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Already MentionedGödel, Escher, Bach; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Predictably Irrational; Darwin's Dangerous Idea; Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking; Amazon.com: The Selfish Gene; The Black Swan; Antifragile; The Symbolic Species; The User Illusion; The Beginning of Infinity;My Top Picks For General ReadersThe Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution: Richard WranghamWrangham is a primatologist who theorizes (along with other biologists) that humans are a domesticated animal. Sounds silly? Who or what domesticated us? Read the book!Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress: Steven PinkerThis book is misunderstood, presumably by people who haven’t actually read it, because the prose is pretty clear. It’s doesn’t argue that the Enlightenment has been perfectly realized or that enlightenment values are perfect values.It argues that we’ve made progress and that we need to be as honest about the wins of Western Civilizations as we are about its crimes and losses—not to pat ourselves on the back, and certainly not to ignore the plight of the disenfranchised. It’s important to focus on what works so we can keep doing it and refine it, to make it better.The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life: Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson: Books"If you want to know what makes people tick, read The Elephant in the Brain. Simler and Hanson have created the most comprehensive, powerful, unified explanation of human nature and behavior to date." --Jason Brennan, Professor of Business, Georgetown UniversityCo-author Robin Hanson describes himself as “nerdy.” I would call this book An Autistic’s Guide to Human Nature. It’s a deep look at behavior, by “an anthropologist on Mars.”Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them: Joshua GreeneThis is the best book about morality I've ever read. The first half is a tour of the current science (social science, anthropology, animal studies, brain-imaging, evolutionary theory, etc) that is connected with morality. The second half is a philosophical (and psychological) defense of the moral theory called Utilitarianism. Even if you're wind up rejecting that theory, you'll find huge value in this book. The writing is crystal clear, provocative, and laced with humor.“After two and a half millennia, it’s rare to come across a genuinely new idea on the nature of morality, but in this book Joshua Greene advances not one but several. Greene combines neuroscience with philosophy not as a dilettante but as an expert in both fields, and his synthesis is interdisciplinary in the best sense of using all available conceptual tools to understand a deep phenomenon. Moral Tribes is a landmark in our understanding of morality and the moral sense.” -- Steven PinkerSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.This is one of the top-ten non-fiction books I've read in my life. Whether or not you agree with everything in it, the book will give you something interesting to think about on almost every page. Some of it might piss you off, too.Harari's thesis is that what makes humans unique is our capacity to invent fictions and use them to structure our lives. Without believing in them, or acting as if we do, we would not be able to live together in cities or collaborate on large-scale projects. The obvious fiction is religion (well, it's fiction to those of us who aren't religious), but other fictions include free will, morality, nations, money, liberal values, legal systems, etc."Sapiens" makes its arguments using a fusion of History, Economics, Psychology, Biology, Philosophy, and pure confidence.UPDATE: I also highly recommend the sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, which uses current and historical trends to discuss the future of humanity.You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation: Deborah Tannen.Tannon, a linguist, had the clever idea of framing women and men are two different cultures—and to study their "languages" the way one would study English and French. The book made me think beyond "the battle of the sexes" to the many ways words can both clarify our ideas and befuddle our listeners. This is a great books for couples, writers, actors, and students of human nature.The Little Schemer - 4th Edition: Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen, Duane Bibby, Gerald J. Sussman.The authors use a Socratic approach to teach a difficult subject: recursion. This is a book you work through with pencil and paper, and, if you work through it, the way it stretches your mind will be more meaningful to you than the subject it teaches. It begins with the simplest of ideas and very gradually ramps up the complexity, until, by the end, your understanding is at a high level. This book is takes teaching and elevates it to a work of art. It's sort of a computer-programming book, but you don't need any programming experience to work through it.From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present: Jacques Barzun.Barzun tells the entire story of Modern Western History, making a brilliant case that there really is such a thing: that, in a sense, our culture began on its current (and future) course 500 years ago, at the birth of the Reformation. As with the best of this sort of book, it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with its premise. It's value is that it makes a clear statement, one that will prompt you towards a sharp reaction.A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction: Christopher Alexander."Brilliant....Here's how to design or redesign any space you're living or working in--from metropolis to room. Consider what you want to happen in the space, and then page through this book. Its radically conservative observations will spark, enhance, organize your best ideas, and a wondrous home, workplace, town will result."--San Francisco ChronicleThis book's influence has leaked into other fields, notably Computer Science.The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: Jonathan Haidt.Why are Conservatives and Liberals they way they are? Why are they so often at odds? Is it due to Nature or Nurture? This book delves into why we so often argue each other. It explores the core values we live by, both consciously and unconsciously. Check out the author's TED talks!Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives | Video on TED.comJonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence | Video on TED.comEvolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives: David Sloan Wilson.This is a great companion to "The Selfish Gene," and it's a good recommendation for people who are interested in the subject but turned off by Dawkins."Evolution for Everyone is a remarkable contribution. No other author has managed to combine mastery of the subject with such a clear and interesting explanation of what it all means for human self-understanding. Aimed at the general reader, yet peppered with ideas original enough to engage scholars, it is truly a book for our time. "—Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of On Human NatureThe Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires: Tim Wu.This book puts the Internet, and, more specifically, the forces that control it, in a historical context. Rather than seeing the web as a unique and new thing, Wu considers it along with the telegraph, radio, telephone, and television networks. His book is a good general history of communication networks.Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis: Eric Berne.The three people in the world who are still believers in Transactional Analysis will be upset by the following claim: it's a "toy psychology." As far as I'm concerned, it's an oversimplified model of how humans work. And that's its strength. It's a kind of "Humans for Dummies." It's a marvelous books for fiction writers and actors, and even though it's an oversimplified model, it contains many grains of truth. Berne thought of all human interactions as games with winners and losers. And the book is a compendium of those games.How to Solve It: G. Polya.If you ever have to solve problems (of any type), it's worth reading this book."Every prospective teacher should read it. In particular, graduate students will find it invaluable. The traditional mathematics professor who reads a paper before one of the Mathematical Societies might also learn something from the book: 'He writes a, he says b, he means c; but it should be d.' "--E. T. Bell, Mathematical Monthly"[This] elementary textbook on heuristic reasoning, shows anew how keen its author is on questions of method and the formulation of methodological principles. Exposition and illustrative material are of a disarmingly elementary character, but very carefully thought out and selected."--Herman Weyl, Mathematical ReviewWhat Is the Name of This Book?: The Riddle of Dracula and Other Logical Puzzles: Raymond M. Smullyan.Smullyan wrote many puzzle books, and I picked this one pretty much at random. When I was a kid, I worked through all of them, and it was as if I could feel my brain growing. Here's an example to give you a taste:Dr. Tarr is a psychologist with the Department of Health. Her job is to inspect asylums to determine whether they are in compliance with the law. Asylums have Doctors and Patients. In a compliant asylum, all the doctors are sane and all the patients are insane. Clearly, an asylum with an insane doctor or a sane patient is Not A Good Thing.Sane persons are correct in all of their beliefs. Insane persons are incorrect in all of their beliefs. Both sane and insane persons are scrupulously honest: they always state what they believe to be the case. Unfortunately, the asylums are very modern and do not use identifying devices such as uniforms, ID tags, or other devices to show which persons are doctors and which are patients. Nor is it possible to know whether a person is sane or insane by any means other than questioning them.One day, after inspecting a number of asylums, Dr. Tarr was having a drink and cigar with her good friend Professor Feather. The professor found her work interesting and asked her to recount some of her findings.“Well,” said Dr. Tarr, “at the first asylum I visited, I met an inhabitant who made a single statement. I immediately took steps to have them released.”“Wait,” interjected the professor, “so you’re saying this person was not an insane patient?”“Of course,” replied Dr. Tarr.Professor Feather thought for a moment, then asked “How is that possible? This sounds like the old Liar and Truth Teller puzzle. This person either told the truth or they lied. But there are four possibilities for any person in an asylum: Sane Doctor, Insane Patient, Insane Doctor, or Sane Patient.“Even if you knew whether they were lying or telling the truth, that would only narrow the matter down to two possibilities. For example, if they told a truth such as ‘two plus two equals four’, you would know that they were Sane. But how would you know that they were a Patient, not a Doctor?”Dr. Tarr replied with a chuckle “I agree that I could not have deduced what to do based on an inhabitant saying ‘two plus two equals four’. But in this case, the patient was quite intelligent and thought of a single statement which could establish the fact that only a Sane Patient could make that statement.“I’m sure if you think about it, you could construct such a statement. Name a statement which could only be uttered by a Sane Patient.”-- A Few Easy Ones from Raymond Smullyan.The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World: Steven Johnson.This is one of the most entertaining History books I've ever read, but it goes beyond that. As it explores the biases that keep smart people from understanding "obvious" truths, it delves into Psychology and even Philosophy.UPDATE: And if you enjoy that, you’ll surely love The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York by Matthew Goodman, which is the story of an incredible (and widely-believed) series of news stories that claimed the moon was teaming with life—including intelligent life.Metaphors We Live By: George Lakoff, Mark Johnson.This book explores a fascinating thesis about how we think. The authors believe that metaphor is a core part of human cognition and that our writing, speech, and ideas are laced with metaphors and metaphorical frameworks we often fail to notice. It's terrific food for thought, whether you wind up agreeing or disagreeing.The Hero with a Thousand Faces: Joseph Campbell.“Campbell’s words carry extraordinary weight, not only among scholars but among a wide range of other people who find his search down mythological pathways relevant to their lives today....The book for which he is most famous, The Hero with a Thousand Faces [is] a brilliant examination, through ancient hero myths, of man’s eternal struggle for identity.” — TimeMind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence: Hans Moravec.One would be making a mistake to let Mind Children recede unopened into a guiltless oblivion. It's a tonic book, thought-provoking on every page. And it reminds us that, in our accelerating, headlong era, the future presses so close upon us that those who ignore it inhabit not the present but the past.--Brad Leithauser (New Yorker )Moravec, by his own admission, is an intellectual joyrider, and riding his runaway trains of thought is an exhilarating experience...This is an intellectual party that shouldn't be pooped, no matter how much it may disturb the neighbours and encourage over-indulgence.--Brian Woolley (Guardian )In the Blink of an Eye Revised 2nd Edition: Walter Murch.This book, by one of Hollywood's greatest editors, goes beyond explaining a single craft. It's a door into the brain of a brilliant technician and problem solver, and many pages of it gifted me new ways of thinking, even though I'm not an editor. For instance, Murch came up with the simple (but genius) idea of taping two tiny, cut-out paper people to the bottom of his monitor. They continually remind him of the scale at which people will see movie images when they are in the theatre.The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present: Eric Kandel.This is an Art History/Criticism book written by a neuroscientist.“Eric Kandel has succeeded in a brilliant synthesis that would have delighted and fascinated Freud: Using Viennese culture of the twentieth century as a lens, he examines the intersections of psychology, neuroscience, and art. The Age of Insight is a tour-de-force that sets the stage for a twenty-first-century understanding of the human mind in all its richness and diversity.”—Oliver Sacks, author of The Mind’s Eye and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat“In a polymathic performance, a Nobel laureate weaves together the theories and practices of neuroscience, art and psychology to show how our creative brains perceive and engage art—and are consequently moved by it. . . . A transformative work that joins the hands of Art and Science and makes them acknowledge their close kinship.”—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)“Engrossing … Nobel-winning neuroscientist Kandel excavates the hidden workings of the creative mind. Kandel writes perceptively about a range of topics, from art history—the book’s color reproductions alone make it a great browse—to dyslexia. … Kandel captures the reader’s imagination with intriguing historical syntheses and fascinating scientific insights into how we see—and feel—the world.”—Publisher’s Weekly“A fascinating meditation on the interplay among art, psychology and brain science. The author, who fled Vienna as a child, has remained captivated by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, each of whom was profoundly influenced by Sigmund Freud and by the emerging scientific approach to medicine in their day … [calls] for a new, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mind, one that combines the humanities with the natural and social sciences.”—Scientific American“Eric Kandel’s book is a stunning achievement, remarkable for its scientific, artistic, and historical insights. No one else could have written this book—all its readers will be amply rewarded.”—Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education“Eric Kandel’s training as a psychiatrist and his vast knowledge of how the brain works enrich this thoroughly original exploration of the relationship between the birth of psychoanalysis, Austrian Expressionism, and Modernism in Vienna.”—Margaret Livingstone, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School“This is the book that Charles Darwin would have produced, had he chosen to write about art and aesthetics. Kandel, one of the great pioneers of modern neuroscience, has effectively bridged the ‘two cultures’—science and humanities. This is a task that many philosophers, especially those called ‘new mysterians,’ had considered impossible.”—V. S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-Tale BrainSex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships: Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha.If you want to grapple with understanding human sexuality, I recommend you read this book and its criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_at_Dawn#ReceptionUncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science by Alan CromerRecommended to me by William Archibald, this is a paradigm-shifting book about the history of Science, though Cromer disputes the whole idea of paradigms. According to Cromer, Science was anything but inevitable. The forces that started it got invented once in history, in ancient Greece. Had that not happened, there's no reason to believe we'd have Science and scientists today.The book spans all the way from the origin of our species to speculation about intelligent life on other planets.EducationHow Children Fail: John Holt.A better title might be "How Teachers Fail." When I was in my teens and first starting to grapple with problems in Education, this book opened my eyes. It started me thinking in ways that had never occurred to me before.Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture: Kirsten Olson.Kirsten Olson's book is refreshingly unlike the general run of sludge I associate with writing about pedagogy: It seems to be entirely free of the familiar platitudes which replace thought when we read about school matters, is scrubbed clean of pretentious jargon, and offers up the twists and turns of Olson's analysis and citations with beautiful clarity. I can't imagine anyone not being better for reading this book Twice! --John Taylor Gatto, Author, Dumbing Us DownSummerhill School: A New View of Childhood: A. S. Neill, Albert Lamb.This book will challenge your ideas about education, whether you wind up agreeing with it or raging against it. While I was suffering through a traditional American public high school, this book showed me there were other possibilities, which both fascinated and depressed me. I longed to go to Summerhill.Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas: Seymour A. Papert."This is the best book I have ever read on how to assist people to learn for themselves. Papert began his work by collaborating with Jean Piaget, and then applied those perspectives in a self-programming language designed to help children learn math and physics.Papert explains Piaget's work and provides case studies of how the programming language, LOGO, can help. He provides a wonderful contrasting explanation of the weaknesses of how math and physics are usually taught in schools." -- from an Amazon reader review.See also Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: Keith Johnstone, below (in the theatre section).The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding by Kieran EganThis book, despite its boring title, is one of the most exciting intellectual adventures I've ever had. (And also despite its boring title, it's readable and witty.) It's an exciting book even if you have no specific interest in education.Egan's thesis (which will make your neurons tingle, even if you disagree with it) is that human civilizations have gone through five intellectual stages, which he calls somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic. His second thesis is that education is best when kids are allowed to fully experience and integrate each of these thinking styles.Somatic learners experience through their bodies, and we are born to learn this way. Babies learn somatically when they go from crawling to walking and when they come to understand gravity's effects by knocking over block towers.Mythic understanding involves binary categories, most famously good and evil. Pretty much everything is understood as an epic (and often magical) opposition: wicked stepmother vs handsome prince; David vs Goliath; Bilbo vs Smaug...Egan believes pre-literate cultures understand the world primarily in terms of the somatic and mythic. As they become literate, people are able to think in other forms, with the romantic bridging mythic and philosophic modes.Romantic thinking is a sort of taming of mythic thinking. It's still extreme, but instead of thinking in terms of cosmic forces or gods and goddesses, it focusing on human and natural extremes. When children become romantic thinkers, they tend to lose some of their interest in monsters and superheroes and become obsessed with human feats, like the ones in the Guinness Book of World Records. Or their gods and monsters become more human-like, as are the troubled citizens of the Marvel Universe.As people focus less on the realm of demons and dragons and more on the real world (even if mostly on the extreme parts of it), they begin to notice patterns and abstractions. Maybe there are traits all lizards have in common; maybe tall is a useful category for both mountains and skyscrapers. These thoughts lead to philosophic thinking, which gives us the tools we need to do math, science, and to theorize about history, literature and to think about any topic in an abstract or algorithmic form.In the end, we notice that our abstractions have holes in them. They are useful, but they don't perfectly model reality. And they tend to get tarnished by social and political biases. These realizations lead to ironic thinking, which is impossible to do in any major sense without first developing philosophic thinking, which in turn is founded on romantic, mythic, and somatic thinking.Egan doesn't champion any of these modes over the others. He doesn't rank them. He also takes pains to say that though they have a hierarchical relationship, it's not a neat one. They leak into each other and coexist. Mythic thinkers may not be all that good at thinking ironically, but they still manage to do it sometimes, and while the philosophic mind loses some of its nimbleness with romance, it never totally loses its romantic inclinations.His main suggestion, in the parts of the book dealing with education, is that to realize their full potential as thinkers, children must be allowed and encouraged to pass through all these stages, and depending on where his chargers are in terms of intellectual maturity, a teacher must have the ability to teach in ways that stimulate all these modes. Most eight-year-olds are romantic thinkers, and teachers do them a disservice by leaping into philosophic mode rather than capitalizing on the strengths of romance.The book also explores what's wrong with current educational systems. Egan suggests (and I agree) that the fundamental problem is that schools have three incompatible goals (and Egan explains the history behind them). Schools attempt to socialize, which in most First World countries means preparing kids for work in corporations; they also attempt to indoctrinate kids into a core curriculum of some kind; finally, they attempt to spur kids into becoming individuals--into being creative, emotionally satisfied, unique beings. The inevitable muddle comes when the needs of the business world (or the requirements of the core curriculum) collide with the needs of the individual.Most schools and teachers don't acknowledge (or even understand) this conflict exists and give kids no help in putting all the pieces together. They just say, "Here's all the stuff. Some parts don't fit well with other parts. Don't complain about that. Figure out a way to cope on your own. Sink or swim."When I was just