Here’s a list of books, poetry, and essays that are part of my canon. I try to read as widely as possible, but my focus areas recently have been biology, German classics, and European history. I will update it as I keep finding more interesting works.

  • Alexander, Scott: I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup
  • Alexander, Scott: The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories
  • Asparouhova, Nadia: Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading
  • Baudelaire, Charles: Paris Spleen
  • Barr, James: A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East
  • Bisky, Jens: The Decision: Germany 1929 to 1934
  • Bland, David J.: Testing Business Ideas: A Field Guide for Rapid Experimentation
  • Bostrom, Nick: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
  • Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita
  • Chen, Andrew: The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects
  • Clancy, Tom: Red Storm Rising
  • Clark, Christopher: Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947
  • Davies, Jamie A.: Synthetic Biology: A Very Short Introduction
  • Feynmann, Richard P.: “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character
  • Fukuyama, Francis: The End of History and the Last Man
  • Fukuyama, Francis: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
  • Goodsell, David S.: The Machinery of Life
  • Havel, Václav: The Power of the Powerless
  • Helmer, Hamilton: 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy
  • Hemingway, Ernest: A Moveable Feast
  • Ishiguro, Kazuo: Never Let Me Go
  • Judt, Tony: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
  • Kafka, Franz: The Castle
  • Kafka, Franz: The Metamorphosis
  • Kafka, Franz: The Trial
  • Kafka, Franz: The Zürau Aphorisms
  • Klein, Ezra: Abundance
  • Kundera, Milan: A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe
  • Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice
  • Mann, Thomas: Doktor Faustus
  • Mann, Thomas: The Magic Mountain
  • Mukherjee, Siddartha: The Gene: An Intimate History
  • Münkler, Herfried: The Thirty Years War: European Catastrophe, German Trauma
  • Myers, John: The housing theory of everything
  • Publius: The Federalist Papers
  • Remarque, Erich Maria: All Quiet on the Western Front
  • Rimbaud, Arthur: A Season in Hell
  • Sarotte, Mary Elise: Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate
  • Smil, Vaclav: Energy and Civilization: A History
  • Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars
  • Tooze, Adam: The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
  • Torres, Teresa: Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value
  • Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaughterhouse-Five
  • Zweig, Stefan: Chess Story
  • Zweig, Stefan: The World of Yesterday