Sahil Bloom
Exploring my curiosity and sharing what I learn along the way. Gave up a grand slam on ESPN in 2012 and still waiting for it to land.
50+ Book Recommendations by Sahil Bloom
The Splendid and the Vile
Erik Larson
@thesamparr The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson is one of my favorite books of all time.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
William L. Shirer
Chronicles the Nazi's rise to power, conquest of Europe, and dramatic defeat at the hands of the Allies.@thesamparr The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson is one of my favorite books of all time.
Anne Frank
Anne Frank
@thesamparr The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson is one of my favorite books of all time.
Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman
Loving this book from one of my favorite modern philosophers @oliverburkeman on all things time! https://t.co/hY7JukkvUD
When Money Dies
Adam Fergusson
Presents a history of the 1923 German economic crisis that made the currency worthless, reduced the country to a barter economy, and left severe social unrest in its wake.@immad When Money Dies was quite good. Focused on one specific event, but a good historical look. https://t.co/AQh2bBOH9S
The Metaverse
Matthew Ball
I read @ballmatthew’s new book to prepare for the conversation. I planned to read it in a few sittings, but wound up immersed and read it in a single one. Highly recommend (not an affiliate link, but loved it). https://t.co/PfH7OrzYaL
The Success Equation
Michael J. Mauboussin
Examines the importance of skill and luck, describes how to develop analytical tools to understand them, and offers suggestions on putting these findings to work to achieve success.@mjmauboussin @paulatwal @erik_udahl +1. The entire book is exceptional. https://t.co/I4bpLoA3X5
Sam Walton
Sam Walton
Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America's heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, Sam never lost the common touch. Here, finally, inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure if his ambitions and achievements. Sam shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style. In a story rich with anecdotes and the "rules of the road" of both Main Street and Wall Street, Sam Walton chronicles the inspiration, heart, and optimism that propelled him to lasso the American Dream.@barrettjoneill Sam Walton's "Made in America" remains one of my favorite business books of all time.
The Daily Stoic
Ryan Holiday
Why have history's greatest minds embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for living a better life, not a classroom exercise. Holiday and Hanselman off 366 days of Stoic insights and exercises, to help you find the serenity, self-knowledge, and resilience you need to live well.--Worldcat.There are some amazing resources here. The Daily Stoic by @RyanHoliday is at the top of this list. It’s an incredible repository of short, daily insights from Stoic philosophy. https://t.co/Mfj9qpEzjI https://t.co/uATV5rflry
Just Keep Buying
Nick Maggiulli
Everyone faces big questions when it comes to money: questions about saving, investing, and whether you're getting it right with your finances. Unfortunately, many of the answers provided by the financial industry have been based on belief and conjecture rather than data and evidence--until now. In Just Keep Buying, hugely popular finance blogger Nick Maggiulli crunches the numbers to answer the biggest questions in personal finance and investing, while providing you with proven ways to build your wealth right away. You will learn why you need to save less than you think; why saving up cash to buy market dips isn't a good idea; how to survive (and thrive) during a market crash; and much more. By following the strategies revealed here, you can act smarter and live richer each and every day. It's time to take the next step in your wealth-building journey. It's time to Just Keep Buying.@david_perell @dollarsanddata My guy @dollarsanddata about to drop some amazing knowledge in his book. https://t.co/iYnTzLLsIb
Range
David Epstein
The #1 New York Times bestseller that has all America talking: as seen/heard on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, The Bill Simmons Podcast, Rich Roll, and more. "Fascinating. . . . If you're a generalist who has ever felt overshadowed by your specialist colleagues, this book is for you." --Bill Gates "The most important business--and parenting--book of the year." --Forbes "Urgent and important. . . an essential read for bosses, parents, coaches, and anyone who cares about improving performance." --Daniel H. Pink Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world's top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see. Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.@DavidEpstein One of my favorite books of the last 5 years. Big, big fan.
