Pete’s mega-recommended reading list

  • The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Debt : The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber
  • Chaos, by James Glick
  • The (mis)Behavior of Markets, by Benoit Mandelbrot
  • What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan
  • Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefèvre
  • Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, by Carlota Perez
  • The Sovereign Individual, by James Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg
  • Zero to One, by Peter Thiel
  • The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, by Don Thompson
  • Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art, by Michael Shnayerson
  • On Equilibrium, by John Ralston Saul
  • A Concise Introduction to Logic, by Patrick J. Hurley
  • Unended Quest : An Intellectual Autobiography, by Karl Popper
  • Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche
  • The Ethics, by Baruch Spinoza
  • Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford
  • Peter The Great : His Life and World, by Robert K. Massie
  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, by Ron Chernow
  • The Sultans, by Noel Barber
  • How Asia Works, by Joe Studwell
  • The Lessons of History, by Will and Ariel Durant
  • The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant
  • A History of Private Life (Vol I-V), edited by Georges Duby
  • The Histories, by Herotodus
  • The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
  • Medieval Feudalism, by Carl Stephenson
  • The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Rabalais
  • Candide, by Voltaire
  • The Book of Satoshi, by Phil Champagne
  • Applied Cryptography : 2nd Edition, by Bruce Schneier
  • Present Shock, by Douglas Rushkoff
  • Mating in Captivity, by Esther Perel
  • The Internet is a Playground, by David Thorne
  • Everybody Lies, by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
  • I Can’t Make This Up, by Kevin Hart
  • Win Bigly, by Scott Adams
  • Alchemy, by Rory Sutherland
  • Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
  • Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight
  • No Room for Small Dreams, by Shimon Peres
  • Putting Out of Your Mind, by Bob Rotella
  • Drive On! : A social history of the motor car, by L.J.K. Setright
  • Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
  • The Trouble With Physics, by Lee Smolin
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Series, by Douglas Adams
  • The Dirk Gently Series, by Douglas Adams
  • The Foundation Series, by Isaac Asimov
  • The Red Queen, by Matt Ridley
  • The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley
  • Systems of Survival, by Jane Jacobs
  • The Hare With Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal
  • Hot to Cold, by Bjarke Ingels
  • Yes Is More, by Bjarke Ingels
  • Building Artistry, by Ian Gillespie
  • The Artist’s Reality : Philosophies of Art, by Mark Rothko

List subject to revision.

14 thoughts on “Pete’s mega-recommended reading list

  1. Mitchell says:

    Is this in order of importance ? :)

  2. Douglass Brayer says:

    I like it, the lists are quite different from my personal 20 book favorites, but that s what makes it valuable. If I can find just ONE book I love among the ones mentioned it s worth it. I would love a pattern analysis regarding top recommended books.

    • Pete D. says:

      The pattern analysis would likely output something like a Rorschach blot.

      P.S. You’re definitely one of the smarter spambots around. WD.

  3. […] equivalent hack to “black sheep wall” is to read a good book. Not any book, mind you. These are not those. But reading the TLP archives would be a good place to start. […]

  4. […] always David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5`000 Years. Both of these titles are on my mega-recommended reading list. […]

  5. […] season) with a quick flip through Bob Rotella’s Putting Out Of Your Mind (yes, it’s on the list). This book is a damned sight more beneficial than hoping against hope that the real putting genie […]

  6. […] stand as tall as ever. This book still very much deserves its second-to-top spot on my (unranked) Reading List. I can’t recommend it enough as a primer for understanding […]

  7. Adlai says:

    Interesting list. I’ve yet to properly process even a single one of these, although I do have dead-tree copies of a couple within the family shelves (and a few more on the personal disks); Partial preorder recalibrated accordingly!

    • Pete D. says:

      Cheers mate. And that reminds me, this list is probably overdue for an update. Getting on that now.

      Edit : Another ten or so titles added!

  8. Pete D. says:

    Updated for at least the third time, but who’s counting ?

  9. Pete D. says:

    Updated with new dead trees, though of course most are available on audiobook as well.

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