Ryan Holiday

Author, Entrepreneur, Executive, Influencer, Podcaster, Writer

Ryan Holiday is an American author of bestsellers including The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy and The Daily Stoic, host of the Daily Stoic podcast, and owner of The Painted Porch Bookshop in Bastrop, Texas.

Ryan Holiday's 1007 Book Recommendations

• Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines
• Fahrenheit 451
• The War of Art
• Tough Jews
• What Makes Sammy Run?
• The Score Takes Care of Itself
• Tiny Beautiful Things
• The River of Doubt
• The Tiger
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
• Wikinomics
• Up From Slavery
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• The Fish That Ate the Whale
• The Moviegoer
• The Moral Animal
• The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus
• The Harder They Fall
• The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects V3
• The Net Delusion
• Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American
• Sex on the Brain
• The 33 Strategies Of War
• The 48 Laws of Power
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Shadow Divers
• The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz
• Selected Epigrams
• On Sparta
• Rules for Radicals
• Reveille for Radicals
• Plutarch's Lives, Volume 2
• My Life and Battles
• My Bondage and My Freedom
• Hamlet
• Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
• Here Comes Everybody
• Letters from a Stoic
• Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
• History of the Peloponnesian War
• Essays and Aphorisms
• Candide
• Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus
• Fight Club: A Novel
• Founders at Work
• Brave New War
• Boyd
• The Aeneid of Virgil
• Average Is Over
• Empire State of Mind
• Mastery
• The Makers of Rome
• The Pirate's Dilemma
• The Strategy Paradox
• The Boys in the Boat
• The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story: “Instead of giving descriptions for these, I’m just going to list titles. You need to read ALL of them. ... The New New Thing by Michael Lewis”
• You are Not a Gadget: “Instead of giving descriptions for these, I’m just going to list titles. You need to read ALL of them. Especially the ones marked with an * ... You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto * by Jaron Lanier”
• Bird by Bird
• Washington
• Titan
• Eisenhower in War and Peace
• Where Men Win Glory
• Eleven Rings
• Destiny of the Republic
• How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life
• In the Heart of the Sea
• So You've Been Publicly Shamed
• Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness
• Shoe Dog
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
• Deep Work
• The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory
• The Road to Character
• Tribe
• But What If We're Wrong?
• The City and the Stars
• Tiger Woods
• Range
• The Second Mountain
• How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
• The Great Influenza
• The Road
• Parting the Waters
• Invisible Man
• Meditations
• The Choice
• Man's Search For Meaning
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
• Caste
• The Warmth of Other Suns
• The Psychology of Money
• Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be
• The Splendid and the Vile
• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
• Conundrum
• The Velveteen Rabbit
• Lincoln at Gettysburg
• The Odyssey
• Turning Pro
• Everything Is Figureoutable
• The Laws of Human Nature
• Atomic Habits
• Letters to a Young Athlete
• Four Thousand Weeks
• How to Live
• The Life You Can Save
• It can't happen here, a novel
• The Creative Act
• Excellent Advice for Living
• Bushido
• The Black Swan: Second Edition
• The 4-hour Workweek
• The Great Gatsby
• Amusing Ourselves to Death
• The Gift of Fear
• Discourses and Selected Writings
• The Dip
• Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me!)
• Ender's Game
• Endurance
• Essentialism
• The ONE Thing
• Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition
• Blood Meridian, Or, The Evening Redness in the West
• Babbitt
• Personal History
• Steal Like an Artist
• Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
• Status Anxiety
• What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars
• Plutarch's Lives, Volume 1
• Words That Work
• The Game
• Good to Great
• Purple Cow
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• Tools of Titans
• Enchiridion
• Walden
• The Big Sleep
• The Long Goodbye
• On the Shortness of Life
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• Eating Animals
• Facing Codependence
• A Sense of Where You Are
• The God Delusion
• The Origins of Virtue
• The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
• The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
• The Path to Power
• Zen in the Art of Archery
• Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
• Nudge
• Tao Te Ching
• Totto-Chan
• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
• The Prince
• The Book of Five Rings
• Steve Jobs
• Show Your Work!
• Letters to a Young Poet
• The Way to Love
• Hillbilly Elegy
• When Breath Becomes Air
• Being Nixon
• American Caesar
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Empire of the Summer Moon
• Pillar of Fire
• At Canaan's Edge
• Fooled by Randomness
• Ask the Dust
• Dreams from Bunker Hill
• The Brotherhood of the Grape
• Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
• Twelve Years a Slave
• Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
• All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
• The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
• Company K
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments
• A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting
• A Fighter's Mind: Inside the Mental Game
• Nicomachean Ethics
• Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
• The Education of a Coach
• The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players
• The Essential Wooden: A Lifetime of Lessons on Leaders and Leadership
• George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon
• Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson
• The Sorrows of Young Werther
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932
• Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography
• The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge
• Bodyguard of Lies
• The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader
• Montaigne
• Magellan
• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
• Bright Shiny Morning
• This Hallowed Ground: A History of the Civil War
• A Stillness at Appomattox
• The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
• Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It
• A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul
• The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership
• Sadaharu Oh: A Zen Way of Baseball
• Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire
• Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill
• The Fall
• What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen
• Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics
• The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
• Memoirs of Hadrian
• George Marshall: Defender of the Republic
• Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
• Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad
• How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management
• The Complete Perfectionist: A Poetics of Work
• Leadership: In Turbulent Times
• Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from Those Who Made History
• Florence Nightingale
• The Reason Why
• De Gaulle
• Truman
• The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business
• Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters
• How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership
• Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones
• How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
• Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything
• Indian Givers: How Native Americans Transformed the World
• The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature
• Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham
• First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
• Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968
• The Children
• Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman
• Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
• Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature
• The Nineties: A Book
• Gift from the Sea
• The Johnstown Flood
• Address Unknown
• How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question
• The Book with No Pictures
• I Need a New Butt!
• Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six
• The Son
• Pontius Pilate
• Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
• The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man
• The Past That Would Not Die
• Three Lives for Mississippi
• Blue Nights
• The Year of Magical Thinking
• Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska
• The Greek Way
• Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall
• The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History
• Night of the Grizzlies
• James
• Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild
• Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure
• The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
• Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
• The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
• Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of the World
• Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor
• Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It
• Hot Dog
• The Rock from the Sky
• That One Should Disdain Hardships: The Teachings of a Roman Stoic
• The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
• Death Be Not Proud
• The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH
• Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes
• Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything
• 84, Charing Cross Road
• How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World
• Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
• The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
• Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning
• Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character
• Maxims
• Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault
• Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 1: The Early Years, 1884-1933
• The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships
• A New Pair of Glasses
• Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War
• The Man Without a Country
• Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi
• Hunger
• Asylum
• Wait Until Spring, Bandini
• The Road to Los Angeles
• This Boy's Life: A Memoir
• The Disenchanted
• All the King's Men
• How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves
• Lives of the Later Caesars
• Profiles in Courage
• Phosphorescence: A Memoir of Finding Joy When Your World Goes Dark
• Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual
• Why Don't We Learn from History?
