Book Recommendations

There have been many biographies written of Albert Einstein. This one by Walter Isaacson is notably great for the incorporation of science, emotion, storytelling, and details. It describes Einstein’s theories, his thought experiments, and his process. It also chronicles his personal life – including his first marriage, his second marriage, his infidelity, and his relationship with his children. (View on Amazon)

Daniel Suarez comes back with more after his excellent sci-fi books Daemon and Freedom. Change Agent is the story of a future where CRISPR (the REAL new tool that enables DNA edits) has developed to the point where scientists can sculpt DNA to their liking, and Interpol maintains a genetic crimes division. As usual, he’s able to use tech that’s plausibly foreseeable from today’s reality to scare the shit out of readers in a remarkably entertaining way. (View on Amazon)

Imagine if you and your brother worked together. Then imagine if you worked together in the government. Keep going – one of you is Secretary of State and the other is Director of the CIA. That’s the Dulles brothers. Together, they overthrew governments, ran secret paramilitary campaigns, and influenced the lives of millions of people around the world – not always for the better. (View on Amazon)

If you’ve never heard the story of the Turtles before, this is worth a listen. It’s a real-life version of the movie Trading Places. In the mid 80s, a group of people were taught a trend-following system for trading markets and given money to trade. They made over $100MM of profits over the following four years, and a few went on to be some of the most successful hedge fund managers in the country. (View on Amazon)

Clayton Christensen applies his innovation framework to the education industry, an effective monopoly that’s resistant to true disruption. With examples galore, he builds a case for how we can expect disruptive innovation to change mass market education. While his timing may have been off, his roadmap still seems practical. (View on Amazon)

Okay so this one is a tiny bit self help-y, but really not so much. The author’s (Clayton Christensen of The Innovator’s Dilemma fame) premise is that his class at Harvard Business School had the best of intentions and the future looked bright, but as time went on more and more of them ended up living unhappy lives despite all sorts of professional success. So he applies lessons from his research into businesses to help understand why the best of intentions can lead to failure, and offers guidance about how to structure your activities to get what you want out of life. (View on Amazon)

Imagine if you and your brother worked together. Then imagine if you worked together in the government. Keep going – one of you is Secretary of State and the other is Director of the CIA. That’s the Dulles brothers. Together, they overthrew governments, ran secret paramilitary campaigns, and influenced the lives of millions of people around the world – not always for the better. (View on Amazon)

Anthony Bourdain’s autobiographical story about “coming up” in the world of kitchens and cooking. He narrates the book himself, which I really enjoyed because he delivers his writing with so much authenticity as well as clarify. If you like food, and have a high level of tolerance for profanity-laced stories about cooking intermixed with drugs, this one’s for you. (View on Amazon)

This author makes a case for the idea that mindfulness/meditation has tangible benefits, backing it up with studies and wrapping it around the story of Siddhartha and the foundation of Buddhism. The studies are, by the author’s own admission, fairly “early” with small sample sizes and less than ideal control groups in many cases. Despite all of that, there’s something to be said for the early data showing that mindfulness practice helps humans function better in this crazy world. (View on Amazon)