I read a lot of books, mostly fiction. That said, occassionally I come across a non-fiction book that genuinely changes how I think about something. In general I can tell those books a while later, because they’re the ones I keep referring people to over and over. So here’s a list of the non-fiction books I’ve read since I started keeping records that I think have changed how I think about the world:
- The Man Who Broke Capitalism: companies should exist for more than mergely hitting quarterly earnings goals — they should serve their shareholders, but also their employees and the communities they operate in. In return, long term growth is more likely than with a short sighted approach.
- The Innovators Dilemma: understanding the behaviour of companies in established markets and how disruption occurs changed how I thought about many of the companies I’ve worked for.
- Chip War: the history of the semiconductor industry and its globalization was both interesting and informative about how interconnected our global economy has become.
- Cult of the Dead Cow: how a group of teenagers looking for fun “hacks” accidentally changed an entire industry’s attitude towards responsible disclosure of security vulnerabilities.
- The Mythical Man-Month: genuinely helpful insights on IT project management many of which still hold true well over 50 years later.
- Bad Pharma: a description of how modern medicine is corrupted by the commercial forces that run largely unchecked in its marketplace. I still think about meta-analyses regularly.
- Command and Control: a book full of “oh my God” moments as it details the history of the American nuclear arsenal. Genuinely terrifying while educating at the same time.
- Bad Science: how science reporting goes wrong, and what can be done about it.