Updated 2023-12-22

Nonfiction

Architecture

Title Author
Soft City David Sim

Food

Title Author
The Angry Chef Anthony Warner

Medicine

Title Author
How to Treat People Molly Case
If Our Bodies Could Talk James Hamblin

Science

Title Author
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived Adam Rutherford
Lab Girl Hope Jahren

History

Title Author
Buy Me the Sky Xinran
Chernobyl Prayer Svetlana Alexievich
Istanbul Bettany Hughes
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari
Secondhand Time Svetlana Alexievich

Politics

Title Author
Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson
Manufacturing Consent Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky
Notes on a Foreign Country Suzy Hansen
Prisoners of Geography Tim Marshall
Sweden’s Dark Soul Kajsa Norman
The Coddling of the American Mind Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff
The Death Of Expertise Thomas M. Nichols
The Nordic Theory of Everything Anu Partanen
The Power of Geography Tim Marshall
The View From Flyover Country Sarah Kendzior
City of Lies Ramita Navai
Honeymoon in Tehran Azadeh Moaveni
Our Women on the Ground Zahra Hankir

Linguistics

Title Author
A Billion Voices David Moser
Babel Gaston Dorren
Because Internet Gretchen McCulloch
Lingo Gaston Dorren
Swearing Is Good for You Emma Byrne
That’s Not What I Meant! Deborah Tannen
The Prodigal Tongue Lynne Murphy
The Stories of English David Crystal

Philosophy

Title Author
Ego is the Enemy Ryan Holiday
The Art of Logic in an Illogical World Eugenia Cheng
How Will You Measure Your Life? Clayton M. Christensen

Psychology

Title Author
An Outsider’s Guide to Humans Camilla Pang
Beyond Measure Margaret Heffernan
Factfulness Hans Rosling & Ola Rosling & Anna Rosling Rönnlund
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Lori Gottlieb
Rethinking Narcissism Craig Malkin
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) Philippa Perry
The Great Mental Models Shane Parrish
Toxic People Tim Cantopher
When Strangers Meet Kio Stark

Business

Title Author
ALIEN Thinking Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, Michael Wade
Platform Revolution Geoffrey G. Parker & Marshall W. Van Alstyne & Sangeet Paul Choudary
The Culture Map Erin Meyer
Trust Me, I’m Lying Ryan Holiday
Impact Players Liz Wiseman

Leadership

Title Author
Build Tony Fadell
HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself Harvard Business Review
Humble Inquiry Edgar H. Schein
Powerful Patty McCord
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni
The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz
The Ideal Team Player Patrick Lencioni
Too Proud To Lead Ben Laker, David Cobb, Rita Trehan
What You Do is Who You Are Ben Horowitz
Tribal Leadership Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright

Technology

General

Title Author
Algorithms to Live By Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths
Close to the Machine Ellen Ullman
Life in Code Ellen Ullman
The Mythical Man-Month Frederick Brooks Jr.
The Business Value of Developer Relations Mary Thengvall
The Missing Readme Chris Riccomini
The Pragmatic Programmer Andy Hunt
The Programmer’s Brain Felienne Hermans
The Psychology of Computer Programming Gerald M. Weinberg
The Software Architect Elevator Gregor Hohpe

DevOps / SRE

Title Author
Continuous Delivery Pipelines Dave Farley
Docs for Developers Jared Bhatti & Zachary Sarah Corleissen & Jen Lambourne & David Nunez & Heidi Waterhouse
Site Reliability Engineering Betsy Beyer & Chris Jones & Jennifer Petoff & Niall Richard Murphy
The Phoenix Project Gene Kim

Data

Title Author
Data Science for Business Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett
Data Teams Jesse Anderson
Designing Data-Intensive Applications Martin Kleppmann
Designing Machine Learning Systems Chip Huyen
Fundamentals of Data Engineering Joe Reis & Matt Housley
Hello World Hannah Fry
Machine Learning Design Patterns Valliappa Lakshmanan & Sara Robinson & Michael Munn
Machine Learning Engineering Andriy Burkov
Practical DataOps Harvinder Atwal
Something Doesn’t Add Up Paul Goodwin
The Data Warehouse Toolkit Ralph Kimball & Margy Ross
The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book Andriy Burkov
Zillow Talk Spencer Rascoff & Stan Humphries

UX/UI

Title Author
Don’t Make Me Think Steve Krug
The Best Interface Is No Interface Golden Krishna
The Design of Everyday Things Donald A. Norman
User Friendly Cliff Kuang & Robert Fabricant

Leadership

Title Author
An Elegant Puzzle Will Larson
Dynamic Reteaming Heidi Helfand
Engineering Management for the Rest of Us Sarah Drasner
Managing Humans Michael Lopp
Peopleware Tom Demarco & Tim Lister
Team Topologies Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais
The Art of Leadership Michael Lopp
The Manager’s Path Camille Fournier

Technical Leadership

Title Author
Staff Engineer Will Larson
Talking With Tech Leads Patrick Kua
The Staff Engineer’s Path Tanya Reilly

Fiction

Contemporary

Title Author
A Man Called Ove Fredrik Backman
And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer Fredrik Backman
The Love Hypothesis Ali Hazelwood
The Red Notebook Antoine Laurain
Sweet Bean Paste Durian Sukegawa

Classics

Title Author
The Book of Rumi Rumi

Crime

Title Author
Millennium Trilogy Stieg Larsson

Fantasy

Title Author
Exit West Mohsin Hamid
Joe Pitt Charlie Huston
The Witcher Andrzej Sapkowski

Historical

Title Author
A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini
Cinnamon and Gunpowder Eli Brown
Perfume Patrick Süskind
The Bastard of Istanbul Elif Shafak
The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini

Sci-Fi

Title Author
All You Need Is Kill Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Autonomous Annalee Newitz
Iraq + 100 Hassan Blasim
Lock In John Scalzi
Repo Men Eric Garcia
The Dispatcher John Scalzi
The Murderbot Diaries Martha Wells
Unauthorized Bread Cory Doctorow

Thriller

Title Author
Little Brother Cory Doctorow
Darknet Matthew Mather

Wuxia

Title Author
Condor Trilogy Jin Yong
The Smiling Proud Wanderer Jin Yong