Bookshelf

This page is inspired by Patrick Collison’s bookshelf. One star books (★) are good and worth the read you have prior interest. Two star books (★★) are great and, for the large part, worth the read regardless of prior interest. This list includes some books that I’ve started but not finished.

Jump to a specific year:

• 2016
• 2017
• 2018
• 2019

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In Progress

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2019

• Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis ★

• Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl ★

• The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

  Similarly, there are often unexpected plusses to some minor new development. What sugar-packet manufacturer could have known that people would take to flapping the packet back and forth to centrifuge its contents to the bottom, so that they could handily tear off the top?… An unpretentious technical invention—the straw, the sugar packet, the pencil, the windshield wiper—has been ornamented by a mute folklore of behavioral inventions, unregistered, unpatented, adopted and fine-tuned without comment or thought.

  I’m split on The Mezzanine. For one, I enjoyed the focus and introspection it brought every part of modern society. I would say the novel is similar to Curb Your Enthusiasm in the way it reveals truths and oddities about small and hidden parts of our lives. But, the stream of consciousness narrative device made it hard for me to keep the pages turning. It’s a book that I appreciate, not love.

• Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing ★

  “It is hard to realize one’s position here,” Macklin wrote, “living in a smoky, dirty, ramshackle little hut with only just sufficient room to cram us all in: drinking out of a common pot… and laying in close proximity to a man with a large discharging abscess—a horrible existence, but yet we are pretty happy….”

  Wow. Endurance is a stunning survival story. The story of Shackleton and his crew remind me of themes from Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, which I just finished.

• Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

  What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss.

  Sebastian Junger’s Tribe is concise and thought-provoking. It raises important questions about how we should organize ourselves in modern society and what progress really looks like.

• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer ★

  People who don’t climb mountains—the great majority of humankind, that is to say—tend to assume that the sport is a reckless, Dionysian pursuit of ever escalating thrills. But the notion that climbers are merely adrenaline junkies chasing a righteous fix is a fallacy, at least in the case of Everest…

  Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking… And in subjecting ourselves to week after week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace.

  Like Jon Krakauer’s other book that I’ve read Into the Wild, Into Thin Air is a compelling narrative, even if his account of the 1996 Everest expeditions is sometimes flawed (see The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest). But Krakauer does a fantastic job of evoking the feeling of what it’s like to climb Everest.

• K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain by David Roberts and Ed Viesturs ★

• The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt

  This book gives you an unfiltered view of what it takes to lead a commercial expedition on Everest. Naturally, it lacks some of the narrative drama you find in other accounts.

• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer ★★

  It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it… But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.

  I’ve been fascinated recently with stories of wilderness and mountaineering. I thought Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild captured the amazement and allure of the wilderness. The way Krakauer intertwines his own story with that of the subject of the book, Chris McCandless, makes the story all the more rich. A fantastic read.

2018

• Faith: A Journey For All by Jimmy Carter

• Why Religion?: A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels ★★

• Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager by Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, n+1, and Keith Gessen ★★

  I got wind of this book by recommendation from Matt Levine. It’s a series of transcribed interviews with an anonymous hedge fund manager throughout the 2008 financial crisis. I was in middle school during the crisis, so I sort of knew what was going on but most of it had limited impact on me. From this book, though, I felt like what it was like to live through a crisis. That’s extremely useful.

• Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart ★

• Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb ★

  This is the first work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s that I’ve read, which was a mistake. Skin in the Game makes many references to characters and ideas developed in Taleb’s previous works (e.g. Fat Tony), and Taleb assumes familiarity with them. The “skin in the game” idea is a good one, though, even if at times it is belabored or stretched beyond its explanatory power.

• Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan ★★

  Jesus of Nazareth–Jesus the man–is every bit as compelling, charismatic, and praiseworthy as Jesus the Christ.

  What a fascinating perspective on Jesus the man. It’s hard to separate historical fact from theology, but Reza Aslan takes a thorough approach with success. Christianity has shaped the Western world for two millennia, and it’s important to understand its roots and the figure at its center.

• God: A Human History by Reza Aslan ★

  I’m in the middle of a little kick of reading about religious history. Religion speaks volumes about human nature, and there’s a lot for me to learn. In God: A Human History Reza Aslan proposes a cohesive interpretation of humanity’s relationship with God, showing how from the beginning of religious thought, God in all its incarnations is in some sense human. I thought Aslan’s narrative was at times simplistic, but always fascinating.

