The Library154 books, all off my own shelves.
The books that actually paid me back.
Every spine below sits on a shelf in my house. Pull one out to see what it says and, where I have written it, what I took from it.
The shelves
Tap a spine. It comes off the shelf and opens.
Showing all 154 books
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Money & Markets
18 books-
Poor Charlie's Almanack
Money & Markets
A collection of Charlie Munger's talks and essays, edited by Peter Kaufman. It lays out his latticework of mental models, the habit of inverting a problem, and the psychology of human misjudgment.
This is the cheat code for thinking. Invert everything: before you ask how to win, ask how you would lose, then just stop doing that.
The 2019 shelf
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The Intelligent Investor
Money & Markets
Benjamin Graham's guide to value investing for ordinary investors. It introduces Mr. Market, the margin of safety, and the difference between a defensive and an enterprising investor.
Mr. Market lives rent free in my head. The market is moody, you don't have to be. Buy with a margin of safety and let the noise be someone else's problem.
The 2019 shelf
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Security Analysis
Money & Markets
The 1934 text that founded value investing, here in its sixth edition. Graham and Dodd teach how to read financial statements and value a business from its fundamentals, not its ticker.
Heavy, dense and worth it. You stop seeing stocks as tickers and start seeing them as businesses with real cash behind them.
The 2019 shelf
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Money: Master the Game
Money & Markets
Tony Robbins' seven step plan for financial freedom, built from interviews with investors such as Ray Dalio and John Bogle. It covers fees, compounding, asset allocation and income for life.
The fee chapter alone pays for the book. Most people never do the math on what they're losing to fees. Do the math.
The 2019 shelf
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Unshakeable
Money & Markets
A shorter follow up to Money: Master the Game, written with Peter Mallouk. It explains why corrections and crashes are a normal part of markets and how to stay invested through them.
Read this before the next red week, not during it. Crashes are on the calendar. Panic is optional.
The 2019 shelf
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Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets
Money & Markets
John Murphy's reference guide to reading price charts. It covers trends, support and resistance, chart patterns, moving averages and oscillators across stocks, futures and currencies.
The textbook every trader pretends they read. Charts don't predict the future, they show you what the crowd is feeling right now, and that is useful.
The 2019 shelf
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Investment Banking
Money & Markets
A practitioner's guide to how deals are valued and done. It walks through comparable companies, precedent transactions, discounted cash flow, leveraged buyouts and the M&A sale process.
If you ever want to sell a company, learn how the buyer's side does the math. This is that math.
The 2019 shelf
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Financial Modeling
Money & Markets
Simon Benninga's hands on guide to building finance models in Excel. It covers financial statements, cost of capital, portfolio models and option pricing, one worked spreadsheet at a time.
Spreadsheets are a superpower nobody brags about. Build the model and the decision usually makes itself.
The 2019 shelf
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Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order
Money & Markets
Ray Dalio studies 500 years of rising and falling empires, reserve currencies and debt cycles, and uses the pattern to read where the US and China stand now.
Photo, Nov 2021
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Big Debt Crises
Money & Markets
Ray Dalio's template for how debt crises unfold, in three parts: the archetypal big debt cycle, detailed case studies, and a compendium of 48 cases.
Photo, Dec 2019
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Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Money & Markets
Thomas Piketty uses centuries of tax and income data to argue that when the return on capital outpaces growth, wealth concentrates.
His Recommended Reading post
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More Money Than God
Money & Markets
A history of hedge funds, from Alfred Winslow Jones in the 1940s through Soros, Robertson and the quants, and how they made their money.
Photo, Sept 2021
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Flash Boys
Money & Markets
Michael Lewis follows the traders who worked out how high-frequency firms were front-running orders on US stock exchanges, and built an exchange to stop it.
Home shelf, 2022
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The Buy Side
Money & Markets
A memoir of a Wall Street trader's rise on the buy side of hedge funds, and the excess that came with it.
Home shelf, 2022
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Black Edge
Money & Markets
The story of Steve Cohen's SAC Capital and the government's long insider-trading case against it.
