guiltygyoza Blog Bookshelf Now

Bookshelf

These books brought notable influences on my thinking in the recent years.

Non-fiction

  • The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power - Robert Kaplan.
  • Debt: The First 5000 Years - David Graeber.
  • The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West - Alex Karp.
  • The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind - Gustave Le Bon.
  • Pieces of the Action - Vannevar Bush.
  • Seven Brief Lessons on Physics - Carlo Rovelli.
  • Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life - Anne Lamott.
  • The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must - Robert Zubrin.
  • Thirty Years that Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory - George Gamow.
  • The Expulsion of Other: Society, Perception and Communication Today - Byung-Chul Han.
  • How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between - Bent Flyvbjerg & Dan Gardner.
  • The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth - Michio Kaku.
  • Star Warriors: A Penetrating Look into the Lives of the Young Scientists Behind Our Space Age Weaponry - William Broad.
  • What Life Could Mean to You - Alfred Adler. Timeless.
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni.
  • Breaking Through: My Life in Science - Katalin Karikó.
  • The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable - Patrick Lencioni.
  • Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors - Patrick Lencioni.
  • The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - Nathaniel Branden. A very clean formulation.
  • The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom - Graham Farmelo. The greatest read I’ve had in a long while.
  • Thinking In Systems: A Primer - Donella Meadows. Familiar concepts from the signals & systems course in college, nevertheless a revelation when applied to personal routines and inducing my interest in the topic of resilience.
  • The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics - Bradley Tusk. Helpful for founders combating entrenched interests.
  • 《沒有一條道路是重複的》 - 余華。
  • The Ant Mill: How theoretical high-energy physics descended into groupthink, tribalism, and mass-production of research - Jesper Møller Grimstrup. “Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence” - Dirac.
  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn.
  • When I Say No, I Feel Guilty: How to Cope - Using the Skills of Systematic Assertive Therapy - Manuel Smith. Wanting something is part of the internal reality. There is no right and wrong when it comes to individual realities.
  • Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box - The Arbinger Institute. “One way, I experience myself as a person among people. The other way, I experience myself as the person among objects. One way, I’m out of the box; the other way, I’m in the box.”
  • Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts - Annie Duke. Getting comfortable with “I’m not sure” is a vital step to becoming a better decision-maker.
  • Maverick Genius: The Pioneering Odyssey of Freeman Dyson - Phillip Schewe. “there is under our noses the territory of nine planets, forty moons, ten thousand asteroids, and a trillion comets.”
  • Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation - Freeman Dyson. Fermionic accounting for solar scale engineering project.
  • The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence - Josh Waitzkin. It is amazing how much growth can come from persistently putting one’s mind to bottlenecks and simply refusing to back down.
  • Shell Beach: The search for the final theory - Jesper Møller Grimstrup. “…if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know the mind of God. (Steven Hawking)”
  • The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever - Michael Bungay Stanier. The Karpman drama triangle is a potent mental model.
  • Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In - Roger Fisher and William Ury. There are many sources of negotiation power: BATNA, relationship, interests, options, objective standards.

Fiction