Elon Musk
Ashlee Vance
In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs—a real-life Tony Stark—and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new “makers.” Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his Internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius’s life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits. Vance uses Musk’s story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk—one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history—is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy. Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans.For more, I recommend the following sources: https://t.co/1ciSQp1EtP https://t.co/fDnEF70dbj https://t.co/p9WOKqJZJf
The Devil in the White City
Erik Larson
'An irresistible page-turner that reads like the most compelling, sleep defying fiction' TIME OUT One was an architect. The other a serial killer. This is the incredible story of these two men and their realization of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, and its amazing 'White City'; one of the wonders of the world. The architect was Daniel H. Burnham, the driving force behind the White City, the massive, visionary landscape of white buildings set in a wonderland of canals and gardens. The killer was H. H. Holmes, a handsome doctor with striking blue eyes. He used the attraction of the great fair - and his own devilish charms - to lure scores of young women to their deaths. While Burnham overcame politics, infighting, personality clashes and Chicago's infamous weather to transform the swamps of Jackson Park into the greatest show on Earth, Holmes built his own edifice just west of the fairground. He called it the World's Fair Hotel. In reality it was a torture palace, a gas chamber, a crematorium. These two disparate but driven men are brought to life in this mesmerizing, murderous tale of the legendary Fair that transformed America and set it on course for the twentieth century . . .@sriramk Every single book that Erik Larson has ever written. Four of my favorites by Larson: • Devil in the White City • Dead Wake • The Splendid & the Vile • Thunderstruck
Dead Wake
Erik Larson
A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title and 1 discussion folder.@sriramk Every single book that Erik Larson has ever written. Four of my favorites by Larson: • Devil in the White City • Dead Wake • The Splendid & the Vile • Thunderstruck
The Splendid and the Vile
Erik Larson
@sriramk Every single book that Erik Larson has ever written. Four of my favorites by Larson: • Devil in the White City • Dead Wake • The Splendid & the Vile • Thunderstruck
Factfulness
Hans Rosling
“One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells thestory of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readershow to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.@sweatystartup I like the optimism. Have you read Factfulness? It’s a great one. https://t.co/1ImDumigGs
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey
@Gekirou89 @StephenRCovey Amazing book
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity—principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.If you're interested in further resources on the topic of The Eisenhower Decision Matrix, I recommend the resources below from @JamesClear and @StephenRCovey. https://t.co/AZTkQLDZ76 https://t.co/wbocc9nvv8
Skin in the Game
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
From the bestselling author of The Black Swan, a bold book that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility 'Skin in the game means that you do not pay attention to what people say, only to what they do, and how much of their neck they are putting on the line' Citizens, artisans, police, fishermen, political activists and entrepreneurs all have skin in the game. Policy wonks, corporate executives, many academics, bankers and most journalists don't. It's all about having something to lose and sharing risks with others. In his most provocative and practical book yet, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows that skin in the game, often seen as the foundation of risk management, in fact applies to all aspects of our lives. In his inimitable style, Taleb draws on everything from Antaeus the Giant to Hammurabi to Donald Trump, from ethics to used car salesmen, to create a jaw-dropping framework for understanding this idea. Among his insights: For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing. Minorities, not majorities, run the world. You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). Just as The Black Swan did during the 2007 financial crisis, Skin in the Game comes at precisely the right moment to challenge our long-held beliefs about risk, reward, politics, religion and business - and make us rethink everything we thought we knew.@anafabrega11 @nntaleb One of the best books ever. Great thread!