Home shelf, 2022
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The Global Economy As You've Never Seen It
Money & Markets
Ninety-nine infographics that explain trade, money, debt and markets, with text by Thomas Ramge and graphics by Jan Schwochow.
Photo, May 2020
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Profit First
Money & Markets
A cash management system for small businesses: take profit first, then run the business on what is left, using separate bank accounts.
Photo, Oct 2020
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The First Billion Is the Hardest
Money & Markets
T. Boone Pickens on a life in oil, gas and deal-making, and what he learned from losing and making fortunes.
Audiobook, his library
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Business & Startups
23 books-
Zero to One
Business & Startups
Peter Thiel's notes on building startups, written with Blake Masters. He argues that real progress means creating something new, from zero to one, and that great companies aim for a monopoly instead of competing.
Competition is for people who didn't find a better question. Build the thing nobody else is building and you don't have to fight for scraps.
The 2019 shelf
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Built to Last
Business & Startups
A study of companies that stayed great for decades, compared with close rivals that did not. Collins and Porras credit a core ideology that never changes, big hairy audacious goals, and a habit of building the company itself as the product.
Build the clock, don't just tell the time. A great product dies with the founder. A great system keeps shipping.
The 2019 shelf
- Clock building, not time telling. Build the company that keeps producing great products, not one great product.
- Preserve the core, stimulate progress. A core ideology that never changes, paired with constant change in everything else.
- Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Bold, long-range goals that pull the whole company forward.
Through MVKBIZ I build the creative strategy, funnels, CRM and AI teams behind brands that want to sell more. The system keeps shipping.
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Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Business & Startups
Peter Drucker's 1985 case that innovation is a discipline, not a flash of genius. He names seven sources of opportunity, from unexpected successes to changes in demographics, and shows how to work them on purpose.
Innovation isn't magic. It's homework. Look for the unexpected success in your own numbers and double down on it.
The 2019 shelf
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High Growth Handbook
Business & Startups
Elad Gil's playbook for scaling a startup from roughly ten to ten thousand people. It covers hiring executives, boards, financing, M&A and culture, with interviews from founders and operators.
This is the book for the stage after it works. Getting the first win is a hustle. Scaling it is a system.
The 2019 shelf
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Venture Capitalists at Work
Business & Startups
Long form interviews with partners at firms such as Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins and Accel. They explain how they find, judge and back companies that turn into billion dollar outcomes.
Want to raise money? Learn how the people with the money actually think. Spoiler: they bet on the founder first.
The 2019 shelf
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Only the Paranoid Survive
Business & Startups
Intel's former CEO on strategic inflection points, the moments when the basics of a business change. Grove explains how to spot them early and steer a company through them.
The best time to worry is when everything is working. Watch the edges of your market, that's where the next shift shows up first.
Photo, 2019
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Ready, Fire, Aim
Business & Startups
Michael Masterson's guide to growing a business through four stages, from first sales to $100 million. The core rule is to get a product to market fast, sell it, then improve it.
My favorite rule in business: ship it, sell it, then fix it. Perfect is just a fancy word for late.
Photo, Sept 2020
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Abundance
Business & Startups
Diamandis and Kotler argue that exponential technologies can raise living standards for everyone. They look at energy, water, health and education, and the entrepreneurs working on each.
A great antidote to doom scrolling. The future is a lot more interesting when you look at what builders are actually building.
Home shelf, 2022
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Little Bets
Business & Startups
Peter Sims argues that breakthrough ideas rarely arrive fully formed. They come out of small, cheap experiments, quick failures and what each one teaches. He draws on comedians, architects and companies such as Pixar and Amazon.
The 2019 shelf
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Tribe of Mentors
Business & Startups
Tim Ferriss sent the same short list of questions to more than 100 people at the top of their fields and collected the answers. They cover the books they give most, the habits they rely on and the advice they would give their younger selves.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Running Lean
Business & Startups
A step-by-step method for taking a product from idea to traction. Ash Maurya introduces the Lean Canvas and shows how to test the riskiest assumptions with customers before building too much.