• Buddha
• Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life
• The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic
• The Daily Pressfield
• The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress
• On the Good Life
• Essays
• The Power of No: Because One Little Word Can Bring Health, Abundance, and Happiness
• Civil War Stories
• The Sea-Wolf
• The Crack-Up
• On the Rock: Twenty-Five Years in Alcatraz
• The Measure of My Days
• The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays
• The Kid Stays in the Picture
• Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
• Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years
• The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man
• Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Pattern
• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
• The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
• The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca
• Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior
• Nature and Selected Essays
• The Art of Happiness
• Moralia
• Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy
• The Lady in the Lake
• Southern California: An Island on the Land
• Los Angeles: Portrait of a City
• The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory
• City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
• The Price of Experience: Money, Power, Image, and Murder in Los Angeles
• L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City
• The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies
• Playback
• Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood
• Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
• And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture
• Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America
• Addiction: A Disorder of Choice
• Black Like Me
• Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again
• Bright Lights, Big City
• The 50th Law
• The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals
• The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own.
• Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know
• Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems
• Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species
• Theory of War
• A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age
• Ambition: The Secret Passion
• My Wicked, Wicked Ways
• Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation
• Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity
• Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
• Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World
• The Tacit Dimension
• The Book of My Life
• The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream
• Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road
• The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
• Within the Context of No Context
• Education of a Felon: A Memoir
• The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism
• The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves
• Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture
• War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
• My War Gone By, I Miss It So
• On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
• The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
• Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism
• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
• Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche
• Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality
• Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor
• Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome
• Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
• Four Reasonable Men: Marcus Aurelius, John Stuart Mill, Ernest Renan, Henry Sidgwick
• Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
• The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary
• The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
• The Sixteen Satires
• Cato: A Tragedy, and Selected Essays
• Julius Caesar
• The Hunters
• Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer
• Strategy
• The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood
• Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865
• A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons
• Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War
• Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War
• The Legacy of the Civil War
• Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
• Mencken: The American Iconoclast
• Full of Life
• 1933 Was a Bad Year
• John Fante & H. L. Mencken: A Personal Correspondence, 1930-1952
• Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving
• The Book of Dead Philosophers
• The Twelve Caesars
• Trouble Is My Business
• The High Window
• The Little Sister
• Farewell, My Lovely
• The Simple Art of Murder
• Raymond Chandler Speaking
• Chandlertown: The Los Angeles of Philip Marlowe
• Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
• Alexander Hamilton
• The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
• Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
• Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940
• The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965
• Lancelot
• Mr. Eternity
• The World According to Star Wars
• The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed
• The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance
• Composed: A Memoir
• Fishing for Fun: And to Wash Your Soul
• Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans
• How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
• The Library Book
• Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
• Napoleon: A Life
• Churchill: Walking with Destiny
• Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy
• A Fool's Errand
• Her Right Foot
• Outside, Inside
• What Does It Mean to Be American?
• Minecraft: Woodsword Chronicles: Into the Game!
• American Rust
• All the Pretty Horses
• Comanches: The History of a People
• Greeking Out: Epic Retellings of Classic Greek Myths
• Greeking Out: Heroes and Olympians
• Rules for a Knight
• The Death of Socrates
• Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters
• The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
• Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing
• Victory Over Myself
• Jungle Ways
• No Hiding Place: An Autobiography
• Hustling: Prostitution in Our Wide-Open Society
• Moralia, Volume II: How to Profit by One's Enemies
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• Dead Wake
• The Art of War
• The Intelligent Investor
• The Bhagavad Gita
• Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman
• A Poem for Every Night of the Year
• Fifty Famous Stories Retold
• Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
• Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection
• High Five
• On War
• Minecraft: The Island
• Sherman: Fighting Prophet
• The Scarecrow
• A Poem for Every Day of the Year
• The Way of the Champion: Pain, Persistence, and the Path Forward
• Gilead
• The Alchemist
• Atlas Shrugged
• In Cold Blood
• American Buffalo
• Buffalo for the Broken Heart
• Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• Permission Marketing
• Unlabel
• Zero to One
• Contagious
• Hooked
• So Good They Can't Ignore You
• A Man in Full
• A Guide to the Good Life
• Antifragile
• Less Than Zero
• All Marketers are Liars
• The Republic
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
• Hold Me Tight
• Discover Your Inner Economist
• 1929
• The Painted Bird
• The Little Prince
• Native Son
• Chesterfield's Letters to His Son, Volume 1
• Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
• And the Sea Will Tell
• A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889
• Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Great Animals
• The Pope's Elephant
• The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
• The Book of Imaginary Beings
• The Bear: History of a Fallen King
• Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves
• The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion
• Natural History, Volume III: Books 8-11
• Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
• The Medici Giraffe: And Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power
• Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human
• A Lion Called Christian
• Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived
• Zamba: The True Story of the Greatest Lion That Ever Lived
• The Beauty of the Beasts: Tales of Hollywood's Wild Animal Stars
• The Flinch
• Creatocracy: How the Constitution Invented Hollywood
• Some Fruits of Solitude
• You Can't Make Me Angry
• Writings from the Zen Masters
• An Apology for Idlers
• Why I Write
• A Confession and Other Religious Writings
• Socrates: A Man for Our Times
• Napoleon
• Churchill
• Edison: A Biography
• Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2: The Defining Years, 1933-1938
• Colonel Roosevelt
• Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter
• Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
• The Heart and the Fist
• The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You
• Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
• Maxims and Reflections
• The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs
• The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes
• Strenuous Epigrams of Theodore Roosevelt
• Maxims of Wall Street
• Michael Jackson, Inc.
• Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics
• Confessions of an Advertising Man
• The Unpublished David Ogilvy
• Choose Yourself!
• The Personal MBA
• Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices
• Spin: How to Turn the Power of the Press to Your Advantage
• Humilitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership
• Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention
• Marshall: Hero for Our Times
• General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman
• Tides of War
• The Great Beanie Baby Bubble
• Grand Delusions: The Cosmic Career of John DeLorean
• The Present Alone Is Our Happiness
• Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche
• My Year Inside Radical Islam
• The Essential Difference
• Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts
• Black Brothers, Inc.: The Violent Rise and Fall of Philadelphia's Black Mafia
• Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King
• Stoicism and the Art of Happiness
• The Consolations of Philosophy
• Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind
• Stoicism
• Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics
• The Stoics: A Guide for the Perplexed
• Stoicism and Emotion
• The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics
• Everything Has Two Handles: The Stoic's Guide to the Art of Living
• A New Stoicism
• Teacher Man
• Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
• Thick Face, Black Heart
• A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
• The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian
• The Man Who Would Be Queen
• Angela's Ashes
• The Sociopath Next Door
• His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S.