The Box
Marc Levinson
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the first container voyage, this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. It recounts how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur, Malcom McLean, turned containerization from an impractical idea into a massive industry that slashed the cost of transporting goods around the world and made the boom in global trade possible. But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason, as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately, it took McLean's success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the container's potential. Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.As you continue to read about the disarray of the global shipping industry, I hope this history lesson leaves you feeling more well-informed about its origins. For more on McLean and containerization, I recommend The Box (the source of this information)! https://t.co/ikHyR7lADc
Leonardo da Vinci
Walter Isaacson
The #1 New York Times bestseller from Walter Isaacson brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography that is “a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it…Most important, it is a powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life” (The New Yorker). Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson “deftly reveals an intimate Leonardo” (San Francisco Chronicle) in a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo’s genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius. In the “luminous” (Daily Beast) Leonardo da Vinci, Isaacson describes how Leonardo’s delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His life should remind us of the importance to be imaginative and, like talented rebels in any era, to think different. Here, da Vinci “comes to life in all his remarkable brilliance and oddity in Walter Isaacson’s ambitious new biography…a vigorous, insightful portrait” (The Washington Post).@blakeaburge The @WalterIsaacson biography of Da Vinci is one of my favorite books of all time. What an incredible polymath.
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir
The sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission to save both humanity and the earth, Ryland Grace is hurtled into the depths of space when he must conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.Project Hail Mary was awesome. h/t to @tobi @Brian_armstrong @sriramk for the rec! https://t.co/4HsIYR05pZ
Sam Walton
Sam Walton
Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America's heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, Sam never lost the common touch. Here, finally, inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure if his ambitions and achievements. Sam shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style. In a story rich with anecdotes and the "rules of the road" of both Main Street and Wall Street, Sam Walton chronicles the inspiration, heart, and optimism that propelled him to lasso the American Dream.@erikbryn Walmart is one of the most amazing companies. Made in America by Sam Walton remains one of my favorite business books of all time.
Good to Great
Jim Collins
The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?For more, I highly recommend the books below: Good to Great: https://t.co/JqOrlh9rPn On Grand Strategy: https://t.co/ICCfOLzOh4 The Hedgehog and the Fox: https://t.co/j78kbgIVTF
On Grand Strategy
John Lewis Gaddis
For more, I highly recommend the books below: Good to Great: https://t.co/JqOrlh9rPn On Grand Strategy: https://t.co/ICCfOLzOh4 The Hedgehog and the Fox: https://t.co/j78kbgIVTF
The Hedgehog and the Fox
Isaiah Berlin
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. Applied to Tolstoy, the saying illuminates a paradox that helps explain his philosophy of history: Tolstoy was a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog. One of Berlin's most celebrated works, this extraordinary essay offers profound insights about Tolstoy, historical understanding, and human psychology. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, English translations of the many passages in foreign languages, a new foreword in which Berlin biographer Michael Ignatieff explains the enduring appeal of Berlin's essay, and a new appendix that provides rich context, including excerpts from reviews and Berlin's letters, as well as a startling new interpretation of Archilochus's epigram.For more, I highly recommend the books below: Good to Great: https://t.co/JqOrlh9rPn On Grand Strategy: https://t.co/ICCfOLzOh4 The Hedgehog and the Fox: https://t.co/j78kbgIVTF
The Goal
Eliyahu M. Goldratt
"Includes case study interviews"--Cover.@MilindMehere One of my favorite books!
Sam Walton
Sam Walton
In an account of his rise to the top of the American retail business, the reminiscences of the billionaire retailer are combined with interviews with Walton's family and friends@DennisHong17 Made in America by Sam Walton remains one of my favorite books (business or otherwise) of all time.
Atomic Habits
James Clear
James Clear presents strategies to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that help lead to an improved life.Special thanks to @GavinSBaker for the topic suggestion! Follow him for powerful investing and technology insights. For more on Kaizen, use these resources: Atomic Habits by @JamesClear: https://t.co/ByTIYHY1CN Continuous Improvement by @JamesClear: https://t.co/RCi7xxfNE3
Why We Sleep
Matthew Walker
"Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity ... An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now ... neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming"--Amazon.com.@F_FYVIE @m_franceschetti Here’s the book! https://t.co/72owpMVSMA
The Daily Stoic
Ryan Holiday
There are some amazing resources on this topic. The Daily Stoic by @RyanHoliday is at the top of this list. It is an incredible repository of short, daily insights from Stoic philosophy. https://t.co/J9wqoVFTGg
Machine, Platform, Crowd
Andrew McAfee Erik Brynjolfsson
@HaakonPedersen @erikbryn https://t.co/rVbL9ZMA1v
Machine, Platform, Crowd
Andrew McAfee
“A clear and crisply written account of machine intelligence, big data and the sharing economy. But McAfee and Brynjolfsson also wisely acknowledge the limitations of their futurology and avoid over-simplification.” —Financial Times In The Second Machine Age, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson predicted some of the far-reaching effects of digital technologies on our lives and businesses. Now they’ve written a guide to help readers make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.@erikbryn @amcafee One of my favorite books. Was foundational to my early thinking on these topics. Great recommendation!
Dune
Frank Herbert
Follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny.@rhodri45954577 @GavinSBaker @GavinSBaker recommended Dune, which ended up being one of the best science fiction books I have read, so I’ll follow all of his recs going forward!
Factfulness
Hans Rosling
“One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells thestory of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readershow to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.@tobi Highly recommend Factfulness for more interesting, optimistic facts about the world and humanity’s progress. https://t.co/1ImDumigGs
The Psychology of Money
Morgan Housel
Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money—investing, personal finance, and business decisions—is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.@CNBC @acorns @morganhousel I gave you and your book a shoutout in this piece. Cheers!
The River of Doubt
Candice Millard
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron. After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever. Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived. From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut.@KFroind River of Doubt was an awesome book about his adventures.
Team of Rivals
Doris Kearns Goodwin
An analysis of Abraham Lincoln's political talents identifies the character strengths and abilities that enabled his successful election, in an account that also describes how he used the same abilities to rally former opponents in winning the Civil War.@GreyZone5l3 Team of Rivals is one of my favorite books.
Factfulness
Hans Rosling
“One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells thestory of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readershow to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.@GavinSBaker @jposhaughnessy Highly recommend reading Factfulness on this topic. Lovely reminders of our progress as a society and species. https://t.co/X2osInDtZr
Zero to One
Peter Thiel
The billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind such companies as PayPal and Facebook outlines an innovative theory and formula for building the companies of the future by creating and monopolizing new markets instead of competing in old ones. 200,000 first printing.@JohnBostick @farnamstreet @HowardMarksBook I re-read that once a year. Have a handful of books I try to come back and read regularly and that is one of them.
The Most Important Thing Illuminated
Howard Marks
Distilling the wisdom of Marks' celebrated client memos into a single volume and, for the first time, making his time-tested investing philosophy available to general readers, this book has been widely acclaimed by professional, casual, aspiring, and armchair investors.15/ So that was Second-Order Thinking 101. For more, I highly recommend the below resources. Second-Order Thinking by @FarnamStreet: https://t.co/Lvz7SPhsWI Memo by @HowardMarksBook: https://t.co/5OdOErPDX1 The Most Important Thing by @HowardMarksBook: https://t.co/Cu2zrqAwG3
Fooled by Randomness
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan–has written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill. This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading–Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives. The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness. However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance. Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared. Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year15/ For more on the topic of survivorship bias, I highly recommend the below resources. Fooled by Randomness by @nntaleb: https://t.co/fB9ncIMlvE Great blog from @ShaneAParrish and @FarnamStreet: https://t.co/o1T85OJMl7
Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Shares insights into how adversity can bring out the best in individuals and communities, drawing on multiple disciplines to consider such topics as the superiority of city states over nation states and the drawbacks of debt.10/ For more interesting insights on the topic, I highly recommend reading @nntaleb's Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. It is simply foundational! https://t.co/R85Kan6pWU
