Books are my mentors. Here’s an overview of my library and anti-library (50/50, for now). My favorite books are highlighted, in no particular order.
- Poorly Drawn Lines: Good Ideas and Amazing Stories
- Explorers’ Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery & Adventure
- Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
- Antifragile
- Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur
- The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
- Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
- How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
- Hannibal and Me
- Outliers: The Story of Success
- Thinking, Fast and Slow (NL: Ons Feilbare Denken)
- Brave New World
- The Crossroads Of Should And Must
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
- Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman
- Good Calories, Bad Calories
- Atlas Shrugged (NL: De Kracht van Atlantis)
- Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality In World War II
- Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
- Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations
- The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds
- Theft by Finding: Diaries: Volume One
- Seeking Wisdom
- Bel-Ami
- Interviews with History and Conversations with Power
- Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
- The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods
- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior
- Wanderlust: A History of Walking
- A Field Guide To Getting Lost
- Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, it’s What People Hear
- Doubt: A History
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
- Lust for Life
- Bad Feminist
- The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance
- On Liberty
- Kant: A Very Short Introduction
- Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction
- History: A Very Short Introduction
- Genius: A Very Short Introduction
- Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction
- Economics: A Very Short Introduction
- Hume: A Very Short Introduction
- Home: A Very Short Introduction
- Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction
- Chaos: A Very Short Introduction
- Jung: A Very Short Introduction
- Military Strategy: A Very Short Introduction
- Leadership: A Very Short Introduction
- Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction
- Risk: A Very Short Introduction
- Logic: A Very Short Introduction
- Probability: A Very Short Introduction
- Enlightenment: A Very Short Introduction
- Waterloo
- Selling The Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst
- Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln
- Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes
- The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change
- History of the Peloponnesian War
- Epictetus: Discourses and Selected Writings
- The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror
- Eichmann in Jerusalem
- Work Smarts: What CEOs Say You Need to Know to Get Ahead
- The Warrior Ethos
- Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work
- Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way
- The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More – More or Less
- The Library of Greek Mythology
- Wealth of Nations
- On War
- Write the Perfect Book Proposal: 10 That Sold and Why
- Lying
- Creatures of Greek Mythology
- Rising Strong
- Daring Greatly
- Gifts of Imperfection
- The Myth of Sisyphus
- Nausea
- Jane Eyre
- Rene Descartes’ Meditations
- Frankenstein
- Pride and Prejudice
- Candide
- Hamlet
- The Imitation of Christ
- The Diary Of A Young Girl
- Fahrenheit 451
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
- The Great Gatsby
- On the Genealogy of Morals
- From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor
- The Rational Optimist
- The Effective Executive
- How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer
- The Old Man and the Sea
- The Mythical Man-Month
- What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars
- Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
- Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero
- Becoming a Category of One
- Mapping the Mind
- Man’s Search for Meaning
- So Good They Can’t Ignore You
- The Rise of Superman
- The Magic of Thinking Big
- The Tartar Steppe
- Mindless Eating
- Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller
- Steve Jobs
- Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale
- The Tom Peters Seminar
- Awaken The Giant Within
- Free Will
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces
- They Got It Wrong: History: All the Facts That Turned Out to Be Myths
- The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
- The Book on the Taboo against Knowing Who You are
- Big Questions from Little People
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things
- David and Goliath
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
- The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World
- Walt Disney: The Biography
- Stumbling on Happiness
- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
- Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness
- Andrew Carnegie
- Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness
- Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha
- Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
- My Life and Work: An Autobiography of Henry Ford
- Don’t Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training
- The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
- As a Man Thinketh
- How to be Bored
- How to Live in the City
- Essays in Love
- Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
- The Little Prince
- Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
- Choose Yourself!
- The Comprehensive ENFP Survival Guide
- The 22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing
- Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life
- The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right
- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
- We Learn Nothing: Essays
- The Complete Maus
- Bad Science
- Writing That Works: How to Communicate Effectively in Business
- Kurt Vonnegut: Letters
- Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium
- The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
- Small Giants: Companies That Choose to be Great Instead of Big
- Slaughter House Five
- The Prince
- Dodging Extinction: Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth
- On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life
- It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be
- Letter to My Daughter
- Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
- Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
- The Journal 1837-1861: Thoreau
- How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
- Insight Meditation
- The Lion and the Bird
- The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide : Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys
- On the Shortness of Life
- Autobiography of a Yogi
- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
- Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
- The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage
- The Greatest Salesman in the World
- Rich Kids: How to Raise Our Children to Be Happy and Successful in Life
- Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals
- Pure, White and Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It
- The Ivy Portfolio: How to Invest Like the Top Endowments and Avoid Bear Markets
- 10% Happier
- Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
- Introducing Neuro-Linguistic Programming
- The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
- The Art Of Seduction
- The Selfish Gene
- The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance
- Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, Briefly
- At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
- I’ll Be You and You Be Me
- Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations
- Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
- The Psychology of Winning
- The 80/20 Principle
- 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
- The Power of Now
- Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- The Richest Man in Babylon
- Think and Grow Rich
- How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
- Getting Things Done
- The 4-Hour Work Week
- Your Money or Your Life
- You Can Be a Stock Market Genius
- The Lean Startup
- The Intelligent Investor
- The Gift of Failure
- Riding with Rilke
- The Happiness Project
- The Art of Non-Conformity
- Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
- The Happiness of Pursuit
- The $100 Startup
- Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do
- The Knowledge: A Too Close To True Novel
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
- Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values
- Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
- The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
- The Artist’s Way
- The Enchiridion
- Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes
- Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
- A Guide to Econometrics
- Black Elk Speaks
- Get Shit Done
- Malina
- Born to Run: The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Ever Seen
- Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness
- Run or Die
- The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind
- Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar…: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
- Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People
- The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor
- Göthe’s Maxims and Reflections
- Groei Maakt Gelukkig
- Cathedral (Vintage Classics)
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years
- The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
- The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History
- Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
- Interstellar: The Complete Screenplay With Selected Storyboards
- Inception: The Shooting Script
- Bij Voorbeeld: 31 verhalen over wat het leven je kan brengen
- The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
- Bertrand Russell: What I Believe
- A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino Portugués
- If This Is A Man/The Truce
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
- Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
- Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
- A Confederacy of Dunces
- Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned
- Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
- Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found
- The Shortest History of Europe
- The Ethics of Ambiguity
- The Miracle Of Castel Di Sangro
- Fighting Fire
- The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History
- Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
- Siddhartha
- Mastery
- The Story of Your Life: Becoming the Author of Your Experience
- The Steal Like an Artist Journal: A Journal for Creative Kleptomaniacs
- Newspaper Blackout
- Teach and Grow Rich
- Killing Rommel
- The Alchemist
- The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great