Skip to content

Science Fiction

Asimov, Isaac. The Caves of Steel.

Asimov, Isaac. Foundation's Edge.

Asimov, Isaac. Foundation and Empire.

Asimov, Isaac. The Naked Sun.

Asimov, Isaac. The End of Eternity.

Asimov, Isaac. Foundation.

Asimov, Isaac. Fantastic Voyage.

Asimov, Isaac. The Complete Robot.

Asimov, Isaac. Foundation and Earth.

Banks, Iain M.. Consider Phlebas.

Brunner, John. The Shockwave Rider.

Clarke, Arthur C.. Childhood's End.

Clarke, Arthur C.. Rendezvous With Rama.

Egan, Greg. Permutation City.

Heinlein, Robert A.. Starship Troopers.

Herbert, Frank. The White Plague.

Herbert, Frank. Children of Dune.

Herbert, Frank. Dune.

Herbert, Frank. Dune Messiah.

Le Guin, Ursula K.. The Left Hand of Darkness.

Liu, Ken. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories.

McDevitt, Jack. Cauldron.

Powers, Richard. Galatea 2.2.

Stapledon, Olaf. Star Maker.

Stapledon, Olaf. Last and First Men.

Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash.

Strugatsky, Arkady. Roadside Picnic.

Vinge, Vernor. A Deepness in the Sky.

Vinge, Vernor. Marooned in Realtime.

Vinge, Vernor. A Fire Upon The Deep.

Vinge, Vernor. The Peace War.

The Shadow World

Barron, John. MIG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lt Belenko.

Farago, Ladislas. The Broken Seal.

Hood, William. The Main Enemy.

Riebling, Mark. Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA.

Singh, Simon. The Code Book.

Snowden, Edward. Permanent Record.

Stoll, Clifford. The Cuckoo's Egg.

One of the most gripping non-fiction books I've ever read. An astronomer stumbles onto a 75-cent accounting error and ends up hunting a KGB hacker through early internet infrastructure. So earnest and nerdy you can't help rooting for him.

How Things Work

Amdahl, Kenn. There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings.

Asimov, Isaac. The Relativity of Wrong.

Asimov, Isaac. The Road to Infinity.

Asimov, Isaac. Understanding Physics.

Bate, Roger. Fundamentals of Astrodynamics.

Benjamin, Arthur. Secrets of Mental Math.

Challoner, Jack. The Atom: A Visual Tour.

Clarke, Arthur C.. Profiles of the Future.

Collier, Peter. A Most Incomprehensible Thing.

Courant, Richard. Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning.

Dawkins, Richard. The Greatest Show on Earth.

Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory.

Einstein, Albert. Relativity.

Gleick, James. The Information.

Goodstein, David L.. States of Matter.

Gordon, J. E.. The Science of Structures and Materials.

Gordon, J.E.. Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down.

Gould, Stephen Jay. Ever Since Darwin.

Gribbin, John. In Search of Schrodinger's Cat.

Gribbin, John & Mary. Einstein: A Life in Science.

Hamming, Richard W.. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering.

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time.

Hoyle, Fred. Frontiers of Astronomy.

Kline, Morris. Mathematics for the Nonmathematician.

Lockhart, Paul. A Mathematician’s Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form.

Macaulay, David. The Way Things Work.

Mitchell, Melanie. Complexity.

Pauling, Linus. The Nature of the Chemical Bond.

Preston, Richard. First Light.

Rosenthal, Jeffrey S.. Probability Theory: A Concise Course.

Sagan, Carl. Broca's Brain.

Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot.

Schrodinger, Erwin. What Is Life?.

Selye, Hans. The Stress of Life.

Stever, H. Guyford. Do Colors Exist?: And Other Profound Physics Questions.

Strang, Gilbert. Introduction to Linear Algebra.

Tesla, Nikola. My Inventions and Other Writings.

Zubrin, Robert. The Case for Mars.

van Lawick-Goodall, Jane. In the Shadow of Man.

The Machine

Abelson, Harold. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

Aho, Alfred V.. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools.

Ananthaswamy, Anil. Why Machines Learn.

Arpaci-Dusseau, Remzi H. & Arpaci-Dusseau, Andrea C.. Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces.

Aspray, William. John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing.

Bach, Maurice. The Design of the UNIX Operating System.

Bardini, Thierry. Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing.

Berners-Lee, Tim. Weaving the Web.

Dijkstra, Edsger. A Discipline of Programming.

Donovan, Alan A. & Kernighan, Brian W.. The Go Programming Language.