Photo, July 2021
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Principles
Business & Startups
Ray Dalio sets out the life and work principles he used to build Bridgewater: radical truth, radical transparency and believability-weighted decisions.
Photo, Oct 2018
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Business & Startups
Ben Horowitz on running a startup when there are no easy answers: layoffs, demoting friends, raising money and being a wartime CEO.
Photo, Jan 2022
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Founders at Work
Business & Startups
Interviews with the founders of Apple, PayPal, Hotmail, Flickr and others about the early days of their startups.
Photo, Nov 2022
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Traction
Business & Startups
Gino Wickman's Entrepreneurial Operating System: vision, people, data, issues, process and traction, for running a small company.
Photo, Jan 2023
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The Startup Owner's Manual
Business & Startups
Steve Blank and Bob Dorf's step-by-step guide to customer development: get out of the building and test every assumption with customers.
Photo, May 2019
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Buy Back Your Time
Business & Startups
Dan Martell on hiring and delegating so the founder stops being the bottleneck, starting with an audit of where your hours go.
Photo, Mar 2024
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The Entrepreneur Mind
Business & Startups
One hundred short chapters on the beliefs, characteristics and habits of entrepreneurs, by Kevin D. Johnson.
Photo, Mar 2022
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Tools of Titans
Business & Startups
Tim Ferriss collects the tactics, routines and habits of the guests on his podcast, from billionaires to athletes.
Audiobook, his library
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Make Your Mark
Business & Startups
A 99U collection of essays on building a creative business with impact: purpose, product, team and growth.
Photo, Apr 2019
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HBR's 10 Must Reads: Strategy
Business & Startups
Ten Harvard Business Review articles on strategy, including Michael Porter's "What Is Strategy?".
Photo, Nov 2022
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HBR's 10 Must Reads: Change Management
Business & Startups
Ten Harvard Business Review articles on leading change, including John Kotter's "Leading Change".
Photo, Nov 2022
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HBR's 10 Must Reads: The Essentials
Business & Startups
The core Harvard Business Review articles on management, strategy and leadership, collected in one volume.
Photo, Nov 2022
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Brand & Marketing
12 books-
Crossing the Chasm
Brand & Marketing
Geoffrey Moore's model of how new technology is adopted. He shows the gap between early adopters and the mainstream market, and how to cross it by winning one narrow beachhead first.
Own one tiny niche so hard it can't ignore you, then expand. Trying to sell to everyone on day one is how you sell to no one.
The 2019 shelf
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Start With Why
Brand & Marketing
Simon Sinek's Golden Circle: why, how, what. He argues that people buy into the reason behind a company before they buy what it makes, using Apple and the Wright brothers as examples.
Your offer is the what. Your why is the reason anyone cares. Lead with it in every headline.
The 2019 shelf
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Zag
Brand & Marketing
A short, visual book on radical differentiation. Marty Neumeier's test: when everyone else zigs, zag, and describe your brand as the only one that does what it does.
If you can't finish the sentence our brand is the only, you don't have a brand yet. You have a logo.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Primal Branding
Brand & Marketing
Patrick Hanlon breaks the strongest brands down into seven parts of a belief system: a creation story, a creed, icons, rituals, sacred words, nonbelievers and a leader.
The best brands feel like a movement you get to join. Give people the story, the words and the rituals, and they'll do the marketing.
The 2019 shelf
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Brand Against the Machine
Brand & Marketing
John Morgan's guide for small businesses that want to stand out from corporate marketing. He argues for being human, being remarkable and building trust with a specific audience.
Be a person, not a press release. People buy from people, especially online.
The 2019 shelf
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Crush It!
Brand & Marketing
Gary Vaynerchuk's early case for turning a passion into a business through content and social media. He pushes a personal brand built on authenticity and relentless output.
This is the book that made content feel like a real business. Pick your platform, show up daily, and outwork the people who only post when they feel like it.
The 2019 shelf
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Growth Hacker Marketing
Brand & Marketing
Ryan Holiday's short primer on growth hacking. Using Dropbox, Airbnb and Hotmail, he shows how marketing can be built into the product, tested cheaply and scaled.
