Recommendations
Books I’d actually recommend
A shelf of 330 books is not a recommendation. These are.
Out of 330 books, these are the ones I would hand to someone. Not the most important books ever written and not the ones that make the best impression on a shelf — the ones that actually changed how I read everything that came after them.
They are grouped by what they are useful for rather than by subject, because the subject is usually the least transferable part of a good book.
Standout reads
12 booksDrawn from the standout picks already recorded on the shelf for 2024 and 2025. Cluster grouping and the longer notes for each are still being written.
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
Timothy Egan · 2023 · read Feb 2025Who brought down the 1920s Klan at the height of its power?
Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment
Jason Schreier · 2024 · read Apr 2025Somewhere between the 2008 Activision merger and the 2021 California lawsuit, Blizzard lost its independence and much of the…
Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat
John P. Carlin · 2018 · read Jun 2025If thieves broke into Boeing and carried out its schematics, the response would be swift.
Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
Michael V. Hayden · 2016 · read Jun 2025Hayden's case is that spy agencies should work right up to the edge of what the law allows, and that your privacy, a value he…
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation
Andrew Ross Sorkin · 2025 · read Oct 2025On October 28, 1929, the market fell about 13 percent, and National City Bank found itself holding some 71,000 shares from a…
The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip
Stephen Witt · 2025 · read Nov 2025From a founding in a Denny's to a brief moment in June 2024 as the world's most valuable company, Nvidia got there on Jensen…
Nuclear War: A Scenario
Annie Jacobsen · 2024 · read Apr 2024It starts with a North Korean thermonuclear strike on the Pentagon, a submarine-launched missile into California's Diablo Canyon…
The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency
Annie Jacobsen · 2015 · read Apr 2024DARPA was a Cold War answer to Soviet technological advances, created under Eisenhower in 1958.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Patrick Radden Keefe · 2021 · read Jun 2024The Sackler name hung on museum galleries until institutions started taking it down.
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Yuval Noah Harari · 2024 · read Oct 2024Information isn't the same thing as truth.
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Adam Higginbotham · 2024 · read Nov 2024Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, and the story usually stops at the booster O-rings.
On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service
Anthony Fauci · 2024 · read Dec 2024From a Brooklyn childhood to decades running the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci tells his career as…
Read something I’d love?
Send it over. Recommendations from people who know what I have already read are how a good chunk of this shelf got here.