Jack’s book list

Jack Yin
Jack Yin
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

Wherein I keep a list of books that I like that may or may not have been stolen from Bill Gates.

  1. Capital in the 21st Century — Thomas Piketty extends Marx’s work and explains the distribution of capital and how it affects our modern world
  2. The Rise and Fall of American Growth — Robert J Gordon boils down in painstaking detail where the source of American growth was. Gives a strong sense of the magnitude of change necessary to produce the kind of growth we saw in the postwar years.
  3. East of Eden — John Steinbeck asks your heart to wonder about how much we’ve inherited, both glories and sins
  4. Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman teaches you how your brain works, and tricks your intuition repeatedly.
  5. Algorithms to live by — Brian Christian talks about computer science algorithms in the real world. In the process, he teaches you how our intuitions evolved to maximize rewards in an uncertain environment, and in fact don’t operate all that bad in the uncertain environments that characterize the vast majority of the real world
  6. Power, Sex, and Suicide — Nick Lane talks about how metabolism and energy usage is the Cinderella stepsister of biology, and how that deeply shapes the entire natural world
  7. Sapiens — Yuval N. Harari argues that what makes humans special and grants us our power is not our rationality and intelligence but our ability to coordinate and collaborate on a mass scale
  8. Daring Greatly — Brene Brown tells you to stop being a pussy and learn how to be vulnerable in your relationships or else you’re doomed
  9. American Nations — An introduction to the origins and history of the various cultures of America
  10. Marriage, A History — Stephanie Coontz lays out the history of marriage, and allows you to understand how our culture and gender norms have shifted over time and why
  11. Energy and Civilization — Vaclav Smil records the large shifts in energy usage and control over time, and really puts our own contributions in perspective.
  12. The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro invites you to inhabit the flawed mind of an excellent butler, and lets you wonder about your own blinders and your own servile nature
  13. I Don’t Want To Talk About It — Terrence Real dissects the symptoms and consequences of toxic masculinity, describing the result as “covert depression.” It’s unclear to me how his “covert depression” relates to the medical phenomena of depression-like disorders, but what’s certain is that Real is describing a real phenomenon that plagues the classical image of American masculinity.
  14. Political Order and Political Decay — Francis Fukuyama attempts to sketch out what a “good government” looks like, and argues that the quality of a government (i.e. if it’s good or bad) is mostly independent from the system of government (e.g. if its democratic or autocratic). He has a ton of history to back it up.

Jack Yin

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Jack Yin

A cool breeze, oak trees, and allergies.

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