The best marketing is baked into the product. If the thing doesn't spread on its own, more ads just make it fail faster.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Stand Out
Brand & Marketing
Dorie Clark's guide to becoming a recognized expert. She shows how to find a breakthrough idea and build a following around it, using interviews with thought leaders.
Pick a lane, have a point of view, and say it out loud a thousand times. That's what being known actually looks like.
The 2019 shelf
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Hooked
Brand & Marketing
Nir Eyal's Hook Model for habit-forming products: trigger, action, variable reward and investment.
His Instagram, 2022
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Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel
Brand & Marketing
John Carlton's course on direct-response copywriting: hooks, salesmanship in print and writing ads that sell.
Photo, Apr 2020
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Overdeliver
Brand & Marketing
Brian Kurtz on building a business through direct marketing, drawing on decades at Boardroom Inc. and the lessons of the old masters.
Photo, Aug 2019
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The Tipping Point
Brand & Marketing
Malcolm Gladwell on how ideas and behaviours spread like epidemics: connectors, mavens and salesmen, stickiness and context.
Home shelf, 2022
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Sales & Stage
4 books-
Advanced Selling Strategies
Sales & Stage
Brian Tracy's guide to the psychology and methods of top salespeople. It covers prospecting, building trust, presenting and closing, plus the habits that keep a seller sharp.
Selling is helping with better posture. Ask more, talk less, and earn the close.
The 2019 shelf
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Secrets of Closing the Sale
Sales & Stage
Zig Ziglar's classic on closing, packed with dozens of closes, questions and stories. He ties persuasion to attitude and to honestly serving the buyer.
Zig is the GOAT. If you believe in what you sell, closing is just finishing the conversation for them.
The 2019 shelf
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Steal the Show
Sales & Stage
Michael Port uses stage acting techniques for everyday high stakes moments such as pitches, interviews and keynotes. He covers rehearsal, presence, story and handling nerves.
Every pitch is a performance. Rehearse it like one and you stop sounding like you're reading a script.
The 2019 shelf
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Predictable Revenue
Sales & Stage
The outbound sales process Aaron Ross built at Salesforce: specialised roles and cold email that produce a steady pipeline.
Photo, Mar 2020
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Leadership
14 books-
Leaders Eat Last
Leadership
Simon Sinek on the circle of safety inside great teams. He links trust and cooperation to body chemistry, endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, and argues that leaders go last.
Your team will run through walls for you if they know you've got their back. Protect them first and the numbers follow.
The 2019 shelf
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The Dichotomy of Leadership
Leadership
The follow up to Extreme Ownership by two former Navy SEAL officers. Each chapter pairs a combat lesson with a business case about balancing opposites, such as leading and following or being aggressive and cautious.
Every rule has an opposite rule that's also true. Real leadership is knowing which one today needs.
Photo, Apr 2022
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The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
Leadership
John Maxwell's 21 principles of leadership, such as the Law of the Lid and the Law of Influence. Each law comes with stories and a self check.
The Law of the Lid hits hardest: your business can't grow past you. Raise the lid first.
Photo, Jan 2022
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First Things First
Leadership
A time management book built on importance, not urgency. It expands the Covey quadrant and argues for planning each week around roles and the few things that matter most.
Busy is not the same as important. Block the important stuff first or the urgent stuff eats your whole week.
The 2019 shelf
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Do More Great Work
Leadership
A short workbook of maps and exercises for spending less time on busywork and more on work that matters. Michael Bungay Stanier sorts work into bad, good and great, and helps you start more projects in the great column.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Leadership Presence
Leadership
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Short articles on how leaders come across, earn trust and hold a room.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Authentic Leadership
Leadership
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on leading as yourself: knowing your values, telling your own story and staying genuine as your role grows.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Influence and Persuasion
Leadership
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on persuading people, from building credibility to framing an argument so others act on it.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Dealing with Difficult People
Leadership
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on working with difficult colleagues, bosses and clients, and keeping conflict productive.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Managing Oneself
Leadership
Peter Drucker's short Harvard Business Review classic: know your strengths, how you work and where you belong.
