Book Reading List

I categorize books into two categories: books for understanding and books for information. Books for understanding help me learn and apply new frameworks. They ultimately allow me to break down and understand complex ideas. Books for information help expand my knowledge with factual information. I tend to read multiple books at once and move on quickly from ones I am not learning from. This list only contains books whose notes I started jotting down in Notion in 2024, with some being re-reads.

The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Mallaby - Demis Hassabis was inspired by games to create AI, from theme parks to Black & White to reinforcement learning. He favors induction over deduction and finds inspiration from serendipitous ideas.

A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities by Pierre-Simon Laplace - Laplace's demon was rejected not just by quantum mechanics but by self-reference paradoxes, computational irreducibility, and Godel's incompleteness. A system cannot contain a complete model of itself.

Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday - Objective judgment, unselfish action, willing acceptance of external events. We are complicit in the creation of every obstacle through our perception. If your nerve holds, nothing really did happen.

The Power Law: Venture Capital by Sebastian Mallaby - Two investors can share enthusiasm for the same deal for completely different reasons. Venture is not a home-run business, it's a grand-slam business. The most common error is to invest too timidly.

Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss - The more you run from your fears the bigger they get, but the more you go into them the more they vanish. Heart work is just as important as hard work. Submerge yourself in great work.

Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks - Every story is about a five-second moment of transformation. Start with movement, not expectations. Give your audience an "elephant" early: a need, a want, a problem, a mystery.

Chip War by Chris Miller - Great book about the history of chips and their geopolitical implications.

48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene - Make yourself less accessible and you increase the value of your presence. A strong presence draws power, but too much creates the opposite effect. Create a pattern of presence and absence.

Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene - Listen well and repeat what is being said. Infect people with the proper mood through laughter and shared pleasure. Confirm their self-opinion and ask for advice.

Daily Laws by Robert Greene - To master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others. The goal of an apprenticeship is the transformation of your mind and character.

War Against Cliches by Martin Amis - All writing is a campaign against cliche. Not just cliches of the pen but cliches of the mind and cliches of the heart. When I dispraise, I am quoting cliches. When I praise, I am quoting freshness, energy, and reverberation of voice.

Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop - Complex systems find a balance between stagnation and anarchy at the "edge of chaos," the one place where a system can be spontaneous, adaptive, and alive. Small early accidents can lock in outcomes permanently. Autocatalytic sets suggest life crystallized out of the primordial soup spontaneously once complexity crossed a threshold.

Craft of Interviewing by John Brady - Project yourself as a kindred spirit. Appeal to what people may want to say. Use non-conventional methods to reach out. Sometimes the right question can unlock someone who said no.

Bill Belichick: The Art of Winning by Bill Belichick - If a team cannot consistently do the most important things that correlate to winning, that team has no chance to win consistently. Roger Federer won 80% of his matches but only 54% of his points. When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.

Games People Play by Eric Berne - Social transactions can be analyzed from the point of view of the advantages gained rather than treating them as defensive operations. On the surface the Adult seems to have the initiative, but the outcome is determined by the Child.

Decision Making by Annie Duke - A single experience shouldn't be used as feedback for a decision. You want many different experiences. Think in counterfactuals to understand that what happened was not inevitable. People tend to pat themselves on the back when things go well while blaming circumstances for bad outcomes.

A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger - Questions are engines of intellect that convert curiosity into controlled inquiry. We operate on autopilot, which saves mental energy but prevents us from questioning what's around us. Artists from Picasso to Chuck Close have spoken of questioning's inspirational power.

PowerHouse by James Andrew Miller - Ovitz said he'd learn to be an agent in 90 days or give his money back. Don't wait to be fed, be a scavenger and go find things to do. The talent agency business grew because structural changes in the movie industry gave rise to agents as TV became popular and studios lost exclusivity.

