I read a bunch too. Here are some of the recent books I’ve read, more or less in reverse order (and recently, with dates).
- Jonathan Taplin, The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto (September 2023)
- Dan Charnas, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (September 2023)
- Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (August 2023)
- David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (July 2023)
- Paul Collier, Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World (May 2023)
- Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (March 2023)
- Lincoln Mitchell, San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team (February 2023)
- Patti Smith, Just Kids (February 2023)
- Karen Bakker, The Sounds of Life (January 2023)
- Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values (October 2022)
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (October 2022) – It took me three tries over 20+ years to finish this wretched book
- Chris Ategeka, The Unintended Consequences of Technology: Solutions, Breakthroughs, and the Restart We Need (May 2022)
- Jimmy Soni, The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (April 2022)
- David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (March 2022)
- Ernest Cline, Ready Player One (February 2022)
- Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (January 2021)
- Jonathan Tapli, The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life (December 2021)
- Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher, The Age of AI and our Human Future (November 2021)
- Bru Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism (October 2021)
- Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (September 2021)
- David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (August 2021)
- Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix (August 2021)
- J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (July 2021)
- James Lovelock, Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence (June 2021)
- Kevin Scott, Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley – Making AI Serve Us All (June 2021)
- Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (May 2021)
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (May 2021)
- Phil Lesh, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (April 2021)
- Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Jazz: A History of America’s Music (January 2021)
- George Orwell, 1984 (January 2021)
- Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (January 2021)
- Alan Krueger, Rockonomics (December 2020)
- Douglas Coupland, Microserfs (December 2020)
- Binyamin Appelbaum, The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society (December 2020)
- John Tusa, On Board: The Insider’s Guide to Surviving Life in the Boardroom (December 2020)
- Nathalia Holt, Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars (November, 2020)
- Paul Brest and Hal Harvey, Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy (November 2020)
- E. O. Wilson, Tales from the Ant World (October 2020)
- Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire (September 2020)
- Seth Shostak, Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (September 2020)
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (August 2020)
- David Byrne, How Music Works (August 2020)
- Ed Ward, The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 2: 1964–1977: The Beatles, the Stones, and the Rise of Classic Rock (August 2020)
- Glen Weyl and Eric Posner, Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society (July 2020)
- Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers (July 2020)
- Condoleezza Rice and Amy Zegart, Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity (June 2020)
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (May 2020)
- David Callahan, The Givers: Money, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age (April 2020)
- Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age (December 2019)
- E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops (October 2019)
- William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine (July 2019)
- Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (June 2019)
- Ken Auletta, World War 3.0 : Microsoft and Its Enemies (May 2019)
- Rob Reich, Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better (April 2019)
- Anand Giridharadasm, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (March 2019)
- Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (March 2019)
- Jaron Lanier, Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality (March 2019)
- Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class-and What We Can Do About It (March 2019)
- Joel Selvin, Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day (February 2019)
- Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (February 2019)
- Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (February 2019)
- P.D. James, The Children of Men (January 2019)
- Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop December 2018)
- Kevin Mitnick, Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker (November 2018)
- Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win (August 2018)
- Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World (August 2018)
- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (July 2018)
- Tim O’Reilly, WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us (July 2018)
- Jeffrey Toobin, American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst (June 2018)
- Ed Ward, The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963(June 2018)
- Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (April 2018)
- Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (March 2018)
- John Doe, Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk (March 2018)
- Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (March 2018)
- Ryan Avent, The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century
- Analee Newitz, Autonomous: A Novel
- Bryce G. Hoffman, American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company
- Simon Winchester, Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers
- Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
- Bill Kreutzmann, Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead
- Erik Brynjolfsson, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
- Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
- Mahzarin R. Banaji, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
- Brian Christian, Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
- Robert Louis Stevens, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four
- Arthur Conan Doyle, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
- Simon Winthrop, How to Be a Mentalist: Master the Secrets Behind the Hit TV Show
- Gabriel Metcalf, Democratic by Design: How Carsharing, Co-ops, and Community Land Trusts Are Reinventing America
- David Talbot, Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love
- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- Richard Dobbs, James Manyika, and Jonathan Woetzel, No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trend
- Edward Lucas, The Snowden Operation: Inside the West’s Greatest Intelligence Disaster
- H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
- Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
- Brian Christian, Most Human Human
- H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
- Tyler Cowen, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better