Over the years, certain books have profoundly influenced how I think about technology, strategy, ethics, and the future.
These are not reviews — simply a small set of works that have shaped my perspective.
"The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a...
Bill Browder graduated from Stanford and entered the world of global finance just as the Soviet Union collapsed. He found himself in Russia, and built a fortune as one of the top western investors in that exploding market. But before long he discovered the reality: a...
Science Fiction at its best, by the Grand Master himself. Superficially, this is the story of a band of rebels, living on the moon, who decide to declare independence from Earth. With echos of the American Revolution—and a smattering of other rebellions—it's a joy to...
I had the good fortune to have Amos Tversky as the chairman of my Ph.D. orals committee at Stanford. Sadly, he passed away just a few weeks later, and before the Nobel Prize was awarded. Together, Amos and Danny Kahneman reshaped the study of human decision-making. In...
Clayton Christensen explains a paradox at the heart of business success: the very management practices that make companies strong—listening to customers, investing in profitable improvements, and optimizing existing products—can cause them to miss the next wave of...
A gripping first-person account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, Into Thin Air is both an incredible adventure story and a sobering look at how risk, judgment, and human ambition play out in extreme conditions. Krakauer brings you directly into the experience of...
I loved this story of shipwreck and mutiny. The gripping writing makes you feel like you are actually aboard this ship, floundering in a deadly storm. Grann tells the harrowing true story of a British naval ship wrecked off the coast of Patagonia in the 1740s....
"First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society...
"Every time we Google something, Facebook someone, Uber somewhere, or even just turn on a light, we create data that businesses collect and use to make decisions about us." My good friend Andreas Weigend was Chief Scientist at Amazon, where he led development of many...
Hard to believe that a book written in the early nineteenth century could be a total page turner today. But it is. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds tells a series of stories of times when it seemed the whole world went crazy. If you've ever...
Widely cited as one of the greatest examples of leadership. "In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way...
Ron was my principal advisor for my Ph.D. I taught ethics with him for years, and ran the Decisions and Ethics Center at Stanford for several years. He and Clint have written an excellent primary on how to identify and managing ethically sensitive situations, and stay...