Elon Musk
Ashlee Vance
In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs—a real-life Tony Stark—and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new “makers.” Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his Internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius’s life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits. Vance uses Musk’s story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk—one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history—is a contemporary, visionary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy. Thorough and insightful, Elon Musk brings to life a technology industry that is rapidly and dramatically changing by examining the life of one of its most powerful and influential titans.15/ If you're interested in learning more on the amazing story of @SpaceX and how @ElonMusk has implemented first principles thinking into almost everything he does, check out the fantastic book by @valleyhack. https://t.co/EBdCxj34sa
Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Shares insights into how adversity can bring out the best in individuals and communities, drawing on multiple disciplines to consider such topics as the superiority of city states over nation states and the drawbacks of debt.9/ Special thank you to @nntaleb, whose writing on this subject (and others) in Antifragile has been essential to managing my own information diet. Check out Antifragile and all of his other works. They are foundational. https://t.co/EaiVJy8Xt4
Andrew Carnegie
David Nasaw
Chronicles the life of the iconic business titan from his modest upbringing in mid-1800s Scotland through his rise to one of the world's richest men, offering insight into his work as a peace advocate and his motivations for giving away most of his fortune.@InvestorAmnesia Fascinating stuff. You prompted me to buy this Carnegie biography and dig in deeper on his life and story, which I have somehow never done! https://t.co/4jQ6HLdJOR
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2017 'Finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option...Unmissable' New York Times At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity – the brain – and finally into a patient and a new father. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.@caprashantmedhe @shiva_yb Good question. I need to think about the exact ordering, but they are all on this General Education page. Atlas Shrugged and The Alchemist definitely both in the top-5. When Breath Becomes Air as well. https://t.co/rpavsaVqyt
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
Blends elements of psychoanalysis and Asian religions to probe an Indian aristocrat's efforts to renounce sensual and material pleasures and discover ultimate spiritual truths@shiva_yb Siddhartha is easily a top-5 lifetime book for me.
The Box
Marc Levinson
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason, as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately, it took McLean's success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the container's potential. Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe. Published in hardcover on the fiftieth anniversary of the first container voyage, this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. Now with a new chapter, The Box tells the dramatic story of how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur turned containerization from an impractical idea into a phenomenon that transformed economic geography, slashed transportation costs, and made the boom in global trade possible.14/ Special thanks go out to @KelbyBalson, who originally tipped me off to this amazing story. As there is much more to this tale, I highly recommend reading The Box by Marc Levinson, which was a fantastic read. https://t.co/c3FxB5gbWS
The Black Swan
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Examines the role of the unexpected, discussing why improbable events are not anticipated or understood properly, and how humans rationalize the black swan phenomenon to make it appear less random.11/ For more on the topic of VAR, its pitfalls, and the role of randomness in life, I highly recommend reading The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness by @nntaleb. Honestly, just read anything by him! Foundational classics. https://t.co/f3kVt2ZF8z https://t.co/cNHEXfMOEu
Fooled By Randomness
Nassim Taleb
Contends that randomness and probability have a large impact on life, claims that people regularly fail to recognize that role, and tells how to differentiate between randomness in general and the financial markets in particular.11/ For more on the topic of VAR, its pitfalls, and the role of randomness in life, I highly recommend reading The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness by @nntaleb. Honestly, just read anything by him! Foundational classics. https://t.co/f3kVt2ZF8z https://t.co/cNHEXfMOEu
The Match King
Frank Partnoy
At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after his suicide in 1932, it became clear that Kreuger was not all he seemed: evidence surfaced of fudged accounting figures, off-balance-sheet accounting, even forgery. He created a raft of innovative financial products— many of them precursors to instruments wreaking havoc in today's markets. In this gripping financial biography, Frank Partnoy recasts the life story of a remarkable yet forgotten genius in ways that force us to re-think our ideas about the wisdom of crowds, the invisible hand, and the free and unfettered market.15/ Ivar Kreuger was, in a sense, the tragic hero of his own story. Ambitious, innovative, and fearless to a fault, but also prone to overreach and poor judgement. @FrankPartnoy covered this story well in his fantastic book, The Match King. https://t.co/U4wZOnTvmy