halfway through with "The Educated Mind," I knew it was going to be a a game-changing book for me. Ever since reading it, I've examined my work to see if it contains all the levels of thought (and experience). I'm talking about my writing, my reading, and my work in the theatre. Am I communicating on somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic levels? If not, is there some way I can enrich my work so that it at least touches on all those modes.The greatest works of art do. That's a subjective call, of course, but it's true in my opinion. Think "2001," "The Great Gatsby," "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "King Lear" ...The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan CaplanTerrific, challenging book by a heretical economist who slaughters every sacred cow in the pasture. Even if all the book does is make you angry, it will give you things to think about.This is the only book I know of that tackles both the problems with eduction for the individual and whether or not the huge amount we spend on education is a good value for society.WritingIn my view, despite frequent references to "Elements of Style" and Stephen King's "On Writing," there are few good books on how to write. Most of what learned was either by reading and imitation or from short essays, such as Orwell's Politics and the English Language and Twain's "Finmore Cooper's Literary Offenses": http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm.I've tried to list most of my core beliefs about writing, here: Marcus Geduld's answer to What should every aspiring writer know about writing?These three books (really four, since the first is a collection of two books) stand out. The first ...Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim: Stephen Sondheim.... is a thorough analysis of Sondheim's lyrics—by Sondheim. In case you don't know who he is, he's the generally-acknowledge "greatest muscial-theatre composer/lyricist of all time." His shows include "Sweeney Todd," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", and "West Side Story" (lyrics only). What sets his books apart is the care he takes over evert single word and the lucid explanations with which he explains his choices. Read these books even if you're a non-lyricist.The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker.This is the best guide to prose style I've ever read. It's biased towards a simple style, but if you can master that, you can use it as a foundation to build on.Clear and Simple as the Truth: Francis-Noël Thomas, Mark Turner.Though somewhat dry, this is the only book I know of that clearly explains how to write in a very specific style. And it's kind-of the ur-style: the one I'd argue all writers should master before going on to anything more complicated. It's what "Elements of Style" should be but isn't.TheatreA Practical Handbook for the Actor: Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previtio, Scott Zigler, David Mamet.This is the best introduction I've ever read to Stanislavsky-based acting. (See Constantin Stanislavski). I think of it as book one in a three-book trilogy. (Composed of this book and the next two in my list.)It helps actors avoid playing murky emotional states and become active on stage. Its core approach is to have actors choose goals for each moment they are on stage.If you know someone who is thinking of becoming an actor, get him this book.The Actor and the Target: Declan Donnellan.This book (part two of my ad-hoc trilogy) delves into one specific aspect of Stanislavsky-based acting: the person (the other actor) or object you're trying to affect when you're on stage. As a director, I find motivating actors towards targets tremendously useful. For instance, if an actor is trying to "be sexy" I ask him to stop and, instead, to try to get the actress (the target) to kiss him.How to Stop Acting: Harold Guskin.In my mind, there's tremendous value in Stanislavky's system, which forms the basis of the first two books on this list. But in the end, most actors need to let all frameworks go, stop thinking about them, and just improvise. They must "be in the moment."This is the best treatment I've found of this slippery subject. Guskin was the acting coach to James Gandalfini, Kevin, Kline, Glenn Close and many other famous actors.Different Every Night: Putting the play on stage and keeping it fresh: Mike Alfreds.This book clearly explores what to me is the core difference between theatre and film. Filmmakers must sweat to get the best performance possible onto film. Theatre practitioners should, if they're smart, create an environment where there is no "best." Great theatre should be different every night (or why not see a film, instead?). Each actor in each performance should try something new, and all the performances, taken together, should explore every avenue of the story, every possible interpretation.Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director's Chair: Frank Hauser, Russell Reich.The ideas behind directing are very, very simple: watch and listen; avoid doing anything most of the time; step in with a suggestion when necessary. But, boy oh boy, is it hard to put these simple procedures into practice! Most directors do too much. Or they focus on the wrong things. I read this smart little book before every rehearsal period.Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: Keith Johnstone.Impro ought to be required reading not only for theatre people generally but also for teachers, educators, and students of all kinds and persuasions. Readers of this book are not going to agree with everything in it; but if they are not challenged by it, if they do not ultimately succumb to its wisdom and whimsicality, they are in a very sad state indeed . . . .Johnstone seeks to liberate the imagination, to cultivate in the adult the creative power of the child . . . .Deserves to be widely read and tested in the classroom and rehearsal hall . . . Full of excellent good sense, actual observations and inspired assertions.–CHOICE: Books for College LibrariesShakespeareThinking Shakespeare: A How-to Guide for Student Actors, Directors, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Feel More Comfortable With the Bard: Barry Edelstein.This is the only worthwhile Shakespeare book I've ever found for beginning actors, and seasoned actors who are new to Shakespeare. Even pros will probably learn something from it. And it's a cool book for Shakespeare fans, too, who want to learn how to read the plays better and who want an understanding of how Shakespeare's approach it.Hamlet in Purgatory: Stephen Greenblatt."Hamlet" has a bewildering and brilliant relationship to Religion, and this is the best book on the subject.Hamlet and Revenge: Eleanor Prosser.Elizabethan morality considered revenge to be a great sin. So how is it possible that Shakespeare's audience considered Hamlet a hero? This is one of the most eye-opening pieces of dramaturgy I've read. I discuss it, here: Marcus Geduld's answer to What is the meaning of "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"?Pick this up used if you can. It's expensive new.Shakespeare's Metrical Art: George T. Wright.If you want to understand what Shakespeare was doing poetically, this is the bible. If you're new to blank verse, I recommend your read "Thinking Shakespeare" before tackling this.I delve into lots of other Shakespearean issues, here: Directing "Hamlet".FictionI gobble down fiction, so if this question was "What are some great novels?" I could list hundreds of books. Ones that would definitely make the list are "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Emma," "Wuthering Heights," "House of Mirth", "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Watership Down," "Cat's Eye", "Bleak House," "Lonesome Dove," "Catcher in the Rye," "The Queen's Gambit," and ... well, I could go on and on.While all great novels expand my mind, I've included two, below, that did so via formal experimentation. In general, I hate experimental novels. Most of them are Sophomoric: "What if the author was a character in his own work? What if the characters knew the were living in a work