• The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World Book by Bart D. Ehrman ★★

  I had little knowledge of the history of the early Christian church before reading this. But Bart Ehrman comes at the topic from a balanced historical view that explains the remarkable story of Christinaity’s beginnings and growth as a religion in ancient Rome.

• Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters ★

  The best parts of this memoir are the frequent italicized passages where Alice Waters focuses on thoughts and philosophies instead of recounting specific moments from the past. This book reminded me of how important the food that we eat is to our being, and the care and intention our food deserves.

• A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Edward O. Thorp ★

  At times, this books reads too self-congragulatory. Ed Thorp makes sure to point out that he foresaw Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme, predicted problems with CDOs and CDSs, and was both responsible for the fantastic successes of his hedge fund Princeton Newport Partners, while having no knowledge or responsibility for his firms tie ups with Michael Milken and junk bonds. That being said, Thorp’s story is an interesting one, and his autobiography is worth reading for his thoughts about learning, risk, and success.

• Traders’ Tales: A Chronicle of Wall Street Myths, Legends, and Outright Lies by Ron Insana

  A collection of short stories about Wall Street and traders. A light and easy read, but the stories tend to get more repetitive as the book goes on.

• Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris ★

  Many of the essays are quite enjoyable. A few fell a bit flat for me.

• The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World by Walter Kiechel ★

  The book details the history of strategy consulting—tracing the roots of BCG, Bain, and McKinsey with a strong focus on the actions of the “lords” of these firms. I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I found it dense with history and minutiae, which, if you are involved in the consulting industry, I imagine would be of great interest to you.

• The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway ★★

  I enjoy Scott Galloway’s sharp wit and insight in his Youtube series Winners & Losers in a Digital Age, and his book is no different. Galloway is to the point and blunt about the benefits and problems that are the result of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple accruing unmatched talent, capital, and data.

  Also of value is Galloway’s chapter about how you should approach and shape your career in light of these new dynamics created by large tech companies. He gives cogent advice, and it’s the most valuable part of the book for me. Galloway’s career talk brings the same blunt clarity as his business insight. For example, on following your passion,

  People will tell you to “follow your passion.” This, again, is bullshit… People who tell you to follow your passion are already rich.

  …

  No kid dreams of being a tax accountant. However, the best tax accountants on the planet fly first class and marry people better looking than themselves—both things they are likely to be passionate about.

  You won’t agree with all of Galloway’s opinions, but I think you’ll find enough of them to be useful, and some extremely so. I have.

• Irrational Exuberance by Robert J. Shiller ★

  In light of the extraordinary rise of cryptocurrency, I thought it would be a good idea to read Robert Shiller’s thoughts on bubbles and speculation. That was a good idea. While the bubble is in a new asset class, the phenomena and patterns that Shiller describes have many parallels in crypto.

2017

• The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. ★

  The Millionaire Next Door first came to my attention by recommendation from a co-worker this summer. I’ve been following personal finance communities online for a while now, so many of the ideas and insights were familiar to me. The key takeaway from this book is to separate wealth from income. When people aspire to be rich, they are aspiring for wealth. The lessons and strategies in this book are best seen early in your career, and I’m glad to have seen them now. The real test, though, is how well I live out these lessons once I leave university in the next couple of years.

• [Unfinished] Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food by Michaela DeSoucey

• Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat ★

  Previously, I read and enjoyed one of Ross Douthat’s other books, Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class. I don’t agree with all of Douthat’s politics or opinions, but I believe it’s important to consider as many differing viewpoints as possible. His thoughtful writing and well-argued positions have made me really think about my beliefs and the reasons why I hold them. In Bad Religion, Douthat does a fine job of presenting his views with sufficient context and argument for all, including myself, to understand. I can’t say that I thought much about the decaying moral fabric of American Christianity before reading Bad Religion, but Douthat makes a strong argument for its importance. Again, it really is Douthat’s background, politics, and worldview that I find most valuable because they force me to question my own beliefs.

• Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School by Shamus Rahman Khan ★

  I went to The Lawrenceville School, an east coast boarding school similar to St. Paul’s. And this line from Shamus Rahman Khan rings true to me:

  And, most important, while students were repeatedly told that we were among the best of the best, why was it that so many of the best came from among the rich?

