Favorite Books

I've always enjoyed seeing what books other people have read. Below are all the books I've read since middle school, roughly in order. Those highlighted orange were those I particularly enjoyed or found impactful. An asterisk (*) indicates you can click to see some of my thoughts on the book :)

[2024 | Age 21]


An Introduction to Linear Algebra - Gilbert Strang *

When Einstein Walked with Gödel - Jim Holt *

The C Programming Language - Brian W. Kernighan & Dennis M. Ritchie *

Competitive Programmer's Handbook - Antti Laaksonen *

Going Infinite - Michael Lewis *

Seeing Like A State - James C. Scott *

The Innovators - Walter Isaacson *

Industrial Society And Its Future - Ted Kaczynski *

The Founders - Jimmy Soni *

The Cathedral & The Bazaar - Eric S. Raymond *

The Man Who Solved The Market - John Steele Gordon *

An Empire of Wealth - John Steele Gordon *

Writing a Compiler In Go - Thorsten Ball *

Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann *

Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach - John L. Hennessy & David A. Patterson *

Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow *

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller - Ron Chernow

[2023 | Age 20]


Napoleon - Andrew Roberts *

A Tour of C++ - Bjarne Stroustrup *

Efficient Go - Bartiomiej Plotka *

Writing an Interpreter In Go - Thorsten Ball *

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power - Max Chafkin

Elon Musk - Walter Isaacson

The House of Morgan - Ron Chernow *

The Rust Programming Language - Steve Klabnik & Carol Nichols *

The Odyssey - Translated by Emily Wilson *

Physics for Engineers and Scientists, Vol. 1 - Hans C. Ohanian & John T. Markert *

Six Easy Pieces - Richard P. Feynman *

Rome: An Empire's Story - Greg Woolf *

The Man From The Future - Ananyo Bhattacharya *

American Prometheus - Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin *

Einstein - Walter Isaacson *

Algorithms to Live By - Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths *

Gödel's Proof - Ernest Nagel & James R. Newman *

The Joy of X - Steven Strogatz *

The Creature from Jekyll Island - G. Edward Griffin *

How Google Works - Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg *

A Mind at Play - Rob Goodman & Jimmy Soni *

The Poincaré Conjecture - Donal O'Shea *

The Everthing Store - Brad Stone *

All the Math You Missed - Thomas A. Garrity *

Cracking The Coding Interview - Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell *

Chip War - Chris Miller *

Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keefe *

No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai

The Roman Empire - Gregory S. Aldrete *

The Rise of Rome - Gregory S. Aldrete

The Smartest Guys In The Room - Bethany McLean *

The Firm - Duff McDonald *

The United States and the Middle East - Salim Yaqub *

[2022 | Age 19]


A Beautiful Mind - Sylvia Nasar *

How Markets Fail - John Cassidy *

The Lost Bank - Kristen Grind *

Masters of DOOM - David Kushner *

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich - Norman Ohler *

Flash Boys - Michael Lewis *

The Machiavellians - James Burnham

Human Nature - Robert Greene

The Lessons Of History - Will & Ariel Durant

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand *

The Road To Serfdom - F. A. Hayek

Zero To One - Peter Thiel

The Fountain Head - Ayn Rand *

The New Right - Michael Malice

A People's History Of The United States - Howard Zinn *

[2021 | Age 18]


The Sovereign Individual - James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg *

The Origin Of Virtue - Matt Ridley

The Rational Male - Rollo Tomassi *

The Infinite Machine - Camila Russo

The Bitcoin Standard - Saifedean Ammous

Beyond Order - Jordan B. Peterson *

Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris

21 Lessons For The 21st Century - Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari

Life 3.0 - Max Tegmark

The Nuremberg Trials - Paul Roland

Give Me Tomorrow - Patrick K. O'Donnel

In The Shadows Of The American Century - Alfred W. McCoy

How The Internet Happened - Brian McCullough

Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee - Dee Brown

Super Intelligence - Nick Bostrom

About Face - David H. Hackworth

All Quiet On The Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari

American Ulysses - Ronald C. White

Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris

Haroun And The Sea Of Stories - Salman Rushdie

The Power Broker - Robert Caro

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris

Atomic Habits - James Clear *

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich - William L. Shirer

[2020 | Age 17]


Memories, Dreams, Reflections - Carl Jung

Ecce Homo - Fridrich Nietsche

Benjamin Franklin - Walter Isaacson

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brian *

Notes From The Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

A Short History Of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

The Compound Effect - Darren Hardy

Beowulf - Ancient Tale

Animal Farm - George Orwell

The Coddling Of The American Mind - Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt

The Boys In The Boat - Daniel James Brown *

Bad Blood - John Carreyrou

The 50th Law - Robert Greene & 50 Cent

AI Superpowers - Kai-Fu Lee

The Autobiography Of Ben Franklin - Ben Franklin

Can't Hurt Me - David Goggins

The Denial Of Death - Ernest Becker

[2019 | Age 16]


The Tipping Point - Malcom Gladwell

Talking To Strangers - Malcom Gladwell

Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance

Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl

The River Of Doubt - Candice Millard

Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki

Be Obsessed Or Be Average - Grant Cardone

The Art Of War - Sun Tzu

Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson

The Snowball - Alice Schroeder

The Art Of Seduction - Robert Greene

E-Myth Revisited - Michael Gerber

Andrew Carnegie - David Nasaw

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

Alexander Hamilton's Guide To Life - Jeff Wilser

Managing One's Self - Peter Drucker

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night - Mark Haddon

Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros

Explosive Growth - Cliff Lerner

Smarter, Faster, Better - Charles Duhigg

12 Rules For Life - Jordan B. Peterson

[2018 | Age 15]


The Richest Man In Babylon - George S. Clason

How To Win Friends And Influence People - Dale Carnegie

Blink - Malcom Gladwell

Drop Out And Get Schooled - Patrick Bet-David

Exactly What To Say - Phil M. Jones

Unlimited Memory - Kevin Horsley

The 1 Page Marketing Plan - Allan Dib

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

Sell Or Be Sold - Grant Cardone

The Power Of Habit - Charles Duhigg

[2017 | Age 14]


To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand

1984 - George Orwell

Mastery - Robert Greene

Excellent Sheep - William Deresiewicz

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

The Giver - Lois Lowry

[2016 | Age 13]


The 48 Laws Of Power - Robert Greene


“The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%” - Andrew Carnegie


Tags: Personal