of fiction? Like, wow men! Cool!"Here are two exceptions:1Q84: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin, Philip ­Gabriel.War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy.And this, to me and many others, is the greatest novel of all time:The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald.I've read it over a hundred times and it still keeps giving. Several famous writers, like Hemmingway, copied it out by hand, so that they could study each sentence. I've often thought of doing the same thing. Here's a lesson I learned from just one of Fitzgerald's sentences: PostUPDATE: Someone recently PMed me, asking me to recommend two fiction and two non-fiction books to him. What follows is my reply, in which I cheated and recommend more. It's interesting to compare the following list with the one above, and see how some books have a stable placement in the front of my mind while others shift.As a lifelong reader, it's almost impossible for me to pick four books without doing so at random, but I'll try, as long as you understand these aren't my four favorites. They're just four books that are meaningful to me chosen somewhat arbitrarily.I'm going pick books that I first read at least five years ago, because I want to give you recommendations that haven't just temporarily dazzled me. Otherwise, I'd suggest"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel KahnemanAmazon: Thinking, Fast and Slowand"Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas TalebAmazon: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorderwhich both struck me as deeply profound and deeply useful. But they're too recent to be "canonized" in my mind.Finally, my favorite novel is"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott FitzgeraldAmazon: The Great Gatsbybut I won't list it, because it's on so many great-works list. It's probably more helpful for me to suggest books you're less-likely to have heard about.Non-fiction:- "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World," by Steven Johnson, is a book about one event in history (and a fascinating one), but it manages to delve into deep matters of philosophy, science, and psychology, too. It's very exciting and readable, like a "page-turner" novel.Amazon: The Ghost Map- "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present," by Jacques Barzun. The best modern-Western history I've ever read.Amazon: From Dawn to DecadenceFiction:- "Lonesome Dove," by Larry McMurtry, is, to me, a Great American Novel. It belongs on shelves next to "The Great Gatsby," "Moby Dick," and "The Scarlet Letter." It's a quest story, similar in that sense to "Lord of the Rings," but its setting is the American West in 1876.Amazon: Lonesome Dove- "Cat's Eye," by Margaret Atwood, is one of the most brutally-honest stories about childhood ever written. It's "Lord of the Flies" without the the island. And it's about little girls instead of little boys.Amazon: Cat's Eye: Margaret AtwoodHere are some other books I love:Fiction:- "One Hundred Years of Solitude," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Magic Realism. Maybe the best fantasy novel ever written. Marquez creates an absolutely unique world that runs via its own surreal logic. You emerge from it a different person. The English translation is gorgeous.Amazon: One Hundred Years of Solitude- "1Q84," by Haruki Murakami is the Japanese "One Hundred Year of Solitude." It's worth reading both of them, to understand what fiction can do and where it can go—and how it can play by its own rules.Amazon: 1Q84- "House of Mirth," by Edith Wharton. A fantastic portrait of 19th-Century New York and a young woman who has to maneuver in that complex, suffocating society.Amazon: The House of Mirth- "The Queens Gambit," by Walter Tevis is simply a perfect tale. It's like a masterclass on how to write a honed but unpretentious novel. It's about a child chess prodigy. Tevis isn't a well-known guy, but many people are aware of his novels via their film adaptations. These include "The Man Who Fell to Earth," "The Hustler," and "The Color of Money."Amazon: The Queen's Gambit: A Novel- "This Perfect Day," by Ira Levin is, in my mind, the best dystopia ever written. Few agree with me, because its politics are naive compared to books like "1984" (which I also love). But Levin isn't playing politics. Nor is he doing social criticism. He's weaving a yarn, and his spare prose and world-building do just that with immense confidence. I'd say it's one of the best sci-fi books of all time. Levin's mystery "A Kiss Before Dying" is also terrific. Don't watch either of the movie versions.Amazon: This Perfect Day- "Amy and Isabelle," by Elizabeth Strout is the best story about a mother/daughter relationship I've ever read.Amazon: Amy and Isabelle- "The Box of Delights," by John Masefield is my favorite children's fantasy novel. Though not nearly as well-known as "The Hobbit" or the Narnia books, for my taste it's superior.Amazon: The Box of DelightsOther novels I love include "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte; "The Time Machine" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells; "Emma," "Sense and Sensibility," and "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen; pretty much any Jeeves book by P.G. Wodehouse; "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens; "Plain Song" by Ken Haruf; "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain; "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy; "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger; "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee; and "Secret History" by Donna Tartt.Non-fiction:- "Godel, Escher, Bach," and "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies," by Douglas Hoffstadter, two of the most thought-provoking books I've read about the human mind and artificial intelligence.Amazon: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden BraidAmazon: Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies- "Shadow Divers," by Robert Kurson is the most exciting non-fiction book I've ever read. It's about deep-sea divers, a subject that (prior to reading this book) didn't interest me in the slightest.Amazon: Shadow Divers- "The Botany of Desire," by Michael Pollan is about the symbiotic way humans live with plants. Pollan is better known for "The Omnivore's Dilemma," which is fantastic, but, for my money, not quite as much the masterpiece as this earlier book.Amazon: The Botany of Desire- "Against Joie De Vivre" and "Being With Children," by Phillip Lopate. Lopate is the best personal essayist of the 20th Century and one of the best of all times.Amazon: Against Joie de VivreAmazon: Being with Children- Essays by George Orwell. I love all of Orwell's writing, but I find his essays—especially "Shooting an Elephant" and "Such, Such Were the Joys" to be the best of his writing.Amazon: Essays Free, online: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html- "How Children Fail," by John Holt; "Summerhill School," by A.S. Neal; "A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart; and the much more recent "Wounded by School," by Kristin Olson, were all deeply important to forming and informing my ideas about education.Amazon: How Children FailAmazon: A Mathematician's LamentFree online (shorter) version (pdf): http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/mnewman/LockhartsLament.pdfAmazon: Summerhill SchoolAmazon: Wounded by School- "The Little Schemer," by Daniel Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, is the only computer-programming book I've read that's a work of art. (Really it's a puzzle book, since one doesn't need to use a computer to work through it. It explores the subject of recursion.)Amazon: The Little Schemer- "In the Blink of an Eye" by Walter Murch, about the art of film editing.Amazon: In the Blink of an EyeFacebook: Friends of ol' marcus