More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby - Soros, Druckenmiller, and Paul Tudor Jones all confided with others to stress-test ideas. Julian Robertson pitched analyst ideas to former executives at companies like Boeing. Jim Chanos worked for Soros, Robertson, and Steinhardt.

The Art of Witty Banter by Patrick King - Don't ask absolute questions. React a little slower than you think you should. Compliment things people have control over. Free association is an excellent foundation for conversation because conversation is about relating unrelated ideas.

Ben Franklin Biography by Walter Isaacson - "Stoop as you go through the world and you will miss many hard bumps." Practice one virtue per week at a time. Traveling is one way of lengthening life.

Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen - Arguments represent much more than what is at stake on the surface. People focus too much on conclusions and their own side. Assume there is information you don't have access to. Your "rule" may be different from others.

The Missing Billionaires by Victor Haghani and James White - Optimal strategy is P minus Q. Gambler's ruin: if odds are against your favor, you will lose no matter the betting strategy. RenTech's Robert Mercer said their successful trading rate was 50.75%. Little advantages that happen every day are key.

Influence by Robert Cialdini - Losses are weighed more heavily than gains. "You have a deal... if you sign" is more effective than "if you sign... you have a deal." Scarcity drives desire, but scarce things do not taste or feel or work any better because of their limited availability.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli - Different leaders are needed for different circumstances. Success depends on the situation. Machiavelli wanted to get hired by the person in power, so he dedicated the book to them, but by publishing his true thoughts he made himself untrustworthy.

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife - The rules of mathematics were built around counting sheep and surveying property, yet these very rules govern the way the universe works. The Greeks rejected zero and infinity, which proved the existence of God in Aristotle's system. Newton and Leibniz created calculus by dividing by zero and adding an infinite number of zeros together.

On Strategy by Lawrence Freedman - Hedgehogs are determined in their path while foxes think of ways that could go wrong. Both are important traits. Your plan goes out the window when you get punched in the face. Lincoln was much more elegant than Pericles, scheming and being deceptive at times but never confronting head on.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson - Lack of political power of people is the main reason nations fall behind. The US did well by giving opportunity to innovators and allowing them to economically exploit their inventions. Patentees often did not come from wealth. Competitive banking means lower interest rates.

Cable Cowboy / Born to Be Wired by Mark Robichaux - Malone's stock price increased 5,578 fold from 75 cents to $4,184 in 23 years. He used distribution as leverage and doubled and tripled down on it. Oliver Cromwell: "He who stops being better stops being good."

Improv by Keith Johnstone - Be obvious and not clever. Obvious is your true self.

Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom - Buffett favored DCFs over price-to-earnings or price-to-book value, which shocked the world.

Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charles T. Munger - Appeal to people's interests, not their reason. Invert, always invert. Train yourself the way pilots are trained: wide base of knowledge, active application in different situations, thinking both logically and backwards.

The Man Who Knew by Sebastian Mallaby - Greenspan kept inflation radically low but was blamed for the financial crisis. He was a great clarinet and sax player who traveled with a band for two years before going to NYU. He focused on empiricism and high quality data over fancy econometric methods.

Buffetology by Mary Buffett and David Clark - Great business at the right price. Moat and durable brand. Diversification is a way to protect yourself against your own stupidity. Like baseball but you only strike out if you swing.

Apple in China by Patrick McGee - "China speed" is when China gets things done at a pace beyond the comprehension of Western visitors. In the 2000s the world's five largest manufacturers were in North America, but by 2010 the number one spot was Foxconn. Andy Grove said losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage the capacity to innovate.

One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch - Use your day-to-day experience to inform investment decisions, but make sure there is expansion potential. If you missed just the 30 best days over five years, your $100,000 turned into $153,792 instead of $341,722.

The World the Box Made by Marc Levinson - Shipping was so expensive before containers that importing didn't make sense, which drove manufacturing hubs into tight areas. Containers lowered cost but innovation in early stages is usually exceedingly ill-adapted to the wide range of uses it is eventually put to.