• A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design by Frank Wilczek ★

  I particularly enjoyed this snippet found in the last chapter of the book:

  From his immersion in the quantum world, where contradiction and truth are near neighbors, Neils Bohr drew the lesson of complementarity: no one perspective exhausts reality, and different perspectives may be valuable, yet mutually exclusive.

  I think it’s prudent to be humble in the correctness of your opinions and views, and to recognize that others may have some of the answers too. Especially as time goes by, our collective understanding involves. So at any one point in time, no one will have all of the answers.

  However, take this opinion of mine with a grain of salt, it’s just one person’s perspective.

• How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness by Russ Roberts ★★

• Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford ★

• The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality by Angus Deaton ★

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari ★★

  I was tuned into Sapiens from its inclusion in Bill Gates’s 2016 summer reading list. Who would’ve thought: Bill Gates has a pretty good taste in books 😉.

  Sapiens is a pleasant read for two reasons: comfortable prose and clear theses. This is not to say that the book is simplistic or boring. It’s the opposite: that the language and structure of the book do so much to keep it an engaging read. I almost couldn’t help but read more.

  One thing I will note is that I was surprised (pleasantly so) by the “philosophy” in the pages of the book. I found myself generally agreeable to many of Yuval Noah Harari’s posits and propositions. But a different perspective on these philosophical points might cloud your perception of the work.

• [Unfinished] A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein, and Sara Ishikawa

  I only made it partway through this book. The parts that I did read were quite enjoyable. This book highlights how important physical spaces are in shaping and molding human experience.

• Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good by Chuck Collins ★

  At times, the book reads a little one-dimensional in its interpretation of the issues facing the world today. But Chuck Collins does a fine job making the case for those in the 1% to give back, and he does so with many suggestions for practical actions.

  If you agree with his assumptions and worldview, then this book will be a convincing and inspiring read. If you agree with some, but not all of Collins’s points (as I do), then this book will be a provocative and ambitious read.

• Sum by David Eagleman ★★

  I first picked up this book after hearing about it on episode 77 of the Hello Internet podcast. By coincidence, the author of the book, David Eagleman, is a neuroscientist who studies the perception of time. Turns out, Eagleman was heavily featured in another book I finished earlier this year called Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation.

  Sum is not what you expect from someone whose career is as an academic. It’s purely a work of fiction, an imaginative exploration of conceptions of the afterlife. Its sections are short, often spanning only two or three pages. Some of the conceptions begin to feel repetitive, but they are all short enough that something new is always around the corner.

  I’m sure everyone will find a couple of the conceptions particularly intellectually stimulating for themselves. For me, I found the first (Sum) and the second to last (Search) the most memorable.

• Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History by John Dickerson ★

  A light and enjoyable read. It’s a collection of 15-minute or so stories, each about a past presidential campaign. A gentle reminder that as crazy as the news seem today, in one way or another, politics has always sort of been this way.

• Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation by Alan Burdick ★

  This book is certainly an enjoyable read. I finished it in about a month with on-and-off reading. If it’s not evident, this book is mainly about the brain—about two-thirds neuroscience, one-third philosophy. I would’ve preferred more philosophy than neuroscience, but the presentation of both topics is accessible and interesting.

• If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … WHERE IS EVERYBODY? by Stephen Webb ★

  When thinking about the Fermi Paradox, the uncertain and unknowable nature of the paradox can make the discussion very esoteric. But Stephen Webb describes solutions to the Fermi Paradox in a totally accessible manner. I think it’s an example of the best kind of science writing that doesn’t over simplify for the wow factor, but that gives a thorough yet accessible treatment of the topic.

  As a side benefit, Webb’s disciplined discussion of the Fermi Paradox provides a framework that can be applied to many other common problems. We are often faced with problems with uncertain outcomes and equally uncertain probabilities. One choice we have is to throw up our hands and make decisions based on gut feeling. The other choice is to apply intuition and get some answer—which is certainly better than none at all. That’s what Webb does in the book to great effect.

  Note: I did not know this when I read the book, but Webb has released an updated version of the book that now includes 75 (up from 50) solutions to the Fermi Paradox. Bonus: If you have access to Springer Link (I have access through my college), you can get a DRM-free PDF.

