100 Best Information Technology Books of All Time

Elon MuskPeter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.” - Elon Mus (Source)

Mark ZuckerbergThis book delivers completely new and refreshing ideas on how to create value in the world. (Source)

Eric WeinsteinIf you really understand something that the rest of the world is confused about, and it’s an important truth, [this book] says here are all the ways you might want to make that work. (Source)

Jeffrey SnoverGreat thread. I know of a number of devops people that haven't read this book. Ya'll should fix that. https://t.co/Yri4JJ0jBZ (Source)

Louis NyffeneggerI don't think I have a specific book that I can call my favourite. Some books have had a big impact on my view of how to build a product/company ("Rework"), some were very enjoyable to read ("The Phoenix Project"), some helped me improve the way I think ("The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out") and some the way I live ("Essentialism") or work ("Deep Work"). (Source)

Elon MuskQuite interesting. (Source)

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012.] (Source)

Gary VaynerchukI've read 3 business books in my life. If you call [this book] a business book. (Source)

Tony RobbinsThe basis of this book is so important to anyone looking to increase their influence, profits or impact. People won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. When you start with the why, everything else falls into place. This book is so impactful, I consider it required reading. (Source)

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Tony HsiehOver the years he’s [] recommended well over 20 business books — including his own, the 2010 bestseller Delivering Happiness and you can always find what he’s currently reading atop his cluttered desk. Start with Why is amogst those titles. (Source)

Bill GatesA great read. (Source)

David AllenAtul is really talking about how absolutely powerful checklists are, and I think he makes a very creative point: that checklist are not just some static, boring thing. They actually allow you to do excellent work and free up your brain by not having to keep remembering what you need to do when. That then allows your brain to be a lot more creative about whatever it is you’re doing. (Source)

Timothy FerrissRamit and I are both obsessed with checklists and love a book by Atul Gawande titled The Checklist Manifesto. I have this book on a shelf in my living room, cover out, as a constant reminder. (Source)

Hadley WickhamThis book is about the craft of software development, and thinking about how to produce good code. (Source)

Jeff BezosEncourages companies to identify the biggest constraints in their operations and then structure their organizations to get the most out of those constraints. (Source)

Kevin SystromAbout basically manufacturing and supply chain management. It sounds really boring, but I promise you it’s really good. (Source)

Chris GowardHere are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: [...] The Goal. (Source)

Chris GowardHere are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: [...] Don't Make Me Think. (Source)

Nicolae AndronicI’m a technical guy. I studied the IT field and did software development for a long time until I discovered the business world. So the path for me is to slowly adapt from the clear, technical world, to the fuzzy, way more complex, business world. All the books that I recommend help this transition. “Don’t Make Me Think” - Steve Krug: for seeing software with the eyes of the user. (Source)

Nick GanjuAbout usability and making software and user interfaces that are friendly to people. (Source)

Santiago BasultoIf my career path is hackers turned business people, I’d say: Start with the basics and fundamentals: SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Code Complete 2 (Source)

Ana BellCode Complete is for people working in industry, writing software for companies. It has little checklists at key points in the book; if you are in industry, you can make sure that your code is readable and debugged by going through these checklists and making sure you’re touching upon all aspects. (Source)

Ana BellThis book is going to show you how to write code that is readable by yourself in the future, or by somebody else. You can sit on the couch and read it; you don’t need to code. You can actually enjoy it if you don’t know how to program at all. (Source)

Jeff Bezos[From "The Everything Store", written by Brad Stone] “An influential computer scientist makes the counterintuitive argument that small groups of engineers are more effective than larger ones at handling complex software projects. The book lays out the theory behind Amazon’s two pizza teams,” Stone writes. (Source)

Alan KayAn early look and experience with timeless truths (and gotchas) from systems building with teams (Source)

Doug McMillon[I read and give this book because] you need to understand what you’re up against. (Source)

Santiago BasultoI love to read biographies and stories of companies. Hatching Twitter is a really good book, and if you’re into that sort of books, bios of Steve Jobs (by Isaacson) or Jeff Bezos are great too. (Source)

Tracy DiNunzioIt's a great book and especially for people starting out. (Source)

Max LevchinEasier to read [than "The Art of Computer Programming"] end-to-end quickly. (Source)

Hadley WickhamThe most valuable thing this book gives you is confidence and knowledge to go and create your own programming language. (Source)