• Radical Reconstruction
• The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
• Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
• What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception
• The Hustons
• The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
• Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations
• How to Be a Stoic
• Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business
• Socrates
• The Big Sea
• A History of My Times
• US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man
• Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
• The Myth of the Robber Barons
• The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
• The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS
• No Logo
• It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive
• Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student
• Free Prize Inside!
• The Greco-Persian Wars
• Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History
• On the Orator
• Till Death Us Do Part
• Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
• The Predators' Ball
• American Psycho
• Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth
• The Anabasis of Cyrus
• The Daily Drucker
• Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
• Fair Play
• Goodbye to a River
• The Present Age
• Raising Hare
• The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America
• Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy
• Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote
• Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot
• The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America
• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• Outliers
• Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans
• The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives
• Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
• The Souls of Black Folk
• The Campaigns of Alexander
• Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids
• Leviathan
• Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both
• American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett: “American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett by Buddy Levy”
• The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet: “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet by Daniel J. Solove (decent, mainly cliche anecdotes)”
• Mark Twain: “Weirdly, a lot of business lessons here of what not to do in his biography of Mark Twain. Mark Twain was a great writer, a great thinker, but he... always thought he had the next big company, lost most of the money he made writing as a result. (video ~0:10)”
• The Wright Brothers: “I liked this book on the Wright Brothers, the power of creativity to make something new... (video ~0:24)”
• McMafia: “McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (thought it would focus more on decentralized criminal organizations but it doesn't. a look at how Russian culture breeds serial entrepreneurs and hustlers)”
• Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are: “Buying In: The Secret Dialog Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker (dismissed a lot of marketing/web 2.0 bullshit)”
• The Poverty of Historicism: “The Poverty of Historicism by Karl Popper (I'm still trying to wrap my head around this one if anyone can help)”
• The Female Brain: “The Female Brain – Louann Brizendine MD (good intro, nothing new)”
• The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations (his notes for a law lecture are my favorite.)”
• Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt: “Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by Edward J. Renehan ('always be an owner, never be a minion')”
• Joan of Arc: Her Story: “Joan of Arc: Her Story by Régine Pernoud”
• Grand Strategies in War and Peace: “Grand Strategies in War and Peace by Paul Kennedy”
• Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship: “Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship by Scott Donaldson (flipping through for research purposes. Hemingway destroyed Fitzgerald in one bold move)”
• Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men: “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men by Michael Kimmel (Kimmel was the only gender sociologist i remembered respecting in college – decent so far)”
• We Bought a Zoo: “We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives Forever by Benjamin Mee (interesting)”
• The Rules of Attraction: “The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis”
• Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community: “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam”
• 'Tis: A Memoir: “'Tis: A Memoir by Frank McCourt”
• The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts: “The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in 3 Acts – Tom Farley Jr. (interesting way to structure a biography.”
• Everything Is Tuberculosis: “This is Everything is Tuberculosis, a history of one of the deadliest diseases in the world... This book will break your heart but also inspire you.”
• A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck: “This is A Marriage at Sea. I can't believe this was this author's first book... Loved this book.”
• Bury the Chains: “If you read Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, about the abolition of slavery”
• Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference: “Books that will make you a better person this year. Moral ambition... This is a great book.”
• The Anxious Generation: “I would connect this with Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, instead of just focusing on the problem, which Haidt nails.”
• Why Fish Don't Exist: “Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller... I can't tell you how good this book is, but it's very good.”
• A Confederacy of Dunces: “A Confederacy of Dunces, of course. Incredible novel by John Kennedy Toole.”
• Edison: “This is a biography of Edison by Edmund Morris... I've never read a biography like that. I don't know why he decided to do it, but it works.”
• Notes to John: “Notes to John. This book sounds incredibly boring, but it's actually one of the greatest writers of all time writing these letters to her husband... it's a great book with a not so good title.”
• The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery: “This book, The Zorg... I thought this was a gripping narrative non-fiction book”
• On Character: Choices That Define a Life: “This is General Stanley McChrystal. It's just meditations on character, something we take for granted, but you can't be a leader without good character. Love this book.”
• Augustus: “John Williams, who wrote Stoner, wrote a fictional memoir of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, I loved this book.”
• The Last of the Wine: “I also loved this book, The Last of the Wine, which is a historical fiction about Socrates.”
• Letter to His Father: “Kafka's letter to the father. This will wake you up as a parent. These are the things you would never want your kid to write to you.”
• The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money: “You're trying to raise kids... who are the opposite of spoiled. I think these are two great parenting books I would recommend”
• The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents: “This is the parents Tao Te Ching. This is great if you've ever read that sort of eastern wisdom applied to parenting. This will make you a better parent.”
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents: “Adult children of emotionally immature parents. That's a great one.”
• The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit: “The Stranger in the Woods and The Art Thief, both written by the same guy... Just absolutely incredible book.”
• The Colossus of Maroussi: “Henry Miller, the novelist... wrote like one of the greatest travel books of all time. And this is this sort of rhapsodic, beautiful book about traveling through Greece as World War II is breaking out.”
• By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept: “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. What a title. This book is a fever dream, but it is beautiful and it lives up to the title.”
• The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem: “The Baby on the Fire Escape, which is about female artists. Also very good.”
• Anne Frank: The Biography: “Melissa Müller did a beautiful and haunting biography of Anne Frank... And you, you have to read this book.”
• The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession: “The Art Thief by Michael Finkel is insane... is an insane book that you almost cannot believe it's happening.”
• Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity: “Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity – Kerry Cohen (short, but interesting.)”
• The Camera My Mother Gave Me: “The Camera My Mother Gave Me by Susanna Kaysen”
• Built for Show: Four Body-Changing Workouts for Looking Good Enough to Hook Up: “Built for Show: Four Body-Changing Workouts for Looking Good Enough to Hook Up by Nate Green (first book I've been asked to blurb)”
• Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law: “Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law by Martha C. Nussbaum (sort of just flipping through it at this point)”
• Winning at Retail: Developing a Sustained Model for Retail Success: “Winning at Retail: Developing a Sustained Model for Retail Success by Willard N. Ander (basically a book about being “the best in the world”)”
• Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them: “Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them by Peter Shankman (good premise, the guy comes off as a bit of a tool)”
• Fidel Castro: My Life: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Toussaint Louverture: A Biography: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Martin Luther: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”
• Team of Rivals: “So I went deeper. I read Hay and Nicolay. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 944-page Team of Rivals. Michael Gerhardt’s 496-page book on Lincoln’s mentors.”
• Lincoln's Mentors: The Education of a Leader: “So I went deeper. I read Hay and Nicolay. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 944-page Team of Rivals. Michael Gerhardt’s 496-page book on Lincoln’s mentors.”
• Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth: “With two young boys, I also pick up a kids book every night. Our favorites: What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Her Right Foot, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Most People, and Here We Are.”
• Most People: “With two young boys, I also pick up a kids book every night. Our favorites: What Does It Mean to Be an American?, Her Right Foot, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, Most People, and Here We Are.”
• The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes: “Bryan also signed my two favorite books of his: Public Enemies and The Big Rich.”
• Caesar: A Biography: “Last week I read “Caesar” by Christian Meier. I strongly recommend you read it.”
• Heart of Darkness: “Here’s the list since I posted last. Doing a lot of Hollywood reading which is interesting but not very inspiring. Heart of Darkness–Joseph Conrad”
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game: “Here’s the list since I posted last. Doing a lot of Hollywood reading which is interesting but not very inspiring. ... Moneyball–Michael Lewis”
• The Godfather: “Here’s the list since I posted last. Doing a lot of Hollywood reading which is interesting but not very inspiring. ... The Godfather–Mario Puzo”
• Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade: “Here’s the list since I posted last. Doing a lot of Hollywood reading which is interesting but not very inspiring. ... Which Lie Did I Tell: Adventures in Screentrade–William Goldman”
• Rickles' Book: A Memoir: “Here’s the list since I posted last. Doing a lot of Hollywood reading which is interesting but not very inspiring. ... Rickles Book–Don Rickles”
• Billion-Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson's Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing: “Here’s the list since I posted last. Doing a lot of Hollywood reading which is interesting but not very inspiring. ... Billion Dollar Kiss:The Kiss That Saved Dawson’s Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing— Jeffrey Stepakoff”
• The Plague: “It's a lovely haunting book about how crises bring out either the best in us or the worst in [us]... sometimes fiction is the best way to learn about what is happening in the world.”
• Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - April 24th”
• Go Tell It on the Mountain: “Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (meh)”
• Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels: “Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels by Jill Jonnes (it's a bargain book so it wasn't a waste but I was hoping for some urban anthropology and this is not it)”
• Spin-Free Economics: A No-Nonsense, Nonpartisan Guide to Today's Global Economic Debates: “Spin-Free Economics by Nariman Behravesh (I was kind of hoping this would be an economics primer but really it’s mostly just a collection of the commonly held beliefs of modern economists)”
• Robert Kennedy and His Times: “Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr (I read a couple others and big chunk of this one. Everybody kept saying he was super ruthless and JFK’s enforcer but I didn’t find one interesting example, not ONE)”
• Joe Louis, Man and Super-Fighter: “Joe Louis, Man and Super-Fighter by Edward Van Every (Louis’s strategy in the ring is fantastic)”
• The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World: “The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World (Aspects of Greek and Roman life) by H. H. Scullard (awesome.”
• Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America: “I know a 900 page biography about a right-wing reactionary conservative writer is probably not high in your list, but this is the best biography I read in 2025. It earns every single page and it explains so much about what's happening in the world right now.”
• Small Things Like These: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: June 2026”
• Days of Rage: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: June 2026”
• Revolutionary Road: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: June 2026”
• The Greatest Sentence Ever Written: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: March 2026”
• War Is a Racket: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: March 2026”
• In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: August 2024”
• These Truths: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - July 24th”
• Furious Hours: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - July 3rd”
• The Right Stuff: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - May 8th”
• The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: June 2026”
• History Matters: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: November 2025”
• Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: August 2025”
• President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman: “Ryan's Recommendations – Monthly Reading Lists: November 2024”
• Hollywood Park: A Memoir: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - July 31st”
• Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson's Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - May 29th”
• How to Stop a Conspiracy: An Ancient Guide to Saving a Republic: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - May 29th”
• Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - May 22nd”
• How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life: “Ryan's Recommendations – TV Appearances: Morning Joe - May 1st”
• Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World: “If you don't believe in people, what do you believe in? This is a provocative book for the moment. Highly recommended.”
• 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works: “That's where his book 10% Happier comes in. And I think this is a great book for helping work on that voice in your head that helps you work on becoming happier.”
• Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect: “Unreasonable Hospitality. One of the great restaurateurs and hospitality experts. This book is great.”
• The Lean Startup: “Eric Ries talks about this in Lean Startup. Uh, very good.”
• Thinking in Bets: “And Annie Duke talking about this [in] Thinking in Bets. Shrinking the risks that you're taking is really important.”
• Elon Musk: “But Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, great”
• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life: “[Walter Isaacson's] book on Benjamin Franklin, also incredibly successful and brilliant business person.”
• When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: “Jerry Weintraub, producer, tour manager, etc. for Elvis, Sinatra... Fascinating guy. This is actually written with Rich Cohen, who's one of my favorite writers”
• Thinking, Fast and Slow: “Thinking Fast and Slow. You're making decisions as a business person. You need to know your cognitive biases.”
• Mindset: “I might put Words That Work up there with some of the ones we were talking about earlier. As well as Mindset”
• How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs: “Guy Raz has interviewed basically every CEO of a big or new company of the last generation or so. This book, How I Built This is incredible.”
• Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character: “I really like Admiral James Stavridis, his book Sailing True North and To Risk It All. These are about great naval leaders for the most part... Highly recommend.”
• How to Say No: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Cynicism: “I would throw in Seneca's How to Keep Your Cool and this little collection of Diogenes the Cynic. How to Say No. Diogenes the Cynic manages to say no to Alexander the Great, the most powerful man in the world.”
• Trillion Dollar Coach: “Here is Trillion [Dollar] Coach. This is written by Eric Schmidt, one of the most successful business CEOs of all time.”
• To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision: “I really like Admiral James Stavridis, his book Sailing True North and To Risk It All. These are about great naval leaders for the most part... Highly recommend.”
• The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations: “With a passage like this, I've come to find it helpful to look at various translations... In the Hicks & Hicks translation, The Emperor's Handbook, it's, "Don't feel for misanthropes what they feel for mankind."”
• The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers: “Last week, I called my girlfriend at home and asked her to get my copy of The Art of Fiction. Somewhere near the front, I said, is a line that uses dreaming as metaphor for the concept of aesthetic distance. Sure enough, tabbed and highlighted was the idea”
• The Annals & The Histories: “I'm reading Tacitus on Robert's recommendation. All I can feel for Tiberius is pity.”
• Old School: “Type out the quotes: From Old School: So much, in fact, that I began to copy out Hemingway's stories.”
• Daily Rituals: “Robert Caro's stuff on doing the work is absolutely essential. I like Daily Rituals. That's another good one.”
• Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI: “I like Ethan Mollick's book Co-Intelligence, which is about how do you use machines not to replace tasks, but to make you better at tasks, right?”
• Levels of the Game: “This is one of the greatest sports books ever written. I would not have guessed that it was so short. It is exactly 150 pages about the famous match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner.”
• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century: “Timothy Snyder's short book on tyranny, very apropos of this moment, clocks in at 126 pages. If people could just read these pages, we would be in better shape.”
• John Adams: “Actually, McCullough talks about this in his biography with John Adams. John Adams was a master of the art of what we would call marginalia.”
• The Bully Pulpit: “I think Doris Kearns Goodwin's The Bully Pulpit is another good example of this, the contrast between Taft and Roosevelt, their understanding of the media.”
• Gates of Fire: “I would have read Gates of Fire right around this time also cuz I remember buying that on Amazon”
• Hacking Your Education: “My friend @DaleJStephens' book "Hacking Your Education" comes out today. He interviewed me for it. Worth checking out http://t.co/ekWllJVBC9”
• Confessions of a Sociopath: “@ardensirens The sociopath book is quite good actually”
• News from Nowhere: Television and the News: “@lisapease His book on the history of the tv news biz is one of there best there is: News from Nowhere”
• The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy: “@briankoppelman @TWalk Too weird, I am reading a Frankl book right now: "Will to Meaning."”
• Count Belisarius: “@artofmanliness You read much about Belisarius? It's from his bio. Robert Graves' novel of Belisarius is good too”
• Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice: “@briankoppelman oh and @ethanbrown72's book Snitch is good.”
• The Man with the Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming's James Bond Letters: “@kathrynschulz Your facts I learned reading piece is amazing. I just learned the Chitty one from Man w/ Golden Typewriter. So good.”
• Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy: “@TVMoJoe @chrislhayes Really liked Chris's book Twilight of the Elites. Could argue we miss the obligation/duty elites are supposed to have”
• On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes: “@DogUmwelt huge fan! Loved your book on looking too”
• The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape: “@herdyshepherd1 reading your book now, and love it.”
• The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost: “@ChadHowse @VDHanson Great book”
• Sapiens: “@MichaelSchein1 @harari_yuval That's one of the best parts of the book and the most original, certainly.”
• Real Artists Don't Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age: “@mikeherreraTD @JeffGoins @mxpx Jeff, you should send Mike Real Artists Don't Starve and all your books actually. I'll send an email.”
• Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune: “@DJacobsmeyer Try the book Empty Mansions :)”
• Highwire Moon: “In 2005, when I was a freshman in college, our convocation speaker was Susan Straight. We read her book Highwire M...”
• The Energy Bus: “@JonGordon11 Was actually reading The Energy Bus last night!”
• Strategy: A History: “@jt_osullivan @LawDavF great book”
• My Side of the Mountain: “Some books to read in 2020: ... My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George”
• Go the F**k to Sleep: “7/ Go the f*ck to sleep That’s the advice of a book I love to read to my kids: Go the F*ck to Sleep! Morning routines are great but a bedtime routine is maybe more important.”
• The World Is a Narrow Bridge: “I wish this quote had not help up so well. From one of my favorite novels The World is a Narrow Bridge...via my notecard system.”
• Magnifica Humanitas: “Books I read this summer.”
• Yesteryear: “Books I read this summer.”
• Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night: “Books I read this summer.”
• Train Dreams: “Books I read this summer.”
• The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece: “Much has been said about this book in other reviews, so I'll focus on one interesting aspect. Nassim Nicholas Taleb said that he thought the scientific community would be better served if scientists left their labs and spent more time going to parties.”
• Old Gorgon Graham: More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son: “This book is the preserved correspondence between Old Gorgon Graham, a self-made millionaire in Chicago, and his son who is coming of age and entering the family business. The letters date back to the 1890s but feel like they could have been written in any era. They are surprisingly stoic. Honest.”
• In Consolation to His Wife: “Grief and the relief of grief is a theme in Greek and Roman literature-some say meant more for publication than actual consolation-but that doesn't make them any less powerful.”
• Coloring Book Land: Coloring Outside the Lines of Good Taste: “I found Jim Wirt through his website, ColoringBookLand.com where he is consistently one of the funniest writers on the internet. The book is no different, featuring the same style of incredibly offensive but genuinely clever cartoons.”
• The Broken American Male: And How to Fix Him: “After catching a few episodes of his TV show, I felt like Boteach "got it" in the way that Dr. Drew and occasionally Dr. Phil got it. He has the ability to cut to the core of the issue, understand when people are acting unhealthily and are unafraid to point fingers.”
• The End of My Addiction: “I approached this book with some skepticism. By the end, I felt guilty to have been stuck making the same mistake as the highly-credentialed doctors who refused to consider the merits of Ameisen's research because they'd grown so fixated on traditional treatments.”
• The Essential Epicurus: “I am not qualified to weigh in on the merits of Epicurus' school of philosophy. As Westerners, we've decided over that two thousand years that his thoughts on death and pleasure and pain are profound and provocative.”
• Samuel Bronfman: The Life and Times of Seagram's Mr. Sam: “In terms of 20th century business titans, Bronfman has been completely forgotten. Of all the people for it to happen to, Bronfman is least deserving as his family legacy has stood the test of time.”
• The Age of the Moguls: The Story of the Robber Barons and the Great Tycoons: “Recently, in Outliers: The Story of Success Malcolm Gladwell examined that unique patch of history where Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan, three of the richest men in the history of the world were all born within half a decade of each other.”
• Murder Trials: “What makes Cicero's courtroom strategies so impressive is the fact that he never bothers to dispute the evidence against his clients. In both the defenses of Roscius and Cluentius, he doesn't even use a single witness. He doesn't offer contradictory evidence or waste much time with alibis.”
• Crazy: Notes On and Off the Couch: “I've known Dr. Rob (Shrinktalk.net) for a long time so this is not exactly an unbiased review. I will attempt to balance out my bias by admitting that I don't often read the stuff on his site. It's actually why I think I liked the book so much and why you probably will too.”
• The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late: “As a person who considers the day I dropped out of college the first real day of my education, this book told me a lot I already knew. But, I'm not a millionaire so I did learn plenty.”
• What It Is Like to Go to War: “The other great books in this vein, "My War Gone By, I Miss It So" and "War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning," cover the same topics but they are not written by soldiers.”
• A Walk on the Wild Side: “A story about the old French Quarter and New Orleans of the 1930s.”
• My Lie: A True Story of False Memory: “This is a very sensitive book on a very sensitive topic: that most recovered memories are not true. But the author approaches it with an empathy and self-awareness that I did not anticipate. I've said before that one of the things I respect most is when a person turns over a long-held belief.”
• How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes: Science-Based Strategies for Better Parenting - from Tots to Teens: “some of my favorite parenting books”
• North Toward Home: “I have never liked Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps it is not the book that is at fault but the undeserved reaction it gets. There are so many better boyhood memoirs (or books about boyhood alienation, whatever you want to call them), the best being This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff.”