Photo, Aug 2019
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HBR's 10 Must Reads: Managing People
Leadership
Ten Harvard Business Review articles on managing people, including pieces by Peter Drucker and Daniel Goleman.
Photo, Nov 2022
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HBR's 10 Must Reads: Managing Yourself
Leadership
Ten Harvard Business Review articles on managing your own time, energy and career.
Photo, Nov 2022
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Power and Impact
Leadership
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on gaining influence and using power well.
Photo, Oct 2022
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The True Measure of a Man
Leadership
Richard E. Simmons III on how men measure their worth, and why performance and possessions make a poor yardstick.
Audiobook, his library
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Mind & Habits
48 books-
Atomic Habits
Mind & Habits
James Clear on how tiny habits compound into big results. His four laws: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying, plus the idea of habits as identity.
Stop setting goals and start building systems. You don't rise to your goals, you fall to your systems.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
Mind & Habits
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman describes two ways of thinking: fast, intuitive System 1 and slow, deliberate System 2. He maps the biases that come from them, including anchoring, loss aversion and overconfidence.
Required reading for anyone who writes copy. Every bias in here is a reason someone buys or doesn't.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Deep Work
Mind & Habits
Cal Newport argues that focused, distraction free work is rare and valuable. He gives rules for training focus, cutting shallow work and scheduling long blocks of concentration.
Notifications are the enemy of money. Two hours of real focus beats a whole day of being busy.
The 2019 shelf
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Switch
Mind & Habits
The Heath brothers on changing behavior when change is hard. They use the image of a rider, an elephant and a path: direct the rider, motivate the elephant, shape the path.
Change the environment and the behavior follows. Willpower is overrated. Design is not.
The 2019 shelf
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Black Box Thinking
Mind & Habits
Matthew Syed compares aviation, which studies every failure, with fields that hide their mistakes. He argues that progress comes from treating failure as data.
Every failed funnel is a black box. Open it, read it, fix it. Hiding a mistake is the only real failure.
The 2019 shelf
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The Charisma Myth
Mind & Habits
Olivia Fox Cabane argues that charisma is a set of learnable behaviors, not a trait you are born with. She breaks it into presence, power and warmth, with exercises for each.
Charisma is mostly paying attention. Put the phone down and actually listen, it's that simple.
The 2019 shelf
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Subliminal
Mind & Habits
Physicist Leonard Mlodinow explains how the unconscious mind shapes perception, memory and judgment. He uses research to show how much of what we decide happens below awareness.
Most buying decisions happen before the brain asks permission. Design for the part of the brain that decides first.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Evolve Your Brain
Mind & Habits
Joe Dispenza combines neuroscience and personal stories to argue that thought and repetition can rewire the brain. He explains how habits form neural networks and how to break them.
Your brain is a muscle with a memory. Repeat the new pattern until the old one forgets you.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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How to Change Your Mind
Mind & Habits
Michael Pollan reports on the history and new science of psychedelics, from early research to current clinical trials for depression and addiction. He also describes his own guided experiences.
A sharp look at how much we still don't know about the mind. Curiosity over judgment, every time.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Spiral Dynamics
Mind & Habits
Building on psychologist Clare Graves, Beck and Cowan describe value systems that people and cultures move through over time, each shown as a color on a spiral.
Once you see the spiral you can't unsee it. Speak to the value system your buyer lives in, not the one you live in.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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The Courage to Be Disliked
Mind & Habits
A dialogue between a philosopher and a young man about Alfred Adler's psychology. It covers separating your tasks from other people's, and finding freedom by not living for approval.
Other people's opinion of you is their task, not yours. Read this once a year.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Steal Like an Artist
Mind & Habits
Austin Kleon's short manifesto on creativity in ten rules, such as steal from many sources, start before you're ready and share your work.
Nothing is original and that's the good news. Steal structure, remix it, make it yours.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite
Mind & Habits
David DiSalvo looks at the shortcuts the brain prefers, such as certainty, comfort and quick rewards, and shows how they lead us astray. He uses research from psychology and neuroscience to explain when to override them.