John Maeda@jesseddy The best book in classical and “hands-on example” terms is Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs — but it requires maybe a year to get thru and for me, 10 years more to marinate over. *A* book is the one I am finishing now to come out Nov 2019. https://t.co/OODjQXgf1I (Source)

Kirk BorneFantastic accomplishment! Congratulations @nicolefv on your outstanding #DevOps book ... I love that: “The Science of Lean” ... that works also for #DataOps and Lean Analytics. https://t.co/i9gPhKL0dt https://t.co/DNJpuJtER0 (Source)

Stephen Kinsella@gavreilly @SLSingh Love that book (Source)

Ana BellIt gets you to use your imagination to virtually build a computer. It’s easy to read, you can lie down on the couch and enjoy it—it’s not so much of a textbook. It demystifies the magic of a computer and what it is. (Source)

Marius Ciuchete Pauneval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-large-mobile-banner-2','ezslot_5',164,'0','1'])); Question: Was there a moment, specifically, when something you read in a book helped you? Answer: Yes there was. In fact, I can remember two separate sentences from two different books: The first one comes from “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman. It says: “great design will help... (Source)

Grey BakerI mainly read to decompress and change my state of mind, so it’s hard to point to an insight I read that helped me. Reading fiction has pulled me out of a bad mood more times than I can count, though, and always reenergises me to attack problems that had stumped me again. That said, I read and loved Norman Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”, and it’s helped me think through design problems... (Source)

Kaci LambeThese three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. (Source)

Drew HoustonIt’s [about] how do technology products make their way from early adopters t the mainstream. (Source)

Ron ConwayBestselling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. (Source)

Seth GodinThis is a key component in my Purple Cow thinking, but with a twist. I'm not as worried about the chasm as I am about the desire of marketers to go for the big middle. (Source)

Nicholas CarrIf Standage’s is a small book focused on a particular technology and moment in time, Gleick’s is extraordinarily broad and sweeping. It’s a very large book, in which he tries – and succeeds in many ways I think – to tell the story of information in human history. Information breaks down into two different things in essence. On the one hand it is messages – things with meaning to human beings –... (Source)

Jeff BezosUnperturbed by conventional wisdom, [the authors] start fresh and rewrite the rules of business. Their approach turns out to be as successful as it is counter-intuitive. (Source)

Mark CubanIf given a choice between investing in someone who has read Rework or has an MBA, I'm investing in Rework every time. This is a must read for every entrepreneur. (Source)

Tony HsiehThe wisdom in these pages is edgy yet simple, straightforward, and proven. Read this book multiple times to help give you the courage you need to get out there and make something great. (Source)

Rick Klau@AtulAcharya @stevesi Same. Read it in college, realized I was more excited about the tech than what I was studying -- and Cliff did such a great job helping you understand what was going on. Such a great book. (Source)

James Stanley"The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll is another great book. I believe it's the first documented account of a computer being misused by a remote attacker. It talks about how Clifford attached physical teleprinters to the incoming phone lines so that he could see what the attacker was actually doing on the computer, and how he traced the attacker across several countries. (Source)

Mark O'ConnellI wouldn’t be the first to look at him this way but I read Kurzweil’s work as essentially a work of religious mysticism. I think there’s no other way to read it, really. (Source)

Antonio EramThis book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. (Source)

Steve AokiIt opened me up to the idea of science fiction becoming science fact. (Source)

Chris FussellThe history of how great ideas evolve. (Source)

Brian BurkhartThis book is essentially a biography of all the people who’ve led to the technology of today—it’s fascinating. The most important point of the book is everything is one long, connected chain. There isn’t just one person or one industry that makes anything happen—it all goes way back. For example, the communication theory I have espoused and taught throughout my career is from Aristotle, Socrates,... (Source)

Sean Gardner@semayuce @MicrosoftUK @HelenSharmanUK @astro_timpeake @WalterIsaacson Yes, I agree: "The Innovators" is a great book. I loved it too. (Source)

Elon MuskWorth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes. (Source)

Maria RamosRamos will take the summer to examine some of the questions weighing more heavily on humankind as we contemplate our collective future: what happens when we can write our own genetic codes, and what happens when we create technology that is meaningfully more intelligent than us. The Gene: An Intimate History—Siddhartha Mukherjee Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies—Nick Bostrom The... (Source)

Will MacAskillI picked this book because the possibility of us developing human-level artificial intelligence, and from there superintelligence—an artificial agent that is considerably more intelligent than we are—is at least a contender for the most important issue in the next two centuries. Bostrom’s book has been very influential in effective altruism, lots of people work on artificial intelligence in order... (Source)

