Book Recommendations

Books are in order of recommendation and organized by topic. Books with a ⭐ are ones that changed how I see things.

Business

1. Good To Great — Jim Collins. Find all the best performing companies over a 15 year period and compare them to similar companies in the same area that weren’t as successful. Collaboration on the book was Jim Collins and a bunch of grad students who all debated on what was in common to success and failure. The insights apply to companies as well as individual careers and I find myself using ideas like the three circles and the flywheel over and over in conversation.
2. Outliers: The Story of Success — Malcolm Gladwell. Breaks down the half dozen or so factors that contribute to success and tells neat backstories on famous outliers like the Beatles, Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Los Alamos a-bomb), and professional Canadian hockey players (most were all born in January and February). This is the book that coined the term “10,000 hours of deliberate practice” and prompted parents to hold back their children a grade.
3. Creativity Incorporated — Ed Catmull. Ed Catmull is one of the guys that started and runs Pixar. He also invented many things in computer graphics like texture maps. He talks about the company culture at Pixar, how they talk about problems and avoid talking about solutions, how Steve Jobs mellowed while at Pixar, how Pixar helped reboot Disney when they were bought, how teams use brain trusts and “give notes” on problems only (no solutions), how not even an executive can override a director’s decision about a movie (although they can remove the director), and lots more about running creative companies.
4. Lean Startup — Eric Ries. The often debated book on “minimum viable product” and quick build, measure, and learn cycles. It talks about the connection to Toyota production lines and mini-batches of production. Its basically how you build something when you don’t know if it will work the first time and you want to minimize the pain of trashing everything and starting over. This is the silicon valley mantra “fail fast, fail often, fail early”
5. Zero to One — Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel runs a silicon valley hedge fund and the book is about how he finds companies to invest in and how to spot and create great companies. He creates terms like “definite optimist” vs “indefinite optimist”. The first invests in one thing in a big way because they know something no one else does. The second invests in a little of everything because they don’t know what will succeed and what will fail.
6. Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson. If you are moved by Steve Jobs, this is a nice read. Its nice to hear the complete story and all the bits you missed.
7. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future — Ashlee Vance. I had to understand Elon Musk and this book tells the history of zip2, paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City as well as his growing up, his wife, and the abrupt firing of his secretary rather mysteriously. Reading it you kind of got the felling the author was painting a rosy picture in a few places but without other sources its hard to know for sure.

Psychology

1. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us — Daniel H. Pink. Why do people play? Why do people work? Whats the difference? What makes you happy according to psychologists expiraments? (hint: its not money and sitting on a beach). Really insightful things like Freedom, Mastery (learning), and Purpose. It also talks about open source software, and “Result Oriented Work Environments (ROWE)” at places like 3M, Gortex, and Google. He also talks about why incentives work for simple manual tasks like an assembly line but not for creative ones and the experiments that tested it.
2. ⭐The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion — Jonathan Haidt. I’ve always been stumped as to why politics and religion defied reason and why so many people seemed to be delusional. Well this book delivers the hard science behind why. Its Darwinian group selection. Basically people are a little like honey bees in how they are wired by natural selection to work as a collective. I not longer criticize people so harshly for their religion or politics because I see how fragile reason is in the face of evolutionary programed drives. One of the more influential books to my world view.
3. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants — Malcolm Gladwell. A collection of stories that illustrate a few points, mostly centering around how underdogs can win and how they manage it, usually by exploiting the aspects of weakness in power. There’s allot I didn’t know about the tactics used by Martin Luther King and others in the civil rights movement that are a little sneaky and you never hear about. Things like they intentionally went to the most racist city in the south with the most violent and brutal police chief with the intent of staging a media event that shocked the rest of the nation to action. Beneficial Disadvantage another cool idea that our shortcomings can push us to develop working solutions that far exceed average ability.
4. Stumbling on Happiness — Daniel Gilbert. The book is about the mental equivalent of optical illusions and how the illusions make us think we will be happy but in the end we are not. The best advice from the book is that the only way to know if working toward something will make you happy is to find someone that is already there and ask them. Does winning the lottery make you happy? Most people think it would. Find a lottery winner and ask them. Turns out, yes, but only for a short while. Second favorite idea is that its hard to notice the absence of things. A bird craps on your shoulder and you think … really? me? today?, never being aware of all the times all the birds in the world do the same thing but everywhere else.
5. Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman . Daniel Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for the work covered in this book. It takes apart how there is a strong fast intuitive part of your brain and a slow weak rational part and what can affect each brain area like a meal or expending effort for a long time. Also other creepy things like your eyes dilate when you expend mental effort, so someone looking at your pupils can know how hard a task is for you.
6. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking — Malcolm Gladwell. Filled with lots of bits about decision making and the brain. When to think deliberately about something and when to go with your gut. How sometimes trying to explain your answer can make your answer worse like when judging the quality of strawberry jam. Also how experts can spot art forgeries but not really explain why.
7. The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics — Tries to set down the basic rules for staying in power regardless of if you are in a democracy or a dictatorship. It caught my interest as a way to prevent government corruption and quality of government by understanding the fundamental process that drives it. This YouTube video does a great job of summarizing the book.
8. Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl . Almost every top ten most influential books list had this on it and now I know why. Viktor Frankl was a psychologist who survived the Nazi concentration camps and then wrote about what he learned. The gist is people without a deep reason to live are the first to give up. Here are some excerpts:

Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

One day, a few days after the liberation, I walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp. Larks rose to the sky and I could hear their joyous song. There was no one to be seen for miles around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks’ jubilation and the freedom of space. I stopped, looked around, and up to the sky — and then I went down on my knees. At that moment there was very little I knew of myself or of the world — I had but one sentence in mind — always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.” How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence memory can no longer recall. But I know that on that day, in that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human being.

“Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.” Varying this, we could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

And this one that floored me beyond measure, because I’ve felt this when I was very ill:

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’”

Invention, Creativity, and Technology

1. ⭐What Technology Wants — Kevin Kelly. I read the book because of this TED talk. Kevin Kelly calls technology the 7th kingdom of life, right up there with fungus, plants, animals, etc. And then goes to connect all the common trends in biology and technology making the argument pretty solid. Platform species like beaver and corral reefs create new habitat and technology like the iPhone does the same. Evolution creates trees of species over time, tracing out decent with modification. Technology does the same. In the book there is a family tree of trumpets and their history and lineage. The book stitches together a whole view of the whole world, physics, life, technology, and intelligence and shows how they are really the same thing, entropy reversing machines using energy to do work to out compete, and out innovate, in an infinite game. Melted my brain a little as the far-reaching impact of this view sunk in. Probably the most influential book I’ve read (but its long and challenging to read).
2. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation — Steven Johnson. How does stuff get invented? Is it lone individuals or groups? Is it secret labs or public discussion? Why do people get ideas in the shower or when they are putting on their coat to go somewhere? Why do patents for the same thing get submitted at the same time with no knowledge of the other inventers? Lots of details about invention and how it happens.
3. Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
   by Steven Kotler, Jamie Wheal — This book centers around a non-ordinary state of consciousness called a flow state, the hyper productive, hyper creative, intense concentration seen in extreme sports, elite navy seals, musicians, artists, and even the top folks at Google and other high innovation tech industries. It shows how flow states in things like surfing, meditation, yoga, and psychedelics all seem to produce the same brain state and are effective in treating PTSD. It weaves together why these states are productive and why we can’t be in them all the time. It shows how if you take it to an extreme you get into the territory of mystical experience and psychedelics. Its an unlikely linkage that has big implications to meaning, psychology, spirituality, creativity and allot more. Joe Rogan interview with Steven Kolter on the book.
4. The Inevitable — Kevin Kelly. What will the future be like? Is the future a utopian ideal we can see or is it such a radical change along the way that its impossible to see the end state. The book is broken into twelve “verbs” for how the future will change and doesn’t really say what the future will be, but instead the ways it will change. Its also loaded with lots of neat words for how you can describe something like something being a fixity or a flow. A book is a fixity. You make it and you are done. A twitter feed is a flow. Its updated continuously. Things like almost all the startups for the next decade will be taking something old and adding intelligence to it. Phones become smart phones. Watches become smart watches. It has deeper thing like, when machines get so good that they can understand and make everything what will humans “do”. The answer is that the last thing the machines will take over is questioning. People will ask the questions, and set the goals, and the machines will find the answers (kind of like Google today). The chapters are:

1. BECOMING
2. COGNIFYING
3. FLOWING
4. SCREENING
5. ACCESSING
6. SHARING
7. FILTERING
8. REMIXING
9. INTERACTING 1
0. TRACKING
11. QUESTIONING
12. BEGINNING

Hard To Categorize

1. Linked— Albert-laszlo Barabasi. By the guy that was at the forefront of discovering these networks, this book talks about networks and the types of network typologies and how one kind of network called a scale free network, shows up in so many different contexts (social networks, web page links, company board members, gene interaction, disease propagation, phase changes like ice melting and tons more). Have you heard of 7-degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon? This book is part of that. The topology gives away insight into how the network formed using “preferential attachment”. Something like its easy to make a friend if you already have lots of friends.
2. What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures — Malcolm Gladwell. A collection of all Malcolm Gladwells articles in the New Yorker as wide and as varied in topic as possible. Dog whisperers, the difference between panicking and choking in sports, a homeless guy who cost the state a million dollars in medical expenses and how the solution is similar to solving auto pollution (small number of things have most the cost), and lots more.
3. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference — Malcolm Gladwell. How things can be stagnant for a long time and then take off with the smallest of nudge. Why some things spread and others do not, viral content, marketing, etc. This was one of the first Malcolm Gladwell books I read and its been a long time so there is likely more I can’t remember.
4. The Man’s Guide to Women:
   Scientifically Proven Secrets from the “Love Lab” About What Women Really Want — many authors. Some real heavy science about something that traditionally has not had any science. Things like what are the top things women look for (trustworthiness and leadership)? Men look for peacefully getting along and sex. Also stuff I didn’t know, like women experience fear more easily than men do and therefor men can underestimate the scariness of things. That men are often the make or break factor in relationships (thus the reason for writing a book aimed at men). Essential reading for anyone jumping into this in a big way. Was recommended by a woman with three masters degrees and a book nut like myself … so I read it (partly to add to this things we could talk about).
5. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t
   — Malcolm Gladwell. Talks about how we misread people, and all the specifics about why. The stories cover Cuban spies, traffic stops, geographic crime distribution, pedophiles, Bernie Madoff and college drinking culture.
6. ⭐ Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse . This one is hard to describe. Imagine if a mathematician wrote a book on game theory but it reads like a religious text. Thats what this felt like to me. James Carse wrote this in the 80s and is a professor of Religion. It doesn’t match any religion though and in some ways reflect Carse’s own way at looking at philosophies. Finite games have fixed rules and come to an end with a winner. Infinite games change their rules and never end. Finite game players play to win. Infinite game players play to keep playing. Sex, myth, nature, evil, and gods are all explained in this context of finite and infinite games. An example of a finite game is chess, or economics. An example of an infinite game is biological life or culture. The ideas are like math in that he just explains how they are defined and work but doesn’t make any prescriptions on how they are to be used. One can see the underpinnings of why tolerant pluralistic societies last.

Fiction

1. Walkaway: A Novel — Cory Doctorow. See this post on what I thought of the book.