorithms to Live by - Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
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Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari
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⭐️ Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
2016
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⭐️ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - Scott Adams
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Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
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🎧⭐️ How Music Got Free - Stephen Witt
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Misbehaving - Richard Thaler
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Chaos Monkeys - Antonio Garcia Marquez
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Disrupted - Dan Lyons
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⭐️ Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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⭐️ Heads - Jesse Jarnow
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A Gambler’s Anatomy - Jonathan Lethem
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Bill Walton - Back from the Dead
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Sprint - Jake Knapp
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From Impossible to Inevitable - Aaron Ross
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🎧 Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life - William Finnegan
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Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art - Virginia Hefferman
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⭐️🎧 Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem
2015
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⭐️ 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
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⭐️ 🎧 Born Standing Up - Steve Martin
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Making Things Happen - Scott Birkun
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The Shallows - Nicolas Carr
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The Best Interface is No Interface - Golden Krishna
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Humans Need Not Apply - Jerry Kaplan
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Wind/Pinball - Haruki Murakami
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Digital Gold - Nathaniel Popper
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Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
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The Futurological Congress - Stanislaw Lem
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A Bone to Pick - Mark Bittman
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⭐️ The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
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Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy - William Janeway
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🎧 Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance
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Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank
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⭐️ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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The Second Machine Age
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How We Got to Now - Steven Johnson
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Einstein - Walter Isaacson
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The Innovators - Walter Isaacson
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Dataclysm - Christian Rudder
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Playing to Win - David Sirlin
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Console Wars - Blake Harris
2014
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⭐️ Fiasco - Stanislaw Lem
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High Rise - JG Ballard
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Cracking the PM Interview
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Where You Go, There You Are - Jon Kabat Zinn
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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki - Haruki Murakami
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If on a Winter’s Night A Traveller - Italo Calvino
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Dissident Gardens - Jonathan Lethem
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Zero to One - Peter Thiel
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Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut
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Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
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Flash Boys - Michael Lewis
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The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
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Hooked - Nir Eyal
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Taipei - Tao Lin
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz
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Present Shock
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Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh
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Age of Context - Robert Scoble
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This is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz
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Sam Walton: Made in America
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What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami
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Hot to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
2013
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David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell
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Rework - Jason Fried
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The Innovator’s Dilemma - Clayton Christenson
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Eleven Rings - Phil Jackson
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⭐️ Who Owns the Future? - Jaron Lanier
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🤦♂️ 4 Hour Work Week
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Back to Blood - Tom Wolfe
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⭐️ Mindset - Carol Dweck
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Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
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The Everything Store - Brad Stone
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The Circle - David Eggers
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Hatching Twitter - Nick Bilton
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⭐️ How Music Works - David Byrne