Josephine WolffAs a book, Countdown to Day Zero is a stunning example of a case study, of really diving into a cyber security incident. She takes on the very technical material—getting into the malware and the question of how do these SCADA machines work and how does this piece of software compromise them—but then also brings in this really rich and complicated geopolitical conflict that this is happening as a... (Source)

Barack ObamaAs 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

Bill GatesAnyone who wants to discuss how artificial intelligence is shaping the world should read this book. (Source)

Elon MuskA compelling guide to the challenges and choices in our quest for a great future of life, intelligence and consciousness—on Earth and beyond. (Source)

Eric RiesA fantastic, proven formula for moving from idea to prototyping to decision making within five days, based on a process he developed while working at Google and later GV. (Source)

Cat Williams-TreloarJake Knapp, John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz "Sprint" - the go-to guide on how to sprint. You may not follow everything to the tee, but it's simple, clean and full of great examples of how to move fast with structure. (Source)

Javed KhatriThis book details the "sprint" process used at Google Ventures. We follow a similar process at Kustard to validate business ideas and to solve problems without wasting much time, money and energy. If you want to quickly validate an idea, this is a proven model and a must read. (Source)

Doug McMillonHere are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)

Sriram Krishnan@rabois @nealkhosla Yes! Love that book (Source)

Chris OliverThis is a great book talking about how you can use computer science to help you make decisions in life. How do you know when to make a decision on the perfect house? Car? etc? It helps you apply algorithms to making those decisions optimally without getting lost. (Source)

Dave Ramsey[Dave Ramsey recommended this book on his website.] (Source)

Scott HarrisonSuch a fan of this book. Such great actionable insights for startups and social entrepreneurs. https://t.co/Vfdq3ZJe1f (Source)

Nick LoperI just finished Building a StoryBrand, and need to fill in the worksheets and re-think my homepage as a result. That's the mark of a good business book — homework! (Source)

Jenny DavidsonYoung adult books often cut to the heart of human relationships. Literature for young people sometimes simplifies things by making them metaphorical, by moving them into a fairy-tale world. That often means YA stories give us some of the most profound stories of human relationships. Howl’s Moving Castle is a story of this caliber. (Source)

David Heinemeier HanssonThis is next on my list of technical books to read! Refactoring is one of two programming books that I’ve read multiple times (the other is Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns), and I’m due for another reading. What perfect time then to dive into Martin Fowler’s long anticipated 2nd edition, now using JavaScript rather than Java for the code examples. Like the stoic books, I read Refactoring and... (Source)

Tyler CowenIf you had to pick one individual who was the sharpest and most prescient commentator on the web and the internet it would be Clay. (Source)

Lev GrossmanShirky is simply the best person at articulating what’s very weird and new about what’s going on. (Source)

Alan Rusbridger Read 2 We the Media by Dan Gillmor Read (Source)

Michael DellThe authors make a case for a future world that is better, not worse, than the one we inherited. That may seem far-fetched given the problems we see flashing across our screens every day. But there is reason for optimism, and it starts and ends with one of my favorite things, technology. (Source)

Dominic Steil[One of the books that had the biggest impact on .] (Source)

Kirk BorneGreat book for Business Analytics and for building #AnalyticThinking >> “#DataScience for Business — What You Need to Know about #DataMining and Data-Analytic Thinking”: https://t.co/e9rAFnVYYQ #BigData #MachineLearning #DataStrategy #AnalyticsStrategy #Algorithms https://t.co/yEblfU2MZd (Source)

Joseph NyeThis is intriguing, because when you look at the enormous opportunities that the Internet has presented – economic efficiency, great communication – we generally think of the positive side. But what Clarke and Knake point out is that as we open these opportunities we also make ourselves vulnerable to their disruption. For example, you have the capacity to do damage in the physical world just by... (Source)

Auston BunsenI’m actually a self-taught programmer, so these books have really helped me with practical skills that I could put to use & yield results. The return on investment for these kinds of books is off the charts for me! (Source)

Erik RostadHere is something that recently helped me. It comes from the book A Mind at Play by Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman. I'll quote the passage directly and then describe how it helped me: "What does information really measure? It measures the uncertainty we overcome. It measure our chances of learning something we haven't yet learned. Or, more specifically: when one thing carries information about... (Source)

Bryan Johnson[Bryan Johnson recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)