• The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby ★

  Sebastien Mallaby goes to great lengths in this biography to support his hypothesis that Alan Greenspan is, and has always been, less caricature than he has been made out to be. Whether it be the “maestro” who received bi-partisan support during his tenure, or the post-2008 revisionist perspective of a ideological to a fault laissez-faire libertarian, Mallaby makes a strong case that the truth—as it often does—lies somewhere in the middle.

  I am quite partial to Mallaby’s rejection of the Great Man Theory when characterizing Greenspan. I believe that we over-index on individual agency when explaining both success and failure. It leads to false hope and inevitable disappointment in politics. And it often creates a dangerous culture of hubris.

• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance ★

  Hillbilly Elegy is worth a read because of how it describes a a white, working-class culture of Appalachia that isn’t often talked about. J.D. Vance manages to describe it well by being nuanced throughout. Very few things are binary, and Vance’s description of hillbilly culture is no different. When talking about social issues partisanship and loaded terms (e.g. “welfare queen”) often bring conversation to a standstill. But I think that this book does a fine job avoiding those traps.

2016

• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

  I read Ready Player One after seeing many recommendations for the book over time. If you are familiar with popular culture from the 1980s, I am quite sure this will be an enjoyable read. If you are not familiar with 80s pop culture, you will be fine for also passing over Ready Player One.

• A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing by Burton Malkiel ★★

  …telling most investors that there is no hope of beating the averages is like telling a six-year-old that there is no Santa Claus. It takes the zing out of life.

  More than anything else, the highest praise that can be given for A Random Walk Down Wall Street is that it is a no-nonsense book. Burton Malkiel advocates that index-based investing ought to form the core of most individuals’ portfolios.

  It’s also refreshing to see that the current edition of the book, the 11th, is an meaningfully revised edition. In this edition, Malkiel addresses recent challenges to the Efficient-Market Hypothesis, such as behavioral finance and smart beta. What’s more, he includes recent economic data up through 2014, when this edition was published.

• God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley ★

  Again, I maintain that most universities have espoused—and continue to do so—collectively, one value as opposed to another.

  While I certainly don’t agree with everything in this book, I thought it a worthwhile read. There are many more smart things than dumb things in this book.

  It is plain that the president of a university cannot transmit to the students his own values directly. His duties are so extensive that to conduct classes on a large scale is a practical impossibility. He must therefore utilize intermediaries, men of similar convictions, to do the job. This academic freedom forbids. It is therefore an appalling yet indisputable fact that because of the restraints of “academic freedom,” the president of Yale has far less influence on the student body than have scores of influential professors who are allowed—in fact encouraged—to teach just as they will , to traffic, within loose limits, in whatever values they choose.

  It is curious that the Corporation spends so much time and effort in selecting a president.

• On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates ★★

  …for boxing is about failure far more than it is about success.

  There are no shortage of reviews and responses to this timeless Joyce Carol Oates anthology of essays about, and on, boxing. And rightly so. For a longtime outsider to the world of combat sports who only started paying more attention recently, beginning with Mayweather vs. Pacquiao last year, On Boxing captures perfectly what is so electric and captivating about boxing.

  I can tell you, though, that it’s not a rigid historical account of the all of the great 20th century boxing moments. Instead, this book explains why boxing is so enthralling. Boxing is in many ways the most primitive of sports, and Oates does a masterful job of encapsulating those ancient feelings and actions with words. While brief, On Boxing is not superficial. The book places you decades deep inside the culture of boxing. A lifetime of experience in only 200 some odd pages. Not a bad deal. To illustrate, Oates in her own words on boxing:

  Which returns us to the paradox of boxing: its obsessive appeal for many who find in it not only a spectacle involving sensational feats of physical skill but an emotional experience impossible to convey in words; an art form, as I’ve suggested, with no natural analogue in the arts. Of course it is primitive, too, as birth, death and erotic love might be said to be primitive, and forces our reluctant acknowledgement of that the most profound experiences of our lives are physical events—though we believe ourselves to be, and surely are, essentially spiritual beings.

• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis

  They traded in the market the way card counters in a casino played blackjack: They played only when they had an edge.

  Flash Boys, if a little repetitive towards the end, was an enjoyable read written accessibly with solid characters and an easy to follow narrative.