• Culturematic: How Reality TV, John Cheever, a Pie Lab, Julia Child, Fantasy Football... Will Help You Create and Execute Breakthrough Ideas: “Grant is a great chronicler of social science trends and the forces that shape our culture consciousness. He deserves to be better known. I personally I have read all his books and consider his thinking to be a huge influence on my own writing and thinking. Culturematic deserves to be read.”
• The Big Hunger: Stories 1932-1959: “Fante was (and is) probably my favorite American fiction writer. His voice is excellent and unique. His insight had depth and subtlety. He wrote with passion and a very real, very gritty force (an ummph). The eponymous story of this collection is one of my Fante favorites.”
• Born to Run: “I have a bad habit where I put off reading a book if I hear it recommended too many times. It stems from being underwhelmed by the flavor of the week long read (normally The New Yorker) or whatever blogs seem to be passing around and splooging all over.”
• Friday Night Lights: “I LOVE this show. I don't know why it took me so long to get into it but I finally watched all the episodes on Netflix, so then I had to read the book. Of course, the book is a classic for a reason. The book is much less inspiring and heartwarming than the show.”
• The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville: “Having read and enjoyed Shelby Foote's novel Shiloh (which I highly recommend), I was motivated to attempt his magnum opus, the one million-plus word trilogy The Civil War. The books are surprisingly readable, come in a bright box set and are great for flipping through.”
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities: “This is one of the most important books about cities ever written. It's what helps you understand why cities work, why they don't work, what makes a neighborhood, what destroys neighborhoods and how almost everything city planners and governments think matters, doesn't.”
• The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms: “I am usually immediately turned-off by books about personal success involving the word "soulful." (It's right there in the title itself.) But Danielle's book, unlike other self-help books, or, like the best kinds of self-help books, is grounded in the current but based on timeless wisdom.”
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: “This book is so weird. Basically nothing happens, and what does happen is surreal or absurd, yet I couldn't stop reading. Actually, I kept telling myself that I would stop, since I wasn't all that interested, but I never did. It may not have been interesting (plot-wise) but it was captivating.”
• Intellectuals: “Turns out the uber-intelligent are, or can be, or just are, a-holes. Johnson covers a diverse group of intellectuals from Marx to Chomsky. Behind the public face of the intellectual is usually a deeply inconsistent, strange and sometimes appalling individual.”
• Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us: “In 2007, before Nicholas Carr and Jaron Lanier, Andrew Keen published a prescient critique of Web 2.0 culture titled The Cult of the Amateur, a book that anticipated many of the problems of the web today. It was, thankfully, a runaway bestseller.”
• Snark: A Polemic in Seven Fits: “Ahh, I had such high hopes for this and I think the author did too. Unfortunately, I don't think he quite understood the subject on which he was writing. Snark is a very real and very important trend in American culture but anyone that thinks Bill O'Reilly is snarky (he's not, he's an jerk.”
• What Would Google Do?: “There's this example What Would Google Do? where Jarvis talks about how newspapers could respond to Huffington Post setting up a new blogging venture in Chicago. He basically says that they should become their new best friend - forget that they are competition and think long term.”
• The Tower Menagerie: The Amazing 600-Year History of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts Kept at the Tower of London: “An example of an author ruining an otherwise fascinating book by interrupting themselves with too many footnotes, parentheses and tangents. Aspiring writers will learn more from the style mistakes than the subject matter. That aside, The Tower Menagerie is illustrative and entertaining.”
• How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq: “The story and the author's new techniques for interrogation are fascinating and impressive. They find relevance far beyond military or police personal - for that matter, building trust and reciprocity with friends and adversaries would do almost all of us a lot of good.”
• The Next 100 Years: “Books aimed at predicting the future are always dangerous and often reek of charlatanism. Books on politics and war are regularly partisan and emotional.”
• The Third Wave: “In the first wave, power came from violence or force. In the second, the Industrial Revolution, power came from wealth. Today, it comes from knowledge. The battle for the future is going to be over information. Unfortunately, the book takes 500 pages to say that.”
• Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary: “Although an informative book, Juan Williams' Thurgood Marshall is an all too common example of a biography where the strength of the subject is forced to shine through weak writing.”
• The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security: “John Boyd is one of the most underappreciated military thinkers in history. Of the last half-century, it's probably also fair to say that he was one of the only strategic thinkers of any position of power in the United States. When it comes to this book, there are two problems.”
• The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century: “I'd meant to read this in 2007, right after Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (also recommended). I wish I had because the examples would been more current and I would have been better able to understand everything that's happened in the last three years.”
• Kraken: “China Mieville's writing has many features to recommend it, but the two most prominent are his leftist politics, which he wears on his sleeve, and his skill at worldbuilding.”
• New Orleans Sketches: “Faulkner moved to New Orleans in 1925 at the age of 27 determined to write fiction. Up to then he fancied himself a poet. During his six month stay in New Orleans he published a group of "sketches" with the main New Orleans literary magazine, The Double Dealer.”
• Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error: “I should have liked this more than I did. Having sat on it a bit, I kept going back to thinking how much I like the author. The book's a bit long at times and redundant, and I don't think it's organized well, but it's the right kind of book.”
• The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World: “It's just a great book. ... I really liked this book.”
• Yellow Pine: “It's a strange but very interesting book. ... I liked it…”
• Those Who Are About to Die: Gladiators and the Roman Mind: “It might be one of the best and most informative books about Rome I have ever read.”
• Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best: “I like her work. I liked this book. ... Just great stuff here.”
• Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden's Compulsive Angler: “their guitarist has a really good book about fishing”
• The New Testament: A Translation: “who also did an eye-opening translation of the New Testament”
• Be on That Hill: Stories from the Summits of Sport: “so yeah, I liked Be on That Hill.”
• Sperm Wars: “a weird evolutionary psychology book I had read years ago called Sperm Wars”
• Double Fudge: “My oldest and I are finishing Double Fudge together. It's been seriously lovely”
• Floof: “My youngest remains obsessed with Floof and Shmoof and insists on getting them for his friends for their birthdays.”
• Shmoof: “My youngest remains obsessed with Floof and Shmoof and insists on getting them for his friends for their birthdays.”
• Dog vs. Strawberry: “He has been insisting we read Dog vs. Strawberry a lot”
• The Big Cheese: “with an occasional reading of The Big Cheese”
• Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year: “This is just a heroic, inspiring and moving book about a great man”
• Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles: “I really enjoyed this book”
• Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind: “this book makes a convincing case that Thoreau might be more of one ... I wish there were more biographies in this style”
• Emerson: The Mind on Fire: “Richardson's Emerson: Mind on Fire (which is amazing and you must read)”
• A Man at Arms: “signed a bunch of copies of The War of Art, Turning Pro, Gates of Fire, A Man at Arms, and his memoir Government Cheese. If you haven't read any of those yet, what are you even doing with your life?”
• Govt Cheese: A Memoir: “signed a bunch of copies of The War of Art, Turning Pro, Gates of Fire, A Man at Arms, and his memoir Government Cheese. If you haven't read any of those yet, what are you even doing with your life?”
