Bookshelf

My bookshelf, in no particular order. Some are entertaining, some are educational, the best are both. A few I vehemently disagree with. All are worth a look. Inspired by Patrick Collison's bookshelf.

Anything I should read not on this list? Let me know.

Reading lists

IT Strategy (CIS 9000) — The reading behind CIS 9000 (IT Strategy) at Baruch – course books, near misses, pre-reads, and deeper dives from strategy cases to AI agents.
The MBA Replacement — The MBA curriculum, replaced by a bookshelf: strategy, operations, finance, and leadership – picked by someone with the degree who teaches at a b-school.
New to PM — An opinionated reading order for first-time product managers – what the job is, how to ship, and how to think about strategy.

Business & Strategy

The War of Art — Steven Pressfield
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy — Hamilton Helmer
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement — Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Only the Paranoid Survive — Andrew Grove
Stubborn Attachments — Tyler Cowen
Poor Charlie's Almanack — Charles T. Munger
Debt: The First 5,000 Years — David Graeber
The Man Who Solved the Market — Gregory Zuckerman
Netflixed: The Battle for America's Eyeballs — Gina Keating
Parkinson's Law — C. Northcote Parkinson
The Tiny MBA — Alex Hillman
How Will You Measure Your Life? — Clayton M. Christensen
IT Strategy for Non-IT Managers: Becoming an Engaged Contributor to Corporate IT Decisions — Amrit Tiwana
Apple in China — Patrick McGee
Liar's Poker — Michael Lewis
Barbarians at the Gate — Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager — Keith Gessen
Expected Returns: An Investor's Guide to Harvesting Market Rewards — Antti Ilmanen
The Bond King — Mary Childs
Trading at the Speed of Light — Donald MacKenzie
Antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Working Backwards — Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
The Power Law — Sebastian Mallaby
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
The Innovator's Dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen
Crossing the Chasm — Geoffrey A. Moore
The Cold Start Problem — Andrew Chen
The Nvidia Way — Tae Kim
Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation — Byrne Hobart, Tobias Huber
Critical Chain — Eliyahu M. Goldratt
The Everything Store — Brad Stone
Zero to One — Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
Measure What Matters — John Doerr
Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models — Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann
How to Measure Anything — Douglas W. Hubbard
Business Model Generation — Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur
The Intelligence Trap — David Robson

Management & Leadership

High Output Management — Andrew Grove
The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management — Will Larson
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership — Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp
Nonviolent Communication — Marshall B. Rosenberg
Getting to Yes — Roger Fisher, William Ury
Adventures of an IT Leader — Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan, Shannon O'Donnell
Developing Talent in Young People — Benjamin S. Bloom
Scaling People — Claire Hughes Johnson
Radical Candor — Kim Scott
Creativity, Inc. — Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making — Tony Fadell
My Years with General Motors — Alfred P. Sloan Jr.
The Accidental CIO — Scott Millett
Getting Things Done — David Allen
The Making of a Manager — Julie Zhuo
Deep Work — Cal Newport
Atomic Habits — James Clear
It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work — Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
Rules for Radicals — Saul D. Alinsky

Product & Design

Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love — Marty Cagan
Don't Make Me Think — Steve Krug
The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information — Edward R. Tufte
User Story Mapping — Jeff Patton
Do the Fucking Work: Lowbrow Advice for High-Level Creativity — Jason Bacher, Brian Buirge, Jason Richburg
Escaping the Build Trap — Melissa Perri
Continuous Discovery Habits — Teresa Torres
The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick
Creative Selection — Ken Kocienda
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products — Nir Eyal
EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products — Marty Cagan, Chris Jones
Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days — Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz
The Four Steps to the Epiphany — Steve Blank
Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is — Donald C. Gause, Gerald M. Weinberg
Impact Mapping — Gojko Adzic
Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products — Martina Lauchengco
Abloh-isms — Virgil Abloh

Systems & Engineering

Thinking in Systems: A Primer — Donella H. Meadows
The Systems Bible — John Gall
The Phoenix Project — Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
The Algorithm Design Manual — Steven Skiena
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering — Richard Hamming
The Chip — T.R. Reid
Maintenance of Everything: Part One — Stewart Brand
The Origins of Efficiency — Brian Potter
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid — Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Book of Why — Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI — Ethan Mollick
AI Engineering — Chip Huyen
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies — Nick Bostrom
Genius Makers — Cade Metz
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned — Kenneth O. Stanley, Joel Lehman
I Am a Strange Loop — Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Pragmatic Programmer — David Thomas, Andrew Hunt
Designing Data-Intensive Applications — Martin Kleppmann
Algorithms to Live By — Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation — Jon Gertner
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger — Marc Levinson
The Mythical Man-Month — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch) — Sebastian Raschka
Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos — Donald J. Wheeler
Naked Statistics — Charles Wheelan

Science Fiction

The Three Body Problem — Liu Cixin
Neuromancer — William Gibson
The Sprawl Trilogy — William Gibson
The Peripheral — William Gibson
Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson
Seveneves — Neal Stephenson
The Stormlight Archive — Brandon Sanderson
The Mistborn Series — Brandon Sanderson
Excession — Iain M. Banks
The Culture Series — Iain M. Banks
Ra — qntm
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... WHERE IS EVERYBODY? — Stephen Webb
There Is No Antimemetics Division — qntm
Mickey7 — Edward Ashton
Blindsight — Peter Watts
Permutation City — Greg Egan
Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson
Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro
The Murderbot Diaries — Martha Wells
A Song of Ice and Fire — George R.R. Martin

Nonfiction & Narrative

Gates of Fire — Steven Pressfield
Masters of Doom — David Kushner
Skunk Works — Ben R. Rich
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets — David Simon
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood — David Simon, Edward Burns
The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025 — Dwarkesh Patel, Gavin Leech
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies — Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares
The Worlds I See — Fei-Fei Li
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup — John Carreyrou
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! — Richard P. Feynman
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution — Steven Levy
The Making of Prince of Persia — Jordan Mechner
How Music Works — David Byrne
On Writing Well — William Zinsser
Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott
The Creative Act: A Way of Being — Rick Rubin
The Warrior Ethos — Steven Pressfield
Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
The Elements of Style — William Strunk Jr., E.B. White

Food & Cooking

The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science — J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
The Wok: Recipes and Techniques — J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
The Noma Guide to Fermentation — René Redzepi, David Zilber
Joy of Cooking — Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker
Kitchen Confidential — Anthony Bourdain
Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin — Kenny Shopsin
Dessert Person — Claire Saffitz
The Joy of Pizza — Dan Richer
The Tassajara Bread Book — Edward Espe Brown
An Economist Gets Lunch — Tyler Cowen
Zero: A New Approach to Non-Alcoholic Drinks — Grant Achatz, Allen Hemberger, Nick Kokonas
Matty Matheson: Soups, Salads, Sandwiches — Matty Matheson
Moroseta Kitchen: Recipes and Stories from a Modern Puglian Farmhouse — Giorgia Goggi
Superiority Burger Cookbook — Brooks Headley