The 2019 shelf
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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Mind & Habits
Julian Jaynes argues that ancient people heard their own thoughts as the voices of gods, a two-chambered or bicameral mind, and that self-aware consciousness appeared only about 3,000 years ago. He builds the case from ancient texts, archaeology and neurology.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Beyond Training
Mind & Habits
Ben Greenfield's guide to endurance, performance and health. It covers training, recovery, nutrition, sleep and hormones, with a focus on getting fitter without wrecking your body along the way.
Photo, 2019
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Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding
Mind & Habits
Robert Kennedy's A to Z reference on building muscle. It covers training methods, exercises, nutrition and contest preparation.
Photo, Nov 2018
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Focus
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on attention: why it matters, how distraction wears it down and how to get it back.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Mindful Listening
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on listening well: staying present in a conversation and hearing what people mean, not only what they say.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Confidence
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on building self-confidence at work and acting with it before you feel it.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Purpose, Meaning, and Passion
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on finding meaning in your work and connecting daily tasks to a larger purpose.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Empathy
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on empathy at work: seeing other people's point of view and why it makes teams and leaders better.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Happiness
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on happiness at work, what drives it and why it matters for performance.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Resilience
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on recovering from setbacks and handling pressure without burning out.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Mindfulness
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on mindfulness at work: paying attention on purpose, and the practical case for it.
Photo, Oct 2022
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The Power of Habit
Mind & Habits
Charles Duhigg on the habit loop of cue, routine and reward, and how individuals, companies and movements change their habits.
His Instagram, 2022
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Relentless
Mind & Habits
Tim Grover, trainer to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, on the mental side of performance: from good to great to unstoppable.
His Instagram, 2022
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Words Can Change Your Brain
Mind & Habits
Twelve conversation strategies, drawn from brain research, to build trust, resolve conflict and increase intimacy.
His Instagram, 2022
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Blink
Mind & Habits
Malcolm Gladwell on rapid cognition: the snap judgements made in the first two seconds, when they work and when they fail.
Home shelf, 2022
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Flow
Mind & Habits
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's study of optimal experience: the state of deep absorption in a task, and how to create it more often.
Home shelf, 2022
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The Great Mental Models Vol. 2
Mind & Habits
Farnam Street's second volume of mental models, taken from physics, chemistry and biology.
Photo, Nov 2021
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How to Have a Beautiful Mind
Mind & Habits
Edward de Bono on being interesting in conversation: how to agree, disagree, differ and respond.
Photo, Mar 2025
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Daily Rituals
Mind & Habits
How 161 writers, composers, painters and scientists structured their working days, edited by Mason Currey.
Photo, Nov 2025
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The Better Brain Book
Mind & Habits
David Perlmutter's guide to improving memory and protecting the brain through diet, supplements and lifestyle.
Photo, Aug 2019
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Sleep Smarter
Mind & Habits
Twenty-one practical tips from Shawn Stevenson for better sleep, and a better body, health and output that follow.
Photo, Aug 2019
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10% Happier
Mind & Habits
ABC newsman Dan Harris on how meditation tamed the voice in his head, without losing his edge.
Photo, July 2024
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Unstoppable
Mind & Habits
Craig Ballantyne on getting through hell, overcoming anxiety and building structure in business and life.
Photo, Sept 2023
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The Ellipsis Manual
Mind & Habits
Chase Hughes' manual on behaviour analysis and influence, written from his work training intelligence and military personnel.
Read on his recommendation
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The Memory Book
Mind & Habits
The classic guide to memory techniques: association, the link system and the peg system for names, numbers and facts.
Read on his recommendation
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Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself
Mind & Habits
Joe Dispenza combines neuroscience and meditation into a four-week process for changing habitual thoughts and behaviour.
Audiobook, his library
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Atlas of the Heart
Mind & Habits
Brené Brown maps 87 emotions and experiences and the language for naming them.
Audiobook, his library
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The Laws of Human Nature
Mind & Habits
Robert Greene on the hidden drives behind how people act, from envy and grandiosity to short-term thinking.
