125 books that shape how I see the world and make sense of it, ranked by their Goodreads rating.
001★ 4.53The Power Broker
Robert A. Caro
002★ 4.46The Infinity Machine
Sebastian Mallaby
003★ 4.46From Third World to First
Lee Kuan Yew
004★ 4.41The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes
005★ 4.41Probability Theory
E. T. Jaynes
006★ 4.40Cosmos
Carl Sagan
007★ 4.40Code
Charles Petzold
008★ 4.39Poor Charlie's Almanack
Charles T. Munger
009★ 4.39Ficciones
Jorge Luis Borges
010★ 4.38Build
Tony Fadell
011★ 4.37Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
012★ 4.37Behave
Robert M. Sapolsky
013★ 4.37Basic Economics
Thomas Sowell
014★ 4.34The Emperor of All Maladies
Siddhartha Mukherjee
015★ 4.33Reality Is Not What It Seems
Carlo Rovelli
016★ 4.33Never Split the Difference
Chris Voss
017★ 4.32Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
018★ 4.32A Deepness in the Sky
Vernor Vinge
019★ 4.31The Use of Knowledge in Society
F. A. Hayek
020★ 4.30Outlive
Peter Attia
021★ 4.30How to Prove It
Daniel J. Velleman
022★ 4.30High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
023★ 4.29Dune
Frank Herbert
024★ 4.29Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
025★ 4.28The Player of Games
Iain M. Banks
026★ 4.28The Demon-Haunted World
Carl Sagan
027★ 4.28Hyperion
Dan Simmons
028★ 4.27The Story of the Human Body
Daniel Lieberman
029★ 4.27The Origin of Wealth
Eric D. Beinhocker
030★ 4.27Surface Detail
Iain M. Banks
031★ 4.27Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
032★ 4.27Exhalation
Ted Chiang
033★ 4.26The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin
034★ 4.26Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Richard P. Feynman
035★ 4.25The Evolution of Cooperation
Robert Axelrod
036★ 4.25Stories of Your Life and Others
Ted Chiang
037★ 4.257 Powers
Hamilton Helmer
038★ 4.24Bernoulli's Fallacy
Aubrey Clayton
039★ 4.24A Man for All Markets
Edward O. Thorp
040★ 4.23The Outsiders
William N. Thorndike
041★ 4.22The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Richard P. Feynman
042★ 4.22Seeking Wisdom
Peter Bevelin
043★ 4.22A New History of Western Philosophy
Anthony Kenny
044★ 4.21Seeing Like a State
James C. Scott
045★ 4.21Influence
Robert B. Cialdini
046★ 4.21A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
047★ 4.20The Meaning of It All
Richard P. Feynman
048★ 4.20Excession
Iain M. Banks
049★ 4.19The True Believer
Eric Hoffer
050★ 4.19The Righteous Mind
Jonathan Haidt
051★ 4.19The Dawn of Everything
David Graeber, David Wengrow
052★ 4.18Thinking in Systems
Donella H. Meadows
053★ 4.18The Vital Question
Nick Lane
054★ 4.18The Big Picture
Sean Carroll
055★ 4.18Gödel's Proof
Ernest Nagel, James R. Newman
056★ 4.17War and Peace and War
Peter Turchin
057★ 4.17Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
058★ 4.17The Beginning of Infinity
David Deutsch
059★ 4.17The Art of Doing Science and Engineering
Richard W. Hamming
060★ 4.17Origins
Lewis Dartnell
061★ 4.17Leonardo da Vinci
Walter Isaacson
062★ 4.16The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
063★ 4.16The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
064★ 4.16The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson
065★ 4.16Notes from Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky
066★ 4.15Titan
Ron Chernow
067★ 4.15The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman
068★ 4.14Zero to One
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
069★ 4.14The Fabric of Reality
David Deutsch
070★ 4.14Structures
J. E. Gordon
071★ 4.13A Fire Upon the Deep
Vernor Vinge
072★ 4.12How to Solve It
G. Polya
073★ 4.12Genius
James Gleick
074★ 4.12Dragon's Egg
Robert L. Forward
075★ 4.12Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke
076★ 4.12Algorithms to Live By
Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths
077★ 4.11Stuff Matters
Mark Miodownik
078★ 4.11Scale
Geoffrey West
079★ 4.10Being You
Anil Seth
080★ 4.10Antifragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
081★ 4.09The Blank Slate
Steven Pinker
082★ 4.09Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
083★ 4.08The Scout Mindset
Julia Galef
084★ 4.08Superforecasting
Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner
085★ 4.08Remembrance of Earth’s Past (The Three-Body Problem)
Cixin Liu
086★ 4.06End Times
Peter Turchin
087★ 4.05Where Is My Flying Car?
J. Storrs Hall
088★ 4.05The Lessons of History
Will & Ariel Durant
089★ 4.05Burn Math Class
Jason Wilkes
090★ 4.05Benjamin Franklin
Walter Isaacson
091★ 4.04The Information
James Gleick
092★ 4.04The Denial of Death
Ernest Becker
093★ 4.04Permutation City
Greg Egan
094★ 4.04Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond
095★ 4.03The Stranger
Albert Camus
096★ 4.03The Innovator's Dilemma
Clayton M. Christensen
097★ 4.03Naked Economics
Charles Wheelan
098★ 4.03Chaos
James Gleick
099★ 4.02The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn
100★ 4.00The Dream Machine
M. Mitchell Waldrop
101★ 4.00Blindsight
Peter Watts
102★ 3.98Solaris
Stanislaw Lem
103★ 3.98How to Read a Book
Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren
104★ 3.98Consilience
E. O. Wilson
105★ 3.98Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
106★ 3.96The Elephant in the Brain
Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson
107★ 3.96Muhammad
Maxime Rodinson
108★ 3.96Calculated Risks
Gerd Gigerenzer
109★ 3.95The Evolution of God
Robert Wright
110★ 3.95Naked Statistics
Charles Wheelan
111★ 3.95I Am a Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter
112★ 3.95How Not to Be Wrong
Jordan Ellenberg
113★ 3.94How the World Really Works
Vaclav Smil
114★ 3.93Theory and Reality
Peter Godfrey-Smith
115★ 3.90The Ascent of Money
Niall Ferguson
116★ 3.89Neuromancer
William Gibson
117★ 3.88Other Minds
Peter Godfrey-Smith
118★ 3.87Power
Jeffrey Pfeffer
119★ 3.87Accelerando
Charles Stross
120★ 3.82The Geography of Thought
Richard E. Nisbett
121★ 3.80Genghis Khan
Frank McLynn
122★ 3.79Wanting
Luke Burgis
123★ 3.79The Art of Strategy
Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff
124★ 3.79Isaac Newton
James Gleick
125★ 3.69Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand