A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes
by Peter Bevelin
Bevelin distils Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes into bite-sized principles and key quotes through this book. In fact, it is more than a collection of quotes. It is a way to learn the powers of observation, understand the limits of our mind, and counter the narrative fallacy.
The Black Swan
by Nassim Taleb
This landmark book is an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. For Taleb, black swans (highly improbable events) underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. This book has the ability to change the way you look at the world.
The Art of Learning
by Josh Waitzkin
This is one of the best books on the art of learning I’ve read. Josh recounts his experiences and shares his insights and approaches on how you can learn and excel in your own life’s passion, using examples from his personal life. Through stories of martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs, he reveals the inner workings of his everyday methods, cultivating the most powerful techniques in any field, and mastering the psychology of peak performance.
Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder
~ by Nassim Taleb
Taleb explains how antifragile is beyond resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. This book is a blueprint for living in a black swan world. The message is clear: the antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it.
Deep Work
by Cal Newport
In a world of distraction, how you organize your time and days makes an enormous difference. Cal’s book convincingly presents a strong argument about the need for deep work and gives numerous hacks to cultivate and protect that skill the ability to do it.
Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work ~ Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking ~ Malcolm Gladwell
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness ~ Richard Thaler
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions ~ Dan Ariely
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us ~ Daniel H. Pink
Outliers: The Story of Success ~ Malcolm Gladwell
Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity ~ John Gribbin
The Tipping Point ~ Malcolm Gladwell
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Seven Patterns of Innovation ~ Steven Johnson
Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights ~ Gary Klein
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences ~ John Allen Paulos
The Little Book of Talent ~ Daniel Coyle
The Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words ~ Randall Munroe
Thinking Physics: Understandable Practical Reality ~ Lewis Carroll Epstein
Seven Brief Lessons in Physics ~ Carlo Rovelli