Audiobook, his library
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The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist
Mind & Habits
Debbie Mirza on recognising covert narcissism in a relationship and recovering from the psychological abuse that comes with it.
Audiobook, his library
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Worthy of Love
Mind & Habits
Debbie Mirza's follow-up on healing after narcissistic abuse and reclaiming a sense of who you are.
Audiobook, his library
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"Don't You Know Who I Am?"
Mind & Habits
Clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula on staying sane in an era of narcissism, entitlement and incivility.
Audiobook, his library
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The King Within
Mind & Habits
A Jungian study of the King archetype in the male psyche and how a man accesses it in a mature form.
Audiobook, his library
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The Interpretation of Dreams
Mind & Habits
Sigmund Freud's 1899 founding text of psychoanalysis: dreams as wish fulfilment, and the method for interpreting them.
Home shelf, 2022
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Homo Deus
Mind & Habits
Yuval Noah Harari on where humanity goes after famine, plague and war, as it reaches for immortality, happiness and godlike power.
Photo, Nov 2019
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Self-Awareness
Mind & Habits
Part of the Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence series. Articles on seeing yourself clearly and how others see you.
Photo, Oct 2022
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Spirit & Consciousness
18 books-
Power vs. Force
Spirit & Consciousness
David R. Hawkins presents his Map of Consciousness, a scale of human states from shame up to enlightenment. He contrasts power, which comes from higher states, with force, which comes from lower ones.
Force pushes, power pulls. Build the kind of brand people move toward on their own.
The 2020 stack
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Letting Go
Spirit & Consciousness
Hawkins' practical book on surrender. He teaches a simple method for noticing feelings and releasing them instead of suppressing or acting them out.
The simplest tool on the whole shelf. Feel it, let it pass, keep moving.
The 2020 stack
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Healing and Recovery
Spirit & Consciousness
Drawn from Hawkins' lectures on healing. He applies his consciousness work to illness, addiction, stress and recovery.
Heavy topics, calm voice. Healing starts the moment you stop fighting what you feel.
The 2020 stack
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Zen and the Brain
Spirit & Consciousness
Neurologist and Zen practitioner James H. Austin connects meditation with brain science. He explores what may be happening in the brain during attention, insight and awakening.
For the nerds who meditate. Science and stillness turn out to be on the same team.
Home shelf, 2022
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How's Your Soul?
Spirit & Consciousness
Pastor Judah Smith asks readers to look after their inner life first. He writes about emotions, contentment and relationships from a Christian perspective.
Success with no soul is just a lot of noise. Check in with yourself before you check your numbers.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life
Spirit & Consciousness
Drunvalo Melchizedek's first volume on sacred geometry, the Flower of Life pattern and a breathing meditation he calls the Mer-Ka-Ba.
Way out there and I love it. Even if you don't buy all of it, the geometry alone is worth the read.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Darkside Zodiac
Spirit & Consciousness
A tongue-in-cheek guide to the less flattering side of every star sign: the traits each sign would rather keep quiet.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Reality Transurfing, Steps I-V
Spirit & Consciousness
Vadim Zeland's model of reality as a field of possible outcomes you move through by choice rather than force. It introduces ideas such as pendulums, importance and outer intention.
The 2020 stack
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Levels of Energy
Spirit & Consciousness
Frederick Dodson maps states of consciousness onto a scale of energy levels, from shame and fear up to love and peace, and describes how to move up it.
Recommended on Instagram, Jan 2020
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You're Not Broken
Spirit & Consciousness
Christopher Michael Duncan's five steps to becoming superconscious and, in the subtitle's words, activating your magic. It treats growth as uncovering who you already are rather than fixing something broken.
Photo, Mar 2025
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Be Here Now
Spirit & Consciousness
Ram Dass's 1971 account of his turn from Harvard psychologist to spiritual teacher, with its hand-drawn centre section.
Photo, July 2019
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Courage
Spirit & Consciousness
Osho on the joy of living dangerously: trusting the unknown instead of clinging to safety.
Photo, Apr 2025
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Awareness
Spirit & Consciousness
Osho on awareness as the key to living in balance, watching the mind instead of being run by it.