• The Diary of a Young Girl: “it's never a bad time to recommend Fahrenheit 451 or Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl or Animal Farm”
• Animal Farm: “it's never a bad time to recommend Fahrenheit 451 or Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl or Animal Farm”
• I Am a Bunny: “He also liked I Am A Bunny by Richard Scarry.”
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: “Instead of banning these books, we need to contextualize them”
• A Night to Remember: “One of my all time favorite books, A Night To Remember.”
• Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality: “I would also recommend Renée DiResta's book Invisible Rulers... This is I think a book that will help you spot slop, help you spot spam”
• The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness: “The main character in Maria's novel published a popular adaptation of Epictetus that is clearly based on a real book called The Art of Living by Sharon Lebell. It's a great and accessible book that I also recommend.”
• Go Gentle: “It was because of Maria Semple's absolutely lovely new book, Go Gentle, which is about a Stoic philosopher! ... but go read the book. It's great”
• The Breaks of the Game: “I've read many books by Halberstam, including The Children (amazing. MUST read), Breaks of the Game (a favorite), The Coldest Winter (haunting)”
• The Coldest Winter: “I've read many books by Halberstam, including The Children (amazing. MUST read), Breaks of the Game (a favorite), The Coldest Winter (haunting)”
• Gods of Tin: The Flying Years: “I read three of his books in three days and now I am knee-deep in his memoir... Gods of Tin is basically a greatest hits of his writing (fictional and otherwise) on flying.”
• The Man Who Lost Everything: “The Man Who Lost Everything by Paul Kuttner – September 17th, 2009”
• Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt: “Guiltily, I had not read it yet but quickly remedied this fact–good thing because he is right. ... This book is largely a cautionary tale on what a love of money does to a family.”
• The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency: “There are lots of books about powerful and famous people. This book is a fascinating look at the man behind the man–the chiefs of staff to the presidency.”
• King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa: “King Leopold's Ghost is about how much evil one person can do–his colony in the Belgian Congo was a crime against humanity akin to the Holocaust. ... I had not heard of either of them until I read these books.”
• Memoirs of Heinrich Schliemann: A Documentary Portrait Drawn from His Autobiographical Writings, Letters, and Excavation Reports: “Memoirs of Heinrich Schliemann: A documentary portrait drawn from his autobiographical writings, letters, and excavation reports by Heinrich Schliemann”
• Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made: “I've read many books by Halberstam, including The Children (amazing. MUST read), Breaks of the Game (a favorite), The Coldest Winter (haunting) and his book about Michael Jordan, too.”
• The Rise of Superman: “@biggercapital Ah one of my clients just did a big excellent book on Flow @kotlersteven”
• Animalish: “Loved your book Animalish.”
• The Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide: “I have to be honest, when I first heard about using webinars to sell products, I thought it was stupid--or worse, a scam. Then I heard Lewis Howes speak and talked to some of the authors he's worked with. It turns out, I was not only wrong but Lewis had discovered the future of marketing”
• Chess Story: “Stefan Zweig is one of my favorite authors.”
• Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman: “Stefan Zweig is one of my favorite authors.”
• The World of Yesterday: “Stefan Zweig is one of my favorite authors. ... Most people know him for his book The World of Yesterday, which is about the Europe that was lost in the destruction of World War I”
• Beware of Pity: “Stefan Zweig is one of my favorite authors.”
• I Broke My Butt!: “My boys love the sequels too: I Broke My Butt! and My Butt Is So Noisy!”
• My Butt Is So Noisy!: “My boys love the sequels too: I Broke My Butt! and My Butt Is So Noisy!”
• Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948: “One of the beauties of traveling is being able to connect places with stories I've already read. Here are some books related to my London trip.”
• The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood: “Books related to my Los Angeles trip”
• My Dog Skip: “Books That Will Make You Cry”
• A Time to Stand: The Epic of the Alamo: “My Favorite Banned Books”
• The Gates of the Alamo: “My Favorite Banned Books”
• Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing - Including You: “Books for Small Business Owners”
• The Master and Margarita: “My Favorite Banned Books”
• Brave New World: “My Favorite Banned Books”
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “My Favorite Banned Books”
• 1984: “My Favorite Banned Books”
• Rise of the Earth Dragon: “My oldest, continuing our practice of listening to audiobooks in the car, listened to all 26 books in the Dragonmaster series by Tracey West including Rise of the Earth Dragon”
• West of Eden: An American Place: “I re-read Raymond Chandler's The High Window (it was mentioned in West of Eden).”
• Between Fact and Fiction: The Problem of Journalism: “You guys should talk to Epstein. His two books are amazing”
• Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy: “Apatows book is so good”
• The Oresteia: “the Aeschylus plays which I wish I had read while writing Conspiracy because they were so so good.”
• Thoughts in Solitude: “These are the books I managed to read on my tour the last month.”
• The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature: “These are the books I managed to read on my tour the last month.”
• Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists: “These are the books I managed to read on my tour the last month.”
• Why Liberalism Failed: “These are the books I managed to read on my tour the last month.”
• Chicago: A Novel: “These are the books I managed to read on my tour the last month.”
• Grant: “These are the books I managed to read on my tour the last month.”
• Milk and Honey: “Really it's just honest poetry, some of it about her #MeToo experiences — which is exactly why it means so much to so many young women.”
• A Disposition to Be Rich: Ferdinand Ward, the Greatest Swindler of the Gilded Age: “Ferdinand Ward, the Bernie Madoff of his day, is there (great book on him here btw).”
• Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son: “I also highly recommend his memoir”
• Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause: “Some other great ones”
• Where I Was From: “Connecting books to places is one of my fav things about traveling”
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem: “Connecting books to places is one of my fav things about traveling”
• Tropic of Cancer: “Some of my favorites in the Banned Book Library right now.”
• The Satanic Verses: “Some of my favorites in the Banned Book Library right now.”
• To Kill a Mockingbird: “Some of my favorites in the Banned Book Library right now.”
• Heather Has Two Mommies: “Some of my favorites in the Banned Book Library right now.”
• Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine: “Books that every entrepreneur should read.”
• Over the Beach: The Air War in Vietnam: “Books I brought for @shawnryan762”
• Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World: “Some of my favorite books about shipwrecks.”
• The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook: “Some of my favorite books about shipwrecks.”
• River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile: “Some of my favorite books about shipwrecks.”
• Wild Dark Shore: “Some of my favorite books about shipwrecks.”
• Hope in the Dark: “Books I brought for @gavinnewsom”
• Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, 1882-1940: “Books I'm recommending to @ezraklein”
• The Inner Game of Tennis: “If you're an athlete, you have to read these books.”
