With so little time (< 30,000 days) and so many books (> 10^8), I think it’s important to spend time on books that are great — not good — great. Here are a list of books that I think are worth reading. The list is far from complete since I may have forgotten a few books and I still have many more to read.
Ideas
Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS, Elizabeth Pisani
The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman
Influence, Robert B. Cialdini
An Illustrated Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright
The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen
Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore
The Shallows, Nicholas Carr
The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
Peopleware, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
Lessons/Skills
How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnigie
Using Your Brain — For a Change, Richard Bandler
Comedy Writing Secrets, Mel Helitzer and Mark Shatz
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Peter D. Kaufman
Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons, Seymour Schulich
The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch
The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence, Tom Peters
What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, Tina Seelig
Biographies
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Alice Schroeder
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, Roger Lowenstein
Blackberry, Rod McQueen
Economics/Business/Wealth/Innovation
The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham
Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Phillip Fisher
The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan
Investment Valuation, Aswath Damodaran
Naked Economics, Charles Wheelan
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management, Roger Lowenstein
Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki
The Smartest Guys in the Room, Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
Value Investing, Glen Arnold
Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter
The Long Tail, Chris Anderson
Technical
Probability Theory: The Logic Of Science, E. T. Jaynes
Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs, Scott Meyers
Interest
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, Tucker Max
The Alphabet of Manliness, Maddox
The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
Fortune’s Formula, William Poundstone
The Art and Science of Cold Reading, Tradecraft
Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