Doxiadis, Apostolos and Papadimitriou, Christos. Logicomix.

Freiberger, Paul & Swaine, Michael. Fire in the Valley.

Gabriel, Richard P.. Patterns of Software.

Hernandez, Michael J.. Database Design for Mere Mortals.

Hiltzik, Michael A.. Dealers of Lightning.

Hunt, Andrew. The Pragmatic Programmer.

Kerrisk, Michael. The Linux Programming Interface.

Lammers, Susan. Programmers at Work.

Levy, Steven. Hackers.

Lions, John. Lions' Commentary on Unix.

Love, Robert. Linux System Programming.

Mechner, Jordan. The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993.

Mindell, David. Digital Apollo.

Nelson, Ted H.. Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now.

Nystrom, Robert. Crafting Interpreters.

Ousterhout, John. A Philosophy of Software Design.

Petzold, Charles. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

Petzold, Charles. The Annotated Turing.

Rankin, Joy Lisi. A People's History of Computing in the United States.

Seibel, Peter. Coders at Work.

Turing, Alan. Alan Turing: His Work and Impact.

Waldrop, M. Mitchell. The Dream Machine.

Ward, Brian. How Linux Works.

Weiss, Stewart. System Programming in Linux: A Hands-On Introduction.

Wiltshire, Alex. Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation.

Worsley, John C.. PostgreSQL Administration.

The Mind

Bennett, Max. A Brief History of Intelligence.

Bloom, Benjamin S.. Developing Talent in Young People.

Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence.

Gardner, Howard. Changing Minds.

Goleman, Daniel. Social Intelligence.

Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis.

Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus.

Hawkins, Jeff. On Intelligence.

Hofstadter, Douglas. I Am a Strange Loop.

Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity Is Nearer.

LeDoux, Joseph. Anxious. annotated

Mitchell, Melanie. Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans.

Penfield, Wilder. The Mystery of the Mind.

Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales.

Smart, Andrew. Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing.

Stanley, Kenneth O.. Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective.

Wooldridge, Dean E.. Machinery of the Brain.

Yudkowsky, Eliezer and Soares, Nate. If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.

The Map

Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations.

Bach, Richard. Illusions.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space.

Berger, John. Confabulations.

Burkeman, Oliver. Four Thousand Weeks.

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus.

Carse, James P.. Finite and Infinite Games.

Cottrell, Seth Stannard. Do Colors Exist?.

Crawford, Matthew B.. The World Beyond Your Head.

Deutsch, David. The Beginning of Infinity.

Frank, Adam & Gleiser, Marcelo & Thompson, Evan. The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience.

Frankl, Viktor E.. Man's Search for Meaning.

The most quietly devastating book I've read. Frankl doesn't argue for optimism. He argues that meaning can be found anywhere, even in suffering, and that this is enough.

Goenka, SN. The Art of Dying: Talks on Vipassana Meditation as Taught by SN Goenka.

Graham, Paul. Hackers & Painters.

Hadot, Pierre. What is Ancient Philosophy?.

Han, Byung-Chul. The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present.

Hitchens, Christopher. Letters to a Young Contrarian.

Hofstadter, Douglas R.. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

Holiday, Ryan. The Daily Stoic.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality.

Johnson, Steven. Where Good Ideas Come From.

Kuhn, Thomas S.. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Leonard, George. Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment.

Machado, Antonio. Consolations.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Pigliucci, Massimo. Nonsense on Stilts.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet.

Rucker, Rudy. Infinity and the Mind.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea.

Scott, James C.. Seeing Like a State.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters on Ethics.

Snow, C.P.. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.

Stephenson, Neal. In The Beginning Was the Command Line.

Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art?.

Tolstoy, Leo. A Calendar of Wisdom.

Watts, Alan. This Is It.

Yates, John (Culadasa). The Mind Illuminated.

Yogananda, Paramahansa. Self-Realization.

Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Science of Self-Realization.

Yudkowsky, Eliezer. Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck.

How It Happened

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery.

Bhattacharya, Ananyo & Camm, Nicholas. The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann.

Burke, James. Connections.

Bynum, William. A Little History of Science.

Caro, Robert A.. The Power Broker.

Carradine, David. The Kill Bill Diary.

Feynman, Richard. Richard Feynman: A Life in Science.

Feynman, Richard P.. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!".

Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.

Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood.

Isaacson, Walter. Einstein: His Life and Universe.

Isaacson, Walter. American Sketches.

Isaacson, Walter. The Innovators.

Isaacson, Walter. Einstein.

Kanigel, Robert. Apprentice to Genius.