• Churchill & Son: “Books I brought for @shawnryan762”
• The Night Lives On: The Untold Stories and Secrets Behind the Sinking of the Unsinkable Ship-Titanic!: “Some of my favorite books about shipwrecks.”
• The Light Between Oceans: “Some of my favorite books about shipwrecks.”
• His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine: “Some of my favorite books about shipwrecks.”
• Burning the Days: Recollection: “Some of my all time favorite memoirs:”
• In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man: A Memoir: “Some of my all time favorite memoirs:”
• A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II: “One of the beauties of traveling is being able to connect places with stories I've already read. Here are some books related to my London trip.”
• Gandhi Before India: “One of the beauties of traveling is being able to connect places with stories I've already read. Here are some books related to my London trip.”
• The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession: “I'm gonna tell you my favorite books about dogs. ... Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief... one of our great journalists”
• Doggerel: Poems About Dogs: “We have Doggerel. Funny poems about dogs from the Everyman Library. I like that.”
• Dog Songs: Poems: “Mary Oliver. Lovely poet. This is her collection of poems about dogs.”
• We Want a Dog: “This book my kids picked out, convinced us to get a dog... But it's a lovely book.”
• Travels in Hawaii: “One of the books I re-read on the way there was Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels In Hawaii, which I had grabbed at the Honolulu Airport last February and very much enjoyed. It's a surprisingly diverse and sensitive look at a place whose history most people are totally ignorant of.”
• The Great Mental Models, Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts: “Here are a few books I recommend for holiday gifts”
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being: “...I think back to my favorite passage in An Unbearable Lightness of Being...”
• Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last: “If you haven't read @wrightthompsonbooks you have to.”
• Greenlights: “Here are a few books I recommend for holiday gifts”
• Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes: “Here are a few books I recommend for holiday gifts”
• The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era: “Some of the books I've read over the last month.”
• The Best and the Brightest: “Some of the books I've read over the last month.”
• Light Years: “Some of the books I've read over the last month.”
• So Late in the Day: “Some of the books I've read over the last month.”
• This Is Your Time: “These books made me a better person, a better thinker, and a better citizen”
• Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life: “Read these books if you're feeling burned out.”
• Ain't I a Woman?: “11 books you can finish in one sitting.”
• What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative: “The reading list email for April 2026...”
• Cassada: “The reading list email for April 2026...”
• Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times: “So I went deeper. I read Hay and Nicolay. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 944-page Team of Rivals. Michael Gerhardt’s 496-page book on Lincoln’s mentors. David S. Reynolds’s 1088-page Abe.”
• Lincoln: “So I went deeper. I read Hay and Nicolay... David S. Reynolds’s 1088-page Abe. David Herbert Donald’s 720-page Lincoln.”
• Lincoln Unbound: How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream--and How We Can Do It Again: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• The Consolation of Philosophy: “I found it very moving and a great example of what philosophy is supposed to do–which is to help us in our darkest moments.”
• De Profundis: “A related book recommendation that I sent to a friend who was in the middle of a similarly dark experience is Oscar Wilde's De Profundis (also written in prison).”
• Hardship and Happiness: “The other book I give out in such circumstances (someone at my talk in Phoenix was in tears over the loss of a loved one) is Seneca's Hardships and Happiness.”
• The Committed: “I love a good novel in the second person and while this is not technically that, it bends and breaks so many conventions that you really have to pay close attention.”
• The Sympathizer: “I read The Sympathizer earlier this year as part of my Vietnam research... what I loved about The Sympathizer is that it captures the Vietnamese perspective.”
• Darkness at Noon: “I am still reeling from reading Darkness at Noon a few months ago... In any case, if you haven't read Darkness at Noon, you must.”
• The Remains of the Day: “I put together a list of books I thought people might like to read over their breaks–books that are not just entertaining or educational, but also can be finished in a week.”
• Middlemarch: “I am also making my way through Middlemarch for Samantha's Quarterly Classics Book Club.”
• An Animal Poem for Every Day of the Year: “We've also been reading An Animal Poem For Every Day of The Year by Jane McMorland Hunter together each night and loving it.”
• Leave Me Alone!: A Good Inside Story About Deeply Feeling Kids: “We got a copy of Leave Me Alone!: A Good Inside Story About Deeply Feeling Kids two weeks ago and read it together while we waited for our food at Pool Burger.”
• Power On: Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family: “I also put together some parenting books to read over spring break, including Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, How To Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes, Range, The Gift of Failure, Power On, and Good Inside.”
• Abraham Lincoln: A History, Volume 1: “So I went deeper. I read Hay and Nicolay.”
• Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1859-1865: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War, Volume One: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• Reading with Lincoln: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• The Ides of March: “Some of the books I read in the month of January”
• Outlive: “The Best Books To Make You Better In 2026”
• The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better: “Ok, I read this book in December... The book is great... I loved this book.”
• Scum of the Earth: “If you want a great memoir that has tones of The World of Yesterday, read Scum of the Earth.”
• Abundance: “I have been giving this to people I knew want to solve political problems”
• Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece: “books that don't seem scary but actually are”
• Day of Infamy: “About the attack on Pearl Harbor. It basically reads like a novel.”
• Tales of Soldiers and Civilians: And Other Stories: “some of my favorite books that weren't written by the Stoics, but have ties to Stoicism”
• American Canto: “Some of the books I read in the month of January”
• From Strength to Strength: “Here are a few books I recommend for holiday gifts”
• Genius: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Liftoff: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Mere Christianity: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Didion and Babitz: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Alex Haley: The Playboy Interviews: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Booth: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Go Up for Glory: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Patton Mind: The Professional Development of an Extraordinary Leader: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Marie Curie: A Life: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Conversations of Socrates: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• That's My Truck!: A Good Inside Story About Hitting: “Every month for the last 18 years, I've sent an email with 5-10 books I've read, loved, and think you'll enjoy...”
• Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Let Them Theory: “We all have people in our lives who would benefit from this book.”
• The World According to Joan Didion: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Travels with Herodotus: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Herodotus: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Histories: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Essays: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography: “Someone asked me if I had read any good books on Lincoln...”
• Walk Through Walls: A Memoir: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• The Complete Works: Handbook, Discourses, and Fragments: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Elon Musk: “You have to read a lot of books to write a book. Here's a chunk what went into Wisdom Takes Work.”
• Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar: “There's a lot to learn from a politician who couldn't be corrupted.”

Books written by Ryan Holiday

• Stillness Is the Key
• Trust Me, I'm Lying
• The Obstacle Is the Way
• Ego Is the Enemy
• The Daily Stoic
• Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising
• Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
• The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living
• Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
• Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius
• Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave
• Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control
• The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids
• Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds.
• Wisdom Takes Work: Learn, Apply, Repeat
• The Boy Who Would Be King: A Fable About Marcus Aurelius
• The Girl Who Would Be Free: A Fable About Epictetus
• What You're Made For: Powerful Life Lessons from My Career in Sports