I’m trying to be helpful and listing some of people’s favourite books to reread each year, sort them into categories and link to them.
Comments and book suggestions come from replies to Laura Deming’s tweet, I want a list of books that are good to re-read every year. Most valued: technical books that can apply across disciplines (‘How to Solve It’ by Polya).
Science & Tech
- Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell
- A Literary Companion to Science by Walter Gratzer
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
- Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M Benyus
- Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins by Garry Kasparov
- Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow , Yoshua Bengio , et al.
- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter
- Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas by Seymour A Papert
- Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, Alexander D. Johnson, et al.
- On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
- Smart Thinking by Art Markman
- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard W. Hamming
- The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch
- The Clock Of The Long Now: Time and Responsibility by Stewart Brand
- The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Under the Read tab)
- The industries of the future by Alec Ross
- The New Turing Omnibus by A.K. Dewdney
- The Principia by Sir Isaac Newton
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte
- Thinking Physics: Practical Lessons in Critical Thinking by Lewis Carroll Epstein
Biographies and Autobiographies
- Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
- Popper by Bryan Magee
- The Period Table by Primo Levi
Business, Economics, Math
- Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland
- A History of Economic Theory by Prof Jürg Niehans
- Computability and Logic by George S. Boolos
- How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff
- Moral Mazes by Robert Jackall
- Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono
- The Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Paul Zeitz
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Classic Literature & Fiction
- Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
- The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
History & Recollections
- Discourses on Livy by Niccolo Machiavelli
- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 by Friedrich Engels
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
- The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin
- The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant
- The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
Psychology, Behavioural, Philosophy
- Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Critical Mass by Philip Ball
- Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
- Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse
- Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
- How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
- How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn
- Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases by Daniel Kahneman
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Full Book linked)
- Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit
- Self Renewal by John Gardner
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
- The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin
- The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows
- Time and the Art of Living by Prof Robert Grudin
- Word and Object by Willard Van Orman Quine
- When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
- Zen Essence by Thomas Cleary
Self Improvement
- As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman
- Learning how to learn by Barbara Oakley
- Obliquity by John Kay
- Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger
- Power of now by Eckhart Tolle
- Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin
- The 12 week year by Brian P. Moran
- The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts by Shane Parrish
- Ultralearning by Scott Young
Misc
- Bird By Bird by Annie Lamott
- Eunoia by Christian Bök
- Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone
- Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock
- The Open Societies and Its Enemies by Karl R. Popper
Related Posts of Mine
- What’s one book that changed your life?
- New Book Recommendations – (Sam Altman)
- What is the Most Underrated Book You’ve Read?
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