The books I have listed below are worthy of your time, either in full or in part.
2024 Reading:
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
Determined, Robert Sapolsky
The Everything Token, Scott Kominers
Amsterdam, Russell Shorto
Why the Dutch Are Different, Ben Coates
Tulip Fever 1636-1637 - Myth and Reality, Henk Looijesteijn
The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Until the End of Time, Brian Greene
Permacrisis, Gordon Brown
Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg
The Exponential Age, Azeem Azhar
Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative, Jennifer Burns
The Worlds I See, Feifei Li
Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom
Two and Twenty, Sachin Khajuria
T, Carole Hooven
When We Walk By, Kevin Adler
The Fastest Tortoise, Ken Hersh
The Magic Pill: GLP1, Johann Hari
The Alchemy of Air, Thomas Hager
Making Sense of Chaos, J. Doyne Farmer
Progress and Poverty, Henry George
Stealing Fire, Steven Kotlet
Tim, Måns Mosesson
Build, Baby, Build, Bryan Caplan
Pattern Breakers, Mike Maples Jr.
Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman
Stalin: Volume 1, Stephen Kotkin
2023:
Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World, Seth Siegel
Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow
What I Learned About Investing From Darwin, Pulak Prasad
The Price of Time, Edward Chancellor
The Committed, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Red Rising, Pierce Brown
Golden Son, Pierce Brown
Morning Star, Pierce Brown
Iron Gold, Pierce Brown
Dark Age, Pierce Brown
Light Bringer, Pierce Brown
Noise, Daniel Kahneman
Talking to Strangers, Malcom Gladwell
Going Infinite, Michael Lewis
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
The New China Playbook, Keyu Jin
Love & Math, Edward Frenkel
The Fund, Rob Copeland
An Immense World, Ed Yong
Travels with Tocqueville Beyond America, Jeremy Jennings
2022:
The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future, Sebastian Mallaby
Country Driving, Peter Hessler
The Birth Partner, Penny Simkin
Americana: A 400 Year History of American Capitalism, Bhu Srinivasan
DeFi and the Future of Finance, Campbell Harvey
The Code Breaker, Walter Isaacson
Expecting Better, Emily Oster
The Myth of Capitalism, Jonathan Tepper
The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen
A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
The Art of Being Unreasonable, Eli Broad
The Alchemy of Finance, George Soros
Freezing Order, Bill Browder
An Economist Walks into a Brothel, Allison Schrager
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles
Streets of Gold, Ran Abramitzky, Leah Boustan
Digital Renaissance, Joel Waldfogel
In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio, Andrew Lo
Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva
Baby Steps Millionaires, Dave Ramsey
Talent, Tyler Cowen, Daniel Gross
The Private Equity Playbook, Adam Coffey
The Caesars Palace Coup, Max Frumes
How to Decide, Annie Duke
Chip War, Chris Miller
Influence Empire, Lulu Chen
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson
Prediction Machines, Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans
2021:
Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone, Brian McCullough
The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty, Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson
Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You, Geoffrey Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes, Adam Rutherford
The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World, Charles Mann
The Biotech Trader Handbook: A Fast, Simplified & Efficient Guide to Potentially Generate Outsized Returns in Biotech Using Options (for the non-scientist), T. Ayers Pelz
Think Again, Adam Grant
Valuation in Life Sciences: A Practical Guide, Boris Bogdan, Ralph Villiger
The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China, Jonathan Kaufman
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect, Judea Pearl
The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, Azra Raza
Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon, Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
The Pharmagellan Guide to Biotech Forecasting and Valuation, Frank S. David
Valuation in Life Sciences: A Practical Guide 3rd ed., Boris Bogdan, Ralph Villiger
Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana - Medical, Recreational and Scientific, Martin Lee
The New Kingdom, Wilbur Smith
JewAsian: Race, Religion, and Identity for America’s Newest Jews, Kiyong Kim and Noah Leavitt
Nonviolent Communication: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values, Marshall Rosenberg
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein
Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century, Jeff Lawson
This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, Walter Isaacson
2020:
The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age, James Davidson, William Rees-Mogg
What You Do is Who You Are, Ben Horowitz
Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden
How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization and the Birth of a New Network, Shane Greenstein
Permutation City, Greg Egan
Cable Cowboy, Mark Robichaux
The Stand, Stephen King
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, J.M. Keynes
The Billionaire Who Wasn’t, Conor O’Clery
Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, Christopher Leonard
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent
Real Estate Finance and Investments: Risks and Opportunities, Peter Linneman
Yogi Corporates, Ashish Patil
Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made, Jason Schreier
Working, Robert Caro
The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
Leonardo da Vinci, Walter Isaacson
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
The Dao of Capital, Mark Spitznagel
The Real Estate Game: The Intelligent Guide To Decision-making and Investment, Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and William J. Poorvu
Hiring for Attitude: A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting and Selecting People with Both Tremendous Skills and Superb Attitude, Mark Murphy
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, Safi Bahcall
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, Ed Yong
Smart Business: What Alibaba's Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy, Ming Zeng
To Hold Up the Sky, Liu Cixin
Who, Geoff Smart, Randy Street
2019:
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World, Tom White and Bradley Hope
Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber
The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Guilded Age, Tim Wu
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, Kai-Fu Lee
King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone, John Morris and David Carey
The House of Morgan, Ron Chernow
The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future, Andrew Yang
Zillow Talk: Rewriting The Rules of Real Estate, Spencer Rascoff and Stan Humphries
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, Jon Gertner
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou
All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, Andrew Blum
Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 billion, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank
A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, Jimmy Soni
Competing With Giants: How One Family-Owned Company Took on the Multinationals and Won, Phương Uyên Trần
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, Nassim Taleb
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Ron Chernow
Investing in Real Estate, Gary W. Eldred
Understanding Vietnam, Philip E. Lilienthal
Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, Howard Schultz
The Years That Matter Most, Paul Tough
The Curse of Cash, Ken Rogoff
Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies, Geoffrey West
Messy, Tim Harford
The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, Saifedean Ammous
Permanent Record, Edward Snowden
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life, Rory Sutherland
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, Gregory Zuckerman
Do You!: 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success, Russell Simmons
The Social Conquest of Earth, E.O. Wilson
Managing Rental Properties, Brandon and Heather Turner
2018:
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Humans Need Not Apply, Jerry Kaplan
Dear Chairman, Jeff Gramm
Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow
It Happened in India, Kishore Biyani
Principles, Ray Dalio
Enlightenment now, Stephen Pinker
Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Carl Jung
The $10 Trillion Prize, Silverstein, Singhi, Liao, Michael
Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, Ryan-Collins, Lloyd, Macfarlane
The Aspirational Investor, Ashwin Chhabra
Chaos Monkeys, Antonio Garcia Martinez
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard
Radical Markets, E. Glen Weyl, Eric Posner
Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke
Trump: The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz
How to Change your Mind, Michael Pollan
Economics for the Common Good, Jean Tirole
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius, Joel Greenblatt
Pre-suasion, Robert Cialdini (We are Asian, like you.)
Why Switzerland, Jonathan Steinberg
The Loyalty Effect, Fredick Reichheld
Am I Being Too Subtle, Sam Zell
Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms, David Evans and Richard Schmalensee
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
A Bank For The Buck/The Story Of HDFC Bank, Tamal Bandopadhyaya
What the U.S. can learn from China, Ann Lee
Stubborn Attachments, Tyler Cowen
The Case Against Education, Bryan Caplan
Ball Lighting, Liu Cixin
The Elephant in the Brain, Robin Hanson
The New Economy of Jobs, Enrico Moretti
2017:
The Complacent Class, Tyler Cowen
The Dark Forest, Liu Cixin
Death's End, Liu Cixin
The Paper Menagerie, Ken Liu
The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
Inside the Black Box, Rishi Narang
The Upstarts, Brad Stone
The Governance of China, Xi Jinping
Money Changes Everything, William Goetzmann
The Huawei Way, Yang Shaolong
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
A Man for All Markets, Edward O. Thorp (Book Review)
The Greatest Story Ever Told -- So Far, Lawrence M. Krauss
The Starbucks Experience, Joseph Michelli
The Second Machine Age, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Electronic Value Exchange, David Stearns
Japan as Number One, Ezra Vogel
The Japan That Can Say No, Shintaro Ishihara
Deep Thinking, Gary Kasparov
Japan and the Shackles of the Past, R. Taggart Murphy
Dogs and Demons, Alex Kerr
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harai
The Just City: Thessaly, Book 1, Jo Walton
Ma Huateng & Tencent, Leng Hu
The Lever of Riches, Joel Mokyr
Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel
The Dark Tower Book VI, Stephen King
The Dart Tower Book VII, Stephen King
Hillbilly Elergy, J.D. Vance
Capitalism Without Capital, Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake
Evicted, Matthew Desmond