First published on 12/04/24.

I've been reading mostly non-fiction lately, which is massively inspiring and exploding my thinking, adding new lenses to view the world, like a proper fox (as opposed to a hedgehog). I'd like to share some of the most recent books here that have made a big impact on me in chronological order, most recent first.

Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge by Ian Kumekawa
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going by Vaclav Smil
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin
How Asia Works: Success and Failure In the World's Most Dynamic Region by Joe Studwell
Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan
Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis by Jeanna Smialek
The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad
Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin
The Disappearing Spoon: And other true tales of rivalry, adventure, and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements by Sam Kean (I accidentally got the young readers edition)
The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why by Jeff Sebo
The Unicorn Project: A Novel about the Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data by Gene Kim
The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker
The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock & Dan Gardner
Overthrow: America's century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer
One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias
Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World by Oliver Bullough
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta
The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin (I read it a second time after getting more middle east context from Bacevich)
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard V. Reeves
America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History by Andrew J. Bacevich
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka
Frontend Architecture for Design Systems: A Modern Blueprint for Scalable and Sustainable Websites by Micah Godbolt
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann
The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu
Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry by Randolph M. Nesse, MD
Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky
The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik
The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef
Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M. Nolan Gray
Why we love dogs eat pigs and wear cows: An introduction to Carnism by Melanie Joy
Stolen Focus: Why you can't pay attention - and how to think deeply again by Johann Hari
Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life by Kristen Ghodsee
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord
Chip War: The fight for the world's most critical technology by Chris Miller
The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin

Recent book list