Recommended Reading List

I have been regularly asked about book recommendations, and I would like to share a list of some of my favorite reads. I will continue to update this list periodically.

Please note that none of the below referenced books are necessarily reflective of my own personal views and opinions. In fact, some suggested books below contradict one another. My intent is to share reading suggestions that I thoroughly enjoyed and provided profound insights or a novel perspective.

Mark Miodownik is a professor of materials at University College London. He does a remarkable job of explaining the science behind the world around us in an enjoyable and engaging manner. There are three books that I would recommend to help better understand the world around us.

• Stuff Matters - his first book about materials and solids
• Liquid Rules - next up is a book on liquids and things that flow
• It's a Gas - his aptly titled most recent book completes the cycle with a focus on gases

Along the same lines of understanding the world around us is an ambitious title from Bill Bryson titled A Short History of Nearly Everything. In it, Bryson attempts to explain how the universe came to be and, critically, how scientists are able to know how the world came to be. It is written with Byrson's typical wit and prose. I recommend all of Bryson's books, but this one stands out the most.

I suggest two books offering conflicting views of the future of the United States of America:

• In The Storm Before the Calm, author George Friedman builds a case that the US is going through a period of unprecedented combination of institutional and general change, but that the US will be able to reinvent itself and emerge stronger after this decade.
• Ray Dalio's book titled The Changing World Order takes the opposite view. Dalio conducted a tremendous amount of research on historical cycles with a focus on the rise and fall of Empires. His conclusions are less rosy on the future of America, suggesting that the country is well into the path of decline.

Another book to help understand the US (and is especially enlightening on regional differences) is American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Cultures of North America by Colin Woodward. As the title implies, Woodward details out how the early settlers arriving to the New World brought their own values, culture, and lifestyle which still shape the country--and voting preferences--to this day.

Missing from Woodward's book on American Nations is any meaningful discussion on Native Peoples. I suggest 1491 by Charles Mann, which explores what the recently re-discovered continent looked like before Christopher Columbus' arrival. This book is the best I have read thus far at understanding the myriads of people that thrived before European settlers arrived. Mann followed up with a second book cleverly titled 1493 which examines the impact of the European explorers and settlers.

There are any number of books by Jared Diamond that are worth reading. His best known book is probably the multiple award-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, which examines the confluence of factors that gave rise to Eurasian hegemony. For this list, I am going to recommend Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis. Not only is this topic relevant for so many nation-states today, Diamond also provides a roadmap for dealing with crises, including one of a personal nature. The book is broken into sections on different nations in history--including Finland, Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Germany, and Australia--making it easy to pick up and read in sections.

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a masterpiece on cognitive biases by the leader in this field, the late Daniel Kahneman. Along with Amos Tversky, Kahneman is considered the grandfather of behavioral economics, winning a Nobel Prize in the process. Be warned: this book is filled to the hilt with incredible insights from his illustrious career, and it will take some time and work to get through it all but is absolutely worth it.

In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari tells the story of humankind. His narrative on our evolution, culminating in the institutions and beliefs we share today, is another must read. An appreciate of how we got here helps make sense of the world around us. His next book, Homo Deus, is also worth a read.

Another seminal book I still find valuable is Influence, by Robert Cialdini. It's been around for a while as I first encountered it at university, yet the topic itself and concepts in the book are as relevant as ever. The book is a quick read.

Covering a similar topic but far less know is 27 Powers of Persuasion by Chris St. Hillare, a specialist in communication strategies for trial lawyers and corporations. Another easy but impactful read.

Speaking of books with numbers in the titles, 33 Strategies of War, is an incredibly well researched and written book by Robert Greene that details 33 primary strategies broken into five sections: self-directed, organizational, defensive, offensive, and unconventional war. All of Greene's books are thorough and insightful, if dense. The 48 Laws of Power and The Laws of Human Nature also stand out.

Shane Parrish recently published a four volume series called The Great Mental Models. A mental model is a representation of how the world works. The books explore a multitude of ways to approach thinking and decision making. Parrish explores mental models from a wide array of disciplines. The four volumes in the series are: I. General Thinking Concepts; II. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology; III. Systems and Mathematics; and IV. Economics and Art.

I would be remiss not to at least mention Chip Heath and Dan Heath. All their books are insightful, but two books from these brothers stood out:

• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Other recommended books on history that I found both enjoyable and insightful include:

Blind Man's Bluff, by Sherry Sontag & Christopher Drew, delves in American Submarine Espionage

Blood and Thunder, by Hampton Sides on Kit Carson and the American West

Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard on the assassination of President James Garfield

Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose follows the Lewis & Clark story before, during and after their epic expedition to the Pacific Ocean

Other recommended books on science and nature include:

The Secret Life of the Forest, by Richard Ketchum, about trees as the name implies

The Rise and Reign of Mammals, by Steve Brusatte, followed The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and explains the evolution of how we are here now

River Out of Eden, by Richard Dawkins, is a somewhat controversial book summarizing some of his earlier work on Darwinian evolution

The Ends of the World, by Peter Brannen, is a non-fiction horror book that dives deep into mass extinction events