Photo, Apr 2024
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Sacred Powers
Spirit & Consciousness
davidji's five secrets to awakening transformation, drawn from meditation and the Bhagavad Gita.
Photo, Aug 2024
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The Transparency of Things
Spirit & Consciousness
Rupert Spira's contemplations on the nature of experience and the non-dual understanding that awareness is all there is.
Photo, May 2021
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True Love
Spirit & Consciousness
Thich Nhat Hanh's short practice for awakening the heart: loving kindness, compassion, joy and freedom in a relationship.
Photo, Mar 2025
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The Complete Conversations with God
Spirit & Consciousness
Books one to three of Neale Donald Walsch's dialogue with God, on life, relationships and the purpose of the soul.
Audiobook, his library
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Outwitting the Devil
Spirit & Consciousness
A manuscript Napoleon Hill wrote in 1938 and his family kept unpublished until 2011: an imagined interview with the Devil about fear and drifting.
Photo, July 2020
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Classics
10 books-
Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Classics
Emerson's essays on trusting yourself over custom and conformity. Self-Reliance, The American Scholar and others make the case for independent thought.
Trust thyself. Two words that cover most of what I'd tell a new founder.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Nature and Other Essays
Classics
Emerson's essay Nature, the founding text of American Transcendentalism, with other essays. It treats nature as a source of insight and spirit.
Go outside. Seriously. Your best ideas don't live in your inbox.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Leaves of Grass
Classics
Walt Whitman's life work of free verse, revised many times over his life. It includes Song of Myself, a celebration of the self, the body and democracy.
I contain multitudes. Best line in American poetry, and a pretty good brand strategy.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Classics
Franklin's own account of his rise from printer's apprentice to statesman. It includes his famous plan of thirteen virtues and the daily schedule he tracked them with.
The original self improvement tracker. He literally scored his own virtues every day. Respect.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Quadrivium
Classics
A Wooden Books compendium of the four classical liberal arts: number, geometry, music and cosmology. Short illustrated chapters show how ancient thinkers linked mathematics, harmony and the movement of the heavens.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Walden
Classics
Henry David Thoreau's account of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond. It is an argument for simple living, self-reliance and close attention to nature.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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The Republic
Classics
Plato's dialogue on justice, in which Socrates imagines an ideal city ruled by philosopher kings. It contains the allegory of the cave.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Classics
Bruce Lee's notes on his martial art and its philosophy, published after his death.
Photo, June 2019
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100 Best-Loved Poems
Classics
A Dover Thrift anthology of one hundred of the most-loved poems in English.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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The Complete Life's Little Instruction Book
Classics
H. Jackson Brown Jr.'s collection of short reminders on living well, first written as advice for his son.
Photo, Apr 2024
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Music & Culture
7 books-
Bowie in Berlin
Music & Culture
The story of David Bowie's years in Berlin in the late 1970s. It covers the making of Low, Heroes and Lodger with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti.
Proof that a change of scene can reset everything. Bowie left LA, moved to Berlin and made his best work.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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Seeing the Light
Music & Culture
A history of the Velvet Underground, from Lou Reed and John Cale's first band to Andy Warhol's Factory and beyond. It traces how a band with modest sales went on to influence generations of musicians.
Barely sold records, changed music forever. Influence beats sales numbers in the long game.
Home shelf, Sept 2024
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The Creative Act
Music & Culture
Rick Rubin on creativity as a way of being: paying attention, letting go of the outcome and trusting the work.
Photo, Mar 2025
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How Music Works
Music & Culture
David Byrne on how music is shaped by the rooms it is played in, the technology that records it and the business that sells it.
Photo, Sept 2021
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Verses
Music & Culture
A collection of Ani DiFranco's poems.
Photo, Sept 2021
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No Hero
Music & Culture
A former Navy SEAL on the training, missions and mindset of his years in the teams.
Photo, May 2019
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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Music & Culture
Jack Weatherford's history of Genghis Khan and how the Mongol empire connected trade, ideas and law across Eurasia.
Audiobook, his library
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MikhailFounder, MVKBIZ