Reading

Worldly Wisdom

Every book here is one I've read — which means the list is incomplete, and always changing. The name is borrowed from Charlie Munger, who called the latticework of ideas across disciplines "worldly wisdom."

Updated July 2026

• Andreessen, Marc. The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. Andreessen Horowitz, 2023.

  A defiant case that technology is the engine of human flourishing. Growth as a moral position.

• Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. Translated by Gregory Hays. Modern Library, 2002.

  A Roman emperor's private notes to himself on duty, death, and self-command. Stoicism with nothing to sell.

• Baron-Cohen, Simon. The Science of Evil. Basic Books, 2011.

  Cruelty reframed as a failure of empathy, measured and mapped. Uncomfortable but clarifying.

• Baron-Cohen, Simon. The Pattern Seekers. Basic Books, 2020.

  Why the systemizing mind that builds technology overlaps with autism. Invention as a cognitive style.

• Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence. Oxford University Press, 2014.

  The book that made AI risk respectable. The control problem, stated before the rest of us were ready.

• Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow. Harper & Row, 1990.

  The psychology of total absorption, and why it is where life is best lived. The science of being in the zone.

• Dalio, Ray. Principles. Simon & Schuster, 2017.

  An operating manual for thinking in systems and acting under uncertainty. The radical-honesty parts cost the most and pay the most.

• Durant, Will, and Ariel Durant. The Lessons of History. Simon & Schuster, 1968.

  Five thousand years compressed into patterns that still hold. History as a teacher, not a chronicle.

• Eger, Edith Eva. The Choice. Scribner, 2017.

  A survivor's account of trading the prison of the past for the freedom of the present. Hard-won, never sentimental.

• Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein. Penguin Press, 2011.

  A journalist trains his way to a memory championship. Proof that memory is a skill, not a gift.

• Frankl, Viktor E. Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 1959.

  Survival in the camps as proof that meaning, not comfort, is what sustains us. The last freedom is how you respond.

• Grandin, Temple. The Autistic Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

  A different kind of mind explaining itself from the inside. The case for cognitive diversity as an asset.

• Greene, Robert. Mastery. Viking, 2012.

  The path from apprentice to master, drawn across centuries of lives. Patience as a superpower.

• Greene, Robert. The 48 Laws of Power. Viking, 1998.

  Power described as it is, not as we wish it were. Read it to recognize the game being played on you.

• Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens. Harvill Secker, 2014.

  How shared fictions let strangers cooperate at scale. The clearest account of why humans run the planet.

• Harari, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus. Harvill Secker, 2016.

  Where the same forces point next — data, algorithms, and the quiet end of the humanist self.

• Hill, Napoleon. Think and Grow Rich. The Ralston Society, 1937.

  The original mindset manual — desire, belief, persistence. Dated in style, durable in substance.

• Hobart, Byrne, and Tobias Huber. Boom. Stripe Press, 2024.

  Why bubbles, for all their waste, are how civilization funds its leaps. A defense of productive mania.

• Holiday, Ryan. Ego Is the Enemy. Portfolio, 2016.

  The quiet case that the self is the obstacle to the work. Humility as strategy.

• Holiday, Ryan. The Obstacle Is the Way. Portfolio, 2014.

  Stoicism turned into an operating system for adversity. The impediment to action advances action.

• Holiday, Ryan. Stillness Is the Key. Portfolio, 2019.

  Why the clearest minds move slowest. Stillness as the precondition for everything else.

• Holiday, Ryan. Courage Is Calling. Portfolio, 2021.

  The first virtue, because none of the others act without it. Fear is the tax on a meaningful life.

• Holiday, Ryan. Discipline Is Destiny. Portfolio, 2022.

  Self-command as freedom, not constraint. The unglamorous virtue that makes the rest possible.

• Holiday, Ryan. Right Thing, Right Now. Portfolio, 2024.

  Justice as a daily practice, not a grand gesture. Character is what you do when it costs you.

• Holiday, Ryan. Wisdom Takes Work. Portfolio, 2025.

  The virtue the other three depend on, saved for last. Wisdom as something earned — by reading, by struggle, by questioning your own beliefs.

• Hughes, Eric. A Cypherpunk's Manifesto. Cypherpunks mailing list, 1993.

  Privacy as the power to reveal oneself selectively, defended with code rather than law. The movement's founding document.

• Isaacson, Walter. The Innovators. Simon & Schuster, 2014.

  The history of computing told as a relay race of collaborators, not lone geniuses. The best argument that progress is a team sport.

• Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Simon & Schuster, 2003.

  The original American polymath — printer, scientist, diplomat, self-inventor. The template for the self-made mind.

• Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster, 2011.

  Taste, cruelty, and the will to bend reality. The case study in caring about the thing itself.

• Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci. Simon & Schuster, 2017.

  Curiosity without limit, discipline without deadline. A reminder that art and science are one inquiry.

• Jorgenson, Eric, and Naval Ravikant. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Magrathea Publishing, 2020.

  Naval's thinking on wealth and happiness, distilled. Leverage, judgment, and the long game.

• Karp, Alexander C., and Nicholas W. Zamiska. The Technological Republic. Crown Currency, 2025.

  Palantir's founder on technology, the West, and the will to win. A challenge to Silicon Valley's politics.

• Kupor, Scott. Secrets of Sand Hill Road. Portfolio, 2019.

  How venture capital actually works, from inside the term sheet. The manual I wish I had read first.

• Munger, Charles T. Poor Charlie's Almanack. Edited by Peter D. Kaufman. Stripe Press, 2023.

  The mental-model latticework of Buffett's partner. Worldly wisdom as a contact sport.

• Nakamoto, Satoshi. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. Self-published, 2008.

  Nine pages that separated money from the state. The most consequential thing I have read this century.

• Nicholas, Tom. VC: An American History. Harvard University Press, 2019.

  Where venture capital came from, and why it shapes who gets to build. The long view on risk capital.

• Orwell, George. 1984. Secker & Warburg, 1949.

  The permanent warning about language, surveillance, and the manufacture of truth. More instruction manual than fiction now.

• Senghor, Shaka. Writing My Wrongs. Convergent Books, 2016.

  Redemption written from inside a prison cell. Proof that a person is not their worst act.

• Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy. Spiegel & Grau, 2014.

  Justice seen from death row, where mercy is the radical act. The conscience of the legal system.

• Swartz, Aaron. Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. Self-published, 2008.

  One page insisting that humanity's knowledge belongs to humanity, and that sharing it is a moral duty, not a crime. He paid for the argument with his life; the argument stands.

• Tegmark, Max. Life 3.0. Knopf, 2017.

  What it means to be human when intelligence itself becomes designable. The far future, taken seriously.

• Thiel, Peter, with Blake Masters. Zero to One. Crown Business, 2014.

  The argument for building the genuinely new instead of copying. Competition is for losers.

• Trump, Donald J., with Bill Zanker. Think Big. HarperCollins, 2007.

  Ambition and self-promotion as method, before the politics. A primary source on a certain American drive.

• Vance, J. D. Hillbilly Elegy. Harper, 2016.

  A memoir of class, family, and the costs of mobility in forgotten America. The story behind a political moment.

• Wilson, Edward O. The Meaning of Human Existence. Liveright, 2014.

  A biologist's wide-angle take on why we are here and where we are headed. Science reaching for the big questions.

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