Before I answer this, let me first say that there are way too many terrible business books out there. Most business books aren’t even books—they are business cards for the writers or ego trips for CEOs. But the great business books? They are worth their weight in gold. They can change your life, they can pay for themselves a thousand times over. Consider that Warren Buffett believes the greatest investment he ever made to be The Intelligent Investor, written by his mentor Benjamin Graham. As Buffett put it, “of all the investments I ever made…[it] was the best.”Certainly some of the books below were (albeit slightly less profitable) some of the best investments I’ve ever made in my life with time or money. I don’t think business books are all a person should read. Many of the most helpful books I’ve read in my career were works of fiction or were ancient classics. But this is a genre that has value—no matter how much literary snobs may look down on it—and below are my favorites (in no particular order). If you’re looking for a business education, they are a lot cheaper than an MBA.Oh, you might also enjoy my monthly reading list email. I send great book suggestions once a month to over 80,000 fellow readers.Enjoy!***Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son by George Horace Lorimer — This book of letters is great—I wish my father had written me stuff this good. It is the fictional 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. Honest. Genuine. Packed with good advice for anyone trying to make their way in the business world.Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight — Ostensibly the memoir of the founder of Nike, it’s really the story of a lost kid trying to find meaning in his life and it ends with him creating a multi-billion dollar company that changes sports forever. I’m not sure if Knight used a ghostwriter (the acknowledgements are unclear) but his personal touches are all over the book—and the book itself is deeply personal and authentic. The main thing I took from it? You actually have to love the thing you’re going into business to sell. Live and love it and breathe it.Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years by Paul B. Carroll — Most business books are about what went right. This one isn’t. It’s about painful failures. The ones that get repeated over and over and over. This book will humble future CEOs and keep them conservative—which is an important balance for any ambitious person.The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen — This book tells the incredible story of Sam Zemurray, the penniless Russian immigrant who, through pure hustle and drive, became the CEO of United Fruit, the biggest fruit company in the world. The greatness of Zemurray, as author Rich Cohen puts it, “lies in the fact that he never lost faith in his ability to salvage a situation.” For Zemurray, there was always a countermove, always a way through an obstacle, no matter how dire the situation.Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. by Ron Chernow — I found Rockefeller to be strangely stoic, incredibly resilient, and, despite his reputation as a robber baron, humble and compassionate. Most people get worse as they get successful, many more get worse as they age. In fact, Rockefeller began tithing his money with his first job and gave more of it away as he became successful. He grew more open-minded the older he became, more generous, more pious, more dedicated to making a difference. And what made Rockefeller stand apart as a young man was his ability to remain cool-headed in adversity and grounded in success, always on an even keel, never letting excessive passion and emotion hold sway over him. Obviously the Steve Jobs bio is great too but if you could only read one giant bio of one figure, go with Rockefeller.Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office by Zack O’Malley Greenburg — This is a biography that also functions as a business book. It shows how as a young man in Brooklyn, Jay applied hustling techniques to the music business and eventually built his empire. A true hustler, he never did only one thing — from music to fashion to sports, Jay dominated each field, always operating on the same principles. As he puts it, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!” And related to that, I also recommend The 50th Law, which tells the stories of many such individuals and will stick with you just as long. I also liked Zack’s follow up: Michael Jackson, Inc.: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of a Billion Dollar EmpireHow They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told By Themselves by Orison Swett Marden — Written in 1901 these are uplifting business oriented biographies of men like Marshall Field, John D Rockefeller, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison and women like Helen Gould and Julia Ward Howe (creator of Battle Hymn of the Republic). I was referred this book by Maria Popova over at Brainpickings and loved it—I’ve referred to it many times since reading it.What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan — With each and every successful move that he made, Jim Paul, who made it to Governor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was convinced that he was special, different, and exempt from the rules. Once the markets turned against his trades, he lost it all — his fortune, job, and reputation. That’s what makes this book a critical part in understanding how letting arrogance and pride get to your head will ruin your business. Learn from stories like this instead of by your own trial and error. Think about that next time you believe you have it all figured out. (Tim Ferriss produced the audiobook version of this, which I recommend.)Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin — You wouldn’t tell anyone that you saw a cow. You would tell them if you saw a purple cow. Seth wrote this book many years ago but it’s a classic because it says something basic, timeless and important. Make remarkable things, do remarkable marketing. It’s the best way to grow. It’s the best way to sell. Even Jay-Z has recommended this book—to Oprah no less! As a marketer, the clearest takeaway from the book is: Represent people who stand out, it makes it easier to do what you do. Pair with his other books Permission Marketing and The Dip.22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries and Jack Trout — It’s a short quick read and but I think you’ll come away with one or two key lessons that with stick with you. Personally, I found the valuable lessons were a bit front loaded (the first couple laws are the best). In short: turns out the best “marketing” decisions you’ll make come long before the paint is dried (or even applied) to the product. Forget the notion that marketing is something that is applied after the product is completed and aim to achieve Product-Market Fit. As I write in Growth Hacker Marketing, the single worst marketing decision you can make is to work on a product that nobody wants. Quick note: I have heard better things about the old version of this book so consider that before getting the “updated” one.The $100 Startup: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Chris Guillebeau — This book is my favorite of Chris’s and a must read. You don’t have to have a lot of money to start a company, and not every idea has to be some massive world changing thing. Start small. Be smart. Be creative. Chris has been in the trenches and knows what he is talking about.Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Fans into Fanatics by Jackie Huba — I picked up this book almost by accident but it has some good stuff in—and I say this as someone who is not a Lady Gaga fan. How does a pop artist manage their sudden fame? How does one consciously craft a career so that one might still be filling stadiums decades from now? (As Gaga has said, her career model is Iron Maiden not other singers.) How does one reward and excite their most loyal fans? Anyway, solid book that has stood up surprisingly well.Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown — My friend Noah Kagan told me this was the best book he’d read that year. This is a book that focuses you, that makes you question many of the projects and commitments and assumptions you’ve said yes to over the years. Though the book is about applying design-style thinking to your life, I really think it is just a solid book of philosophy, stories and anecdotes that make you reconsider your priorities. That’s all you can hope for from a book and it more than delivers.Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy — Very old but good. Unfortunately, the title overstates a bit as Ogilvy doesn’t exactly confess to anything. He just shares his wisdom. Surprisingly, most of the best lessons in this book are not about advertising but about leadership, client management and presentation. Follow this with The Unpublished David Ogilvy.Choose Yourself! by James Altucher — The message of the book is this: the record label, the Fortune 500 company, the college, the book publisher—these institutions are decayed and broken. They are not coming to sign/discover/hire/choose you. It’s just not fucking happening. You have one option: choose yourself. Make your own way. Especially if you want to run your own business. The idea that some investor or mentor is going to spot you? A myth.Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out by Marc Ecko — One of the best business memoirs and books on branding I have ever read. I’d recommend it if I hadn’t worked on it or consider Marc my friend. Marc left pharmacy school and hustled to build from scratch Marc Ecko Entreprises, what is now a billion-dollar empire and later founded Complex Media, which now boasts over 90 million unique views per month. Marc knows how to create compelling spectacles (tagging Air Force One), knows how to use celebrity, knows how to design products people like and is an expert on what they call convergence culture. This is an underrated book—but only because it’s relatively new and not enough people have discovered it.Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne — The best law in the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is “invent your own category.” Well, Blue Ocean Strategy is entirely about that. It’s about competing where there is the least amount of competition. It teaches you how successful businesses focus on being different, about carving out a new space for themselves. This book will help with marketing and every other part of business life. The sequel, Blue Ocean Shift, is now out and is great.The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz — Ben Horowitz wrote a fantastic book. If it was the only thing he’d ever done, I’d consider him a master. But it’s not. Building billion-dollar companies, slogging through the depths of multiple recessions, mentoring hundreds of entrepreneurs—these are the things Ben does for his day job. Writing for him is just a side project distilling that hard won experience into lessons we can use. This book is inspiring, it’s honest, it’s practical and it’s actually real. There’s a reason Horowitz’s essays have taken hold online second only to those of Paul Graham. There’s been a backlash about this book, but it’s one of the best business books I have read in a very long time. Also, what a title right?The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss — Tim often likes to joke about how his book titles sound like infomercials—which is a blessing and a curse—but this book continues to sell in and out every day for a reason. Tim forces you to think hard about what do you really want out of life, how to think about the way you want to run your business and where to focus your efforts.Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel — People think business is about competition. Really it’s about avoiding competition and creating something new. If most business books stretch an idea that could be contained in a chapter—or ideally not written at all—Peter’s book takes the opposite approach. Each chapter is deeply unconventional, contrarian and profound coming from one of the most successful investors and thinkers of our time. Thiel puts into question many of today’s business best practices and offers lessons that I think back to almost daily.The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb — Nassim Taleb is in the same category as Peter Thiel—a deep, thoughtful, well read writer and thinker whose work breaks new ground. This book is a required reading for any executive trying to think about risk but it is really for anyone who wants to make better decisions and not fall prey to our common cognitive fallacies. Pair this one with his Fooled by Randomness and the aphorisms in The Bed of Procrustes.Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport — In most fields today, if you can’t cultivate the ability to have quiet, insightful, deeply focused periods of productive work, you’re going to be mediocre at best. This is a book that explains how to cultivate and protect the most important creative and leadership skill—the ability to do deep work. I strongly urge you to begin this practice now—if you want to get anything done or perform your best. His other book So Good They Can’t Ignore You is also essential career advice.The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William N. Thorndike / Personal History by Katharine Graham — This book is also one of Warren Buffett’s favorite books. Instead of focusing on celebrity business figures who were good at self-promotion, it studies the heads of companies like the Washington Post, Berkshire Hathaway, General Dynamics, Capital Cities Broadcasting, TCI, and Teledyne who created billions of dollars of wealth through a series of unorthodox business and leadership strategies we can all learn from. I discovered the book after reading Katharine Graham’s epic autobiography in my efforts to read more books by and about women. She really was an exceptional leader and CEO.Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins — There is a little pseudo-science to Collin’s research but I don’t care about that. This is a great book and a timeless classic for reason. He creates a framework for how to think about building a great company. You get the right people on the bus, you spend time and energy winding up the flywheel and if you’re lucky you break through. It’s not a complicated formula but the examples in this book are helpful. Even if you don’t read it, the title is helpful. You don’t want to be good, you want to be great.Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston — This book is basically like reading 20 short books about a bunch of different startups from the early web to Web 2.0 era. It comes from Jessica Livingston, one of the founding partners of Y Combinator, which has invested in everyone from Airbnb to Dropbox to reddit. The book is a collection of interviews with prominent Silicon Valley technologists and while some of the companies might sound almost irrelevant now, as the book was originally published a decade ago, the fundamentals in business and in starting companies haven’t changed.The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman — As I said, if you are looking for a business education, books are a lot cheaper than an MBA. And this one provides the most important concepts covering everything from marketing to sales to finance. If you’re a business veteran looking to brush up on old concepts that you’ve studied years ago or simply want to have a well-rounded understanding of business, this book is for you.48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene / 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene — Of course, I am biased because I trained under Robert. But if I had not, these books still would have given me a priceless education (as they have for millions of other people) in how to acquire and build influence. Robert is a crack researcher and storyteller – he has a profound ability to explain timeless truths through story and example. I promise you will leave not just with actionable lessons but an indelible sense of what to do to make your work seen, respected, and authoritative. It might seem weird that books about power and war could do this—but they are campaigns like any other. Robert explains how the historical greats have found patrons, captivated the public, commanded fear or deference and ultimately succeeded at what they set out to do. Related to these books is another favorite of mine: Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. It’s great for anyone marketing a cause or building a movement. Alinsky was also a die hard pragmatist, a man who had ideals but also a sense for working with and through the system to get what he needed. In fact, his best examples in the book is actually how to use the system against itself to get what he needed.Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age by Jonah Berger — I am a big Jonah Berger fan. In terms of business books, this is one you can trust because he is legit. I based more than a little of Trust Me I’m Lying on the research he has done on what does and doesn’t spread, which I read early when they were published as academic papers. The book is more accessible than those pages and unless you’re already a high level marketer, this book has real practical lessons you’ll want to learn. Some critics of the book have pointed out that it doesn’t tell how some recent things went viral like Gangnam Style or Harlem Shake. Well…welcome to book publishing. The book was wrapped before those things happened—but as a mark of its value, it correctly predicts how and why they would have. Consider this your requisite business/marketing book for the year.Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz — Frank Luntz is an expert in influencing and leading public perception through image and words. It actually matters whether we’re talking about illegal immigrants or undocumented workers, or whether we describe the problem as climate change or global warming. A lot of people hate this guy but that doesn’t mean he isn’t very smart and very good at what he does. Marketers need to understand the power of language and framing–it doesn’t matter how right you are, if you lose this battle it can be impossible to rally people to your cause. A related (and more political book on framing) is Don’t Think of an Elephant. Read them both.The Obstacle Is The Way and Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday — Both books are inspired by the practical philosophy of Stoicism, and teach you how to deal with both external obstacles, as well as our worst enemy—our own ego. Both books feature inspiring stories and timeless lessons from business magnates and tycoons, including Rockefeller, Sam Zemurray, Howard Hughes, John DeLorean, Katharine Graham, and many others. They will teach you how to avoid the worst mistakes many of them have made, as well as how they solved the challenges and obstacles they faced in their careers.The Brass Check by Upton Sinclair — Let me end this with a work of fiction, and one I named my own company after. You probably don’t know this, but in 1920 Upton Sinclair self-published arguably the first ever structural expose of how the media industry works. Not only did he self-publish it—at the height of his fame no less—but he refused to copyright it, hoping to pass through the complete media blacklist a book like this faced. Sinclair deeply understood the economic incentives of early 20th century journalism and thus could predict and analyze the manipulative effect it had on The Truth. Today, those incentives and pressures are different but they warp our information in a similar way. In almost every substantial charge he leveled against the yellow press, you could, today, sub in blogs and the cable news cycle and be even more correct. That’s why you need to read this book.And if you’re reading this Quora answer, you probably want to learn more about strategy. My new book Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, which the New York Times raved about, is out now. Not only is the book an epic page turner, it’s designed to be a deep meditation on strategy and power inspired by the decade-long conspiracy engineered by the billionaire Peter Thiel to take down Gawker. Order your copy now.

I'm not sure how to rank these things, what do you mean “top” 10? most useful? most favorite? I'll just list 10 non-fiction books that's meaningful to me in someway, not in particular order.Chinese books:古文观止选译著 Or selected essays and translations from Guwen GuanzhiGu Wen Guan Zhi is a collection of essays of classical Chinese selected from various dynasties. While I did eventually read the book in its entirety, this was where I started. Or, where my grandma had me started. This is my grandma's book. She made the book sleeve (the other one has sleeve too, but I lost it). This is one of the very few books I brought from China to US when I moved here.It has my grandma's great handwriting noteAnd my scribbles希腊的神话和传说 Or the Chinese translation of Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece by Gustav SchwabI really like this book, I love Greek mythology, full of passion, hate, lust, everything is so exaggerated, people went on quests, kill each other, curse entire family… for the pettiest little things.and the pictures are purrrty.English Books:Sandro Botticelli by LightbrownAs you can see this is a book originally owned by a library, by Cal state Long Beach Library, in fact, where I studied. I was doing a term paper on Botticelli and checked out bunch of books. And it must be some kind of system mistake, this one was never listed as “checked out". And just so happen, this is my favorite book, so I just kept it.Botticelli's Uffizi “Adoration" by Rab Hatfield.Again, I checked out this book when I was doing my Botticelli term paper. But it really has nothing to do with the content of my paper, I just read it purely out of curiosity. This obscure book is about portrait study (identification) of Adoration of Magi by Botticelli. Unfortunately (?) I wasn't able to keep the library's version. I end up searching up and down finally found an used copy on ebay.Apparently, it used to belong to a person named H. C. Rochrich, with impeccable handwriting.Alphonse MuchaI bought this book when I was in Italy. We just finished sightseeing at Palatine Hill and it's hot August summer day, we went to this museum for some air conditioning, and just so happen, there's a Mucha exhibit there. I've studied Mucha in art school, but this was the first time I actually saw an actual Mucha. I was quite impress by the size of his work. I used to think his works are small, but they're actually live size.Before leaving, I bought this book and carried it all the way back to US.And… The MedicisThe Medici by G.F. YoungAgain, probably a rather obscured book about the Medici family. But this was, as far as I know, the first book dedicated to the family. Colonel Young was very fond of the family and it shows in his book. The book put Medicis in a very favorite light, which kind of set my opinion for the family as well. I've read many other Medici books, many had negative opinions about them. But I've always remain fascinated by the family, particularly Lorenzo de Medici.which bring me to my next bookMegnifico by Miles J. Unger.You can see I read this book quite intently, made a lot of book mark, each one indicate a note on my google drive.I also wrote some quick note in the book. But majority of the notes are digital.As far as history goes, I also quite like Greco-Persian Wars by Peter Green.Like many others books, I first read it borrowing from library, and then bought my own copy. Other than being a comprehensive history book, I really like the sarcastic tone of Peter Green. We're talking about some of the most memorable wars and glorious heroes of classical time, and the way he put it, they're human, they made (often quite stupid) mistakes, they made bad decisions, and war happened. It might be exciting but there's nothing “glorious" about it.And of course, I can't call myself a game industry professional without reading this bookThe Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.But seriously, why is being an industry professional has anything to do with monomyth? I don't know, I just had this weird impression in my head.And last not least: The very useful Color Index Book by Jim KrauseYou have no idea how many time I consult this book when needing to design something web or print related.It is very important to get the color numbers right.…Is that 10 books? I think that's 10.Thank you Dan, for A2A.