Essential
Psycho-Cybernetics
Maxwell Maltz
A personal cultural archive
Mediatheque.
My bookshelf is a work in progress.
I tend to read several books in parallel. Occasionally, though, I’ll find something so captivating that everything else gets pushed aside until I finish it.
Some books entertain me. Some teach me something. And a small number permanently change the way I see the world.
Books marked as Essential belong to that last category. They helped shape who I am today. If you’re wondering where to begin, start there.
The same is true for films. There are movies I enjoy once—and others I return to again and again because they reveal something new each time.
This Mediatheque is where I keep both.
And as always, if there is something you think I should read or watch, I’d love to hear about it.
On the bookshelf
Read, revisited, and still unfolding.
The Nolan Variations
Tom Shone
Essential
The Beginning of Infinity
David Deutsch
The Invention of Tomorrow
Thomas Suddendorf, Jonathan Redshaw, and Adam Bulley
Essential
Accelerando
Charles Stross
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick
Essential
A Brief History of Intelligence
Max Bennett
Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes
Essential
The Score Takes Care of Itself
Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, and Craig Walsh
Time is a Tool
Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
High Growth Handbook
Elad Gil
Catching the Big Fish
David Lynch
Essential
Insanely Simple
Ken Segall
The Writing Life
Annie Dillard
Essential
The MANIAC
Benjamín Labatut
Cinema Speculation
Quentin Tarantino
How Brands Grow
Byron Sharp
Six Easy Pieces
Richard P. Feynman
The God Equation
Michio Kaku
Upgrade
Blake Crouch
Save the Cat!
Blake Snyder
Essential
The Last Question
Isaac Asimov
Essential
The Second Mountain
David Brooks
The Innovator's Dilemma
Clayton M. Christensen
Wabi Sabi: The Art of Finding the Beauty of Imperfection
Makoto Saito
The Scaling Era
Dwarkesh Patel; edited by Gavin Leech
Build
Tony Fadell
Your Brain Is a Time Machine
Dean Buonomano
The Singularity Is Near
Ray Kurzweil
Essential
Crucial Conversations
Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Quantum Supremacy
Michio Kaku
Determined
Robert M. Sapolsky
Essential
Creative Selection
Ken Kocienda
The Future Is Faster Than You Think
Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler
Essential
The Fabric of Reality
David Deutsch
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
Deepak Chopra
Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell
Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind
Marcel Kuijsten (editor)
Essential
Let My People Go Surfing
Yvon Chouinard
High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
Essential
The Sovereign Individual
James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg
Who Not How
Dan Sullivan & Benjamin Hardy
Sense & Respond
Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden
Drive
Daniel H. Pink
Essential
Nexus
Ramez Naam
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Eric Jorgenson
Essential
Replay
Ken Grimwood
Essential
Evolutionaries
Carter Phipps
Starship Troopers
Robert A. Heinlein
Essential
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Essential
Shoe Dog
Phil Knight
Essential
Enzo Ferrari
The Man and the Machine
Brock Yates
Survival of the Friendliest
Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods
AI 2041
Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan
Scary Smart
Mo Gawdat
The Messy Middle
Scott Belsky
Working Backwards
Colin Bryar & Bill Carr
Novacene
James Lovelock with Bryan Appleyard
Winning from Within
Erica Ariel Fox
Essential
Authentic Happiness
Martin E. P. Seligman
Full-Spectrum Thinking
Bob Johansen
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari
Essential
Neuromancer
William Gibson
Think Again
Adam Grant
A Whole New Mind
Daniel H. Pink
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
Atomic Habits
James Clear
Essential
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
The Ultimate Time Machine
Joseph McMoneagle
The Age of Spiritual Machines
Ray Kurzweil
Essential
Superintelligence
Nick Bostrom
Life 3.0
Max Tegmark
Ready Player One
Ernest Cline
Creativity, Inc.
Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
Wanting
Luke Burgis
The 48 Laws of Power
Robert Greene
Essential
Surface Detail
Iain M. Banks
Essential
A Thousand Brains
Jeff Hawkins
Why Simple Wins
Lisa Bodell
The Infinite Machine
Camila Russo
Men, Machines, and Modern Times
Elting E. Morison
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
Essential
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
The Brand Flip
Marty Neumeier
Essential
Relentless
Tim S. Grover and Shari Lesser Wenk
This Could Be Our Future
Yancey Strickler
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
The Surrender Experiment
Michael A. Singer
The Pyramid Principle
Barbara Minto
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon
12 Rules for Life
Jordan B. Peterson
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
Age of Invisible Machines
Robb Wilson with Josh Tyson
River Out of Eden
A Darwinian View of Life
Richard Dawkins
Reading Now
Five Dialogues
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo
Plato
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Our Final Invention
Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era
James Barrat
Essential
Simplify
How the Best Businesses in the World Succeed
Richard Koch & Greg Lockwood
Essential
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu
A Dance with Dragons
George R. R. Martin
Essential
Dune
Frank Herbert
To Be a Machine
Mark O’Connell
Essential
The Creative Act
A Way of Being
Rick Rubin
Prisoners of Geography
Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World
Tim Marshall
The Book of Five Rings
Miyamoto Musashi
Small Giants
Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big
Bo Burlingham
Ego Is the Enemy
Ryan Holiday
Conscious Leadership
Elevating Humanity Through Business
John Mackey, Steve McIntosh & Carter Phipps
The Obstacle Is the Way
The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Ryan Holiday
Essentialism
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Greg McKeown
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
Carlo M. Cipolla
Limitless
Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life
Jim Kwik
Multipliers, Revised and Updated
How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
Liz Wiseman
Essential
Abundance
The Future Is Better Than You Think
Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler
Team of Teams
New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman & Chris Fussell
The Big Leap
Gay Hendricks
Essential
Out of Your Mind
Essential Listening from the Alan Watts Audio Archives
Alan Watts
7 Powers
The Foundations of Business Strategy
Hamilton Helmer
The Fifth Discipline
The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization
Peter M. Senge
It's Not Your Money
How to Live Fully from Divine Abundance
Tosha Silver
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
Talking to Strangers
What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know
Malcolm Gladwell
Built to Last
Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
Jim Collins & Jerry I. Porras
Algorithms to Live By
The Computer Science of Human Decisions
Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths
Tribes
We Need You to Lead Us
Seth Godin
An Elegant Puzzle
Systems of Engineering Management
Will Larson
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
A Leadership Fable
Patrick Lencioni
Trillion Dollar Coach
The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg & Alan Eagle
Blink
The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell
Grit
The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Angela Duckworth
Die Empty
Unleash Your Best Work Every Day
Todd Henry
The Power of Now
A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Eckhart Tolle
The Code of the Extraordinary Mind
10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed on Your Own Terms
Vishen Lakhiani
Da Vinci’s Ghost
Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image
Toby Lester
Switch
How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Give and Take
A Revolutionary Approach to Success
Adam Grant
Essential
Zero to One
Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
Poor Charlie’s Almanack
The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
Charles T. Munger; edited by Peter D. Kaufman
Delivering Happiness
A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Tony Hsieh
Essential
Principles
Life and Work
Ray Dalio
The Infinity Machine
Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence
Sebastian Mallaby
The Half-Life of Facts
Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date
Samuel Arbesman
Hackers & Painters
Big Ideas from the Computer Age
Paul Graham
Antifragile
Things That Gain from Disorder
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Reading Now
Ready, Fire, Aim
Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat
Michael Masterson
Reading Now
1984
George Orwell
Reading Now
Data Empire
How Information Shaped Human History
Roopika Risam
The Alignment Problem
Machine Learning and Human Values
Brian Christian
The War of Art
Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Steven Pressfield
Better, Simpler Strategy
A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance
Felix Oberholzer-Gee
Power, Sex, Suicide
Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life
Nick Lane
Influence
The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Dennis E. Taylor