Books

This is my working list of books.
Some I have read closely, some I revisit, and some are next.

The list is organized by the problems each book helps me solve: deciding what matters, moving people, building products and companies, exercising engineering judgment, creating demand, managing risk, and keeping perspective.

Within each section, books are ordered by a mix of precedence, leverage, and personal value, not as a strict ranking.

Deciding What Matters

(What to do, what to ignore, and why)

• The Effective Executive — Peter Drucker

• Good Strategy Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen R. Covey

Leading Through Others

(What to expect, what to demand, and how to respond)

• Extreme Ownership — Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

• Developing Management Skills — David Whetten, Kim Cameron

• The Manager’s Path — Camille Fournier

• The Staff Engineer’s Path — Tanya Reilly

• Coaching for Performance — John Whitmore

• Crucial Conversations — Patterson et al.

• Nonviolent Communication — Marshall B. Rosenberg

• Presentation Zen — Garr Reynolds

• Quiet — Susan Cain

• The Introverted Leader — Jennifer B. Kahnweiler

Building Products and Companies

(What to build, who it’s for, and how it scales)

• The Innovator’s Dilemma — Clayton Christensen

• Zero to One — Peter Thiel

• Essays — Paul Graham

• Hackers and Painters — Paul Graham

• The Lean Startup — Eric Ries

• Lean UX — Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden

• Build Better Products — Laura Klein

• The Geek Way — Andrew McAfee

Engineering Judgment

(What to reason about, what to abstract, and what to trade off)

• The Algorithm Design Manual — Steven Skiena

• Algorithms — Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne

• Design Patterns — Gamma et al.

• The Art of Doing Science and Engineering — Richard Hamming

Creating Demand

(What people notice, what they remember, and what they act on)

• The Boron Letters — Gary C. Halbert

• The Copywriter’s Handbook — Robert W. Bly

• Contagious — Jonah Berger

Managing Risk and Capital

(What to protect, what to risk, and what compounds)

• The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel

• A Random Walk Down Wall Street — Burton Malkiel

• The Intelligent Investor — Benjamin Graham

• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing — John C. Bogle

• The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing — Larimore et al.

• Unshakeable — Tony Robbins

Keeping Perspective

• Benjamin Franklin — Walter Isaacson

• A Brief History of Time — Stephen Hawking

• The Martian — Andy Weir

• All Quiet on the Western Front — Erich Maria Remarque

• Quo Vadis — Henryk Sienkiewicz

• The Infinite Game — Simon Sinek