The Gambling Man by Michael Kranish - Masa was the richest man in 2000 with $70B before the dot-com bubble burst and lost 96% of his wealth. He made the Alibaba investment after a 6-minute meeting, overruling all colleagues who opposed the deal. What other people perceived as expensive, Masa saw as cheap.

Am I Being Too Subtle? by Sam Zell (RIP) - Economic success is freedom no matter how small the scale. Indifference to rejection is one fundamental part of being an entrepreneur. Grave dancing requires confidence, optimism, conviction, and courage. Opportunities don't matter if you don't take action.

Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke - Life is more like poker than chess. You could make the smartest decision and still have it blow up in your face. The smarter you are, the better you are at constructing a narrative that supports your beliefs. Blind-spot bias is greater the smarter you are.

The Man Who Solved the Market by Gregory Zuckerman - Renaissance's Medallion fund generated 66% average annual returns since 1988. They used hidden Markov models to infer market states without needing to know why. Players don't need to know why their opponent is glum to profit from those moods.

The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant - In the last 3,421 years, only 268 years have seen no war. Society is founded not on the ideals but on the nature of man. Every vice was probably once a virtue making for the survival of the individual.

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - We must deal with what we don't know, not with what we know. Statistics and induction should be used for thesis development, not risk management. The opportunity cost of missing a "new new thing" is minuscule compared to the toxicity of all the garbage you have to go through to get to these jewels.

No Filter by Sarah Frier - Kevin Systrom's filters made reality look like art. Instagram's early popularity was less about the technology and more about the psychology. A filter on Instagram was like if Twitter had a button to make you more clever.

Master Market Cycles by Howard Marks - Market cycles are driven by human psychology. Superior investors have a better sense of what's in the "bowl of lottery balls" and decide whether it's worth participating. Ask where you are in the cycle, whether investors are driven by fear or greed, and how to position accordingly.

21st Century Monetary Policy by Ben Bernanke - Volcker was the maverick who jacked up rates to 12% while mortgage rates hit 18%. Arthur Burns gave into Nixon's pleas and drove inflation to highs through stop-go policy. The source of economic disruption shifted from rate increases to markets-driven events during Greenspan's tenure.

The Right Call by Sally Jenkins - Making a decision is like a muscle. You can improve it by working at it. Pressure is what you feel when you don't know what to do. Practice eliminates that. Confidence drops when technique is weak.

The Money Game by Adam Smith - Personal intuition and sensing of the market is key to success in finance. Markets are a way to figure out who you are.

Strategy Rules by David Yoffie and Michael Cusumano - Steve Jobs saw himself as the prototypical consumer and didn't do market research. No market research would have worked since nobody had seen a GUI before. Be paranoid about competitors no matter how far ahead you get.

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen - Companies that are successful listen to their best customers and invest where returns are highest, and that's exactly what leads to their downfall. Sears pioneered supply chain management, store brands, and credit card sales, then didn't pay attention to discount retailers. Disruptive innovation means investing in lower-margin products in smaller markets.

The Everything Store by Brad Stone - Bezos constantly generated ideas to improve the website. Something as simple as one-click shipping made a huge difference. The flywheel: lower prices lead to more customers lead to more sellers lead to lower fixed costs lead to lower prices. Borrow the best ideas from competitors.

Letters on Ethics by Seneca - Don't fear anything. Imagine that thing happening. It's either not that bad or short-lived.

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman - TV doesn't necessarily affect the development of those who watch it, but it affects what is discussed and how. It spreads slowly, like waste spreading through water before reaching an inflection point when everything dies. Ads started off as written works to communicate rationally, rather than relying on psychology and aestheticism.

The Icon and the Axe by James Billington - Kiev was the mother of Russian cities. Russians see spiritual truth in tangible form. In all early Russian writings about a Christian prince, the mention of physical beauty is never lacking. Heat, not light, warmth rather than enlightenment, was the way to God.