Kanigel, Robert. The Man Who Knew Infinity.

Kernighan, Brian. UNIX: A History and a Memoir.

Lepore, Jill. These Truths.

Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz.

Martin, Steve. Born Standing Up.

McCullough, David. The Wright Brothers.

Murray, Charles & Cox, Catherine Bly. Apollo: The Race to the Moon.

Neustadt, Richard E.. Thinking in Time.

Patel, Dwarkesh. The Scaling Era.

Sapolsky, Robert M.. A Primate's Memoir.

Schweber, Silvan S.. QED and the Men Who Made It.

Seife, Charles. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea.

Shum, Desmond. Red Roulette.

Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of the Artists.

Wooden, John. Wooden.

The Workshop

Abernethy, David. The Prophet from Silicon Valley: The Complete Story of Sequential Circuits.

Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building.

Austin, James. Feck Perfuction.

Bass, Jennifer. Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design.

Bayles, David. Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking.

Bjooks, Kim & Metlay, Mike. Patch & Tweak.

Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style.

Few, Stephen. Information Dashboard Design.

Kocienda, Ken. Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs.

Koestler, Arthur. The Act of Creation.

Krug, Steve. Don't Make Me Think! Revisited.

McPhee, John. Draft No. 4.

Norman, Don. The Design of Everyday Things.

Pressfield, Stephen. The War of Art.

Rams, Dieter. Less but better.

Raskin, Jeff. The Humane Interface.

Rubin, Rick. The Creative Act.

Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman.

Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting in Time.

Tufte, Edward R.. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

Williams, Robin. The Non-Designer's Design Book.

Young, James Webb. A technique for producing ideas: A simple five step formula for producing ideas.

The Market

Carreyrou, John. Bad Blood.

Chernev, Irving. Winning Chess.

Drucker, Peter F.. Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Flyvbjerg, Bent. The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management.

Gawande, Atul. The Checklist Manifesto.

Grove, Andrew S.. High Output Management.

Larson, Will. An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management.

Lopp, Michael. Managing Humans.

Mezrich, Ben. Accidental Billionaires.

Newport, Cal. Slow Productivity.

Peter, Laurence J.. The Peter Principle.

Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Sivers, Derek. Anything You Want.

Welch, Jack. Winning.

Zeihan, Peter. The Accidental Superpower.

The Cafe

Beber, Neena. Liars and Saints.

Borges, Jorge Luis. The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory.

Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita.

Camus, Albert. The Fall.

Camus, Albert. The Stranger.

Danielewski, Mark Z.. House of Leaves.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov.

Dumas, Alexandre. The Three Musketeers.

Ellis, Bret Easton. Lunar Park.

King, Stephen. The Complete Stories.

Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon.

Labatut, Benjamin. When We Cease to Understand the World.

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Le Guin, Ursula K.. No Time to Spare.

Moore, Alan. From Hell: Master Edition.

Moore, Christopher. Lamb.

Moore, Christopher. Fluke.

Murakami, Haruki. A Wild Sheep Chase.

Orwell, George. 1984.

Pushkin, Alexander. Eugene Onegin.

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis. The Magician of Lublin.

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island.

The Stacks

Asimov, Isaac. Words from the Myths.

Asparouhova, Nadia. Working in Public: The Making of Maintenance of Open Source Software.

Brand, Stewart. The Maintenance of Everything.

Bush, Vannevar. The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush.

Caplan, Bryan. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.

Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Dubief. Precious Little Sleep.

Fox, Margalit. The Riddle of the Labyrinth.

Frisch, Aeleen. Essential System Administration.

Grus, Joel. Data Science from Scratch.

Hall, Storrs J.. Where Is My Flying Car?.

Hillis, W. Daniel. The Pattern on the Stone.

Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy & Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick. Einstein Never Used Flash Cards.

Kelleher, John D. & Tierney, Brendan. Machine Learning and AI.

Lewis, Michael. Moneyball.

Meadows, Donella H.. Thinking in Systems.

Mezrich, Ben. Bringing Down the House.

Mougayar, William. The Token Economy.

Pinch, Trevor. Analog Days.

Powell, Aubrey. Hipgnosis: Portraits.

Rippetoe, Mark. Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training.

Skycak, Justin. Advice on Upskilling.

Strunk, William & White, E.B.. The Elements of Style.

Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock.

Toffler, Alvin. The Third Wave.

Trelease, Jim. The Read-Aloud Handbook.

Vail, Mark. Vintage Synthesizers.

Wright, Alex. Glut.

Brooklyn, NY