James StanleyI very much enjoyed reading "Programming Pearls" by John Bentley. Most of the software we write is trying to solve fairly large and ill-defined problems in a way that minimises development cost, but Programming Pearls presents a lot of small, well-defined problems, and talks through their solutions in ways that minimise machine resource usage. There are lots of good "a-ha" moments when reading... (Source)

Juliette AristidesNicholas Carr talks at length about what is gained and lost by technological progress. Reading and writing enlarged people’s sympathetic response and enriched their lives even when the book was put aside. One could say the same thing about drawing. (Source)

Andra ZahariaWhile I was thinking of the best books to add to this short list, I realized that not even half of them are directly related to digital marketing. This is because I believe that the best marketers are people who understand human nature deeply and aim to bring out the best in it. Call me naive, but that’s how I see it. If I were to want to pursue a career in marketing, I’d read [...] The Shallows. (Source)

Andrew ChenNow starting the section now these information empires eventually got dismantled, by the internet, cable, and the government antitrust efforts on the 1950s! Awesome book so far (Source)

Seth GodinThis one really stuck with me--a top level analysis of how changes in media change the culture and change the structure of industry. (Source)

Nicholas CarrIf The Information is a sprawling, sweeping story of how information has changed over time, one thing it doesn’t get into is the commercial nature of information as a good that is bought and sold. That’s the story Tim Wu tells in The Master Switch. His basic argument is that whenever a new communication medium arises, a similar pattern occurs. The technology starts off as a hobbyist’s passion,... (Source)

Richard BejtlichIn 2002 I reviewed Kevin Mitnick's first book, The Art of Deception. In 2005 I reviewed his second book, The Art of Intrusion. I gave both books four stars. Mitnick's newest book, however, with long-time co-author Bill Simon, is a cut above their previous collaborations and earns five stars. As far as I can tell (and I am no Mitnick expert, despite reading almost all previous texts mentioning... (Source)

Antonio EramThis book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. (Source)

Nick JanetakisI'm going to start reading Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick this week. I used to go to 2600 meetings back when he was arrested for wire fraud and other hacking related shenanigans in the mid 1990s. I'm fascinated by things like social engineering and language in general. In the end, I just want to be entertained by his stories. For someone who is into computer programming, a book like this... (Source)

Marvin LiaoMy list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make... (Source)

Ivan KvI have finally finished reading your book (Industries of the Future), @AlecJRoss... My favorite read this year. #VR #AI #Genomics #cybersecurity #BigData #future https://t.co/qHsIYABkWS (Source)

Kevin Kelly[The author] was the one who introduced the term 'future shock' which was that people would actually have like a resistance or a reaction to the future. (Source)

Andy SternI think Future Shock actually did foretell the future, because it talks about how in essence we're building a new civilisation in front of our eyes. How no group of people have ever been so shocked by the ever-changing realities that have completely altered media, lifestyles, culture and work. In some ways they were the canary that was singing about a future that they saw well before anyone quite... (Source)

The CEO Library Community (through anonymous form)One of the best 3 books I've read in 2019 (Source)

Bill GatesThing Explainer is filled with cool basic knowledge about how the world works. If one of Munroe’s drawings inspires you to go learn more about a subject—including a few extra terms—then he will have done his job. He has written a wonderful guide for curious minds. (Source)

Kate Lee (St Paul's Girls' School)It’s about how to explain things using the simplest terms you possibly can, using only the top 1,000 words in the English language. It’s just ingenious. So many people will try and sound clever by using lots of fancy words, but this is exact opposite. It is being clever by using the most straightforward language you possibly can, without sacrificing accuracy. It’s beautifully drawn and... (Source)

Paula BoddingtonHow the use of algorithms has affected people’s lives and occasionally ruined them. (Source)

Ramesh SrinivasanThis book is a really fantastic analysis of how quantification, the collection of data, the modelling around data, the predictions made by using data, the algorithmic and quantifiable ways of predicting behaviour based on data, are all built by elites for elites and end up, quite frankly, screwing over everybody else. (Source)

Alvin LindsayCEO of ClickFunnels GIVES away his best 7 funnels! he just paid for your book (where do you want it shipped?) https://t.co/meFLMLNrb0 😃 https://t.co/97R3MPo3yd (Source)

Matthew BarbyOn the other side of things, which is a bit more like inspirational and a bit more tactical, it would probably be Rise of the Robots. Focuses all on the rise of artificial intelligence. Has some really interesting pieces on how people are disrupting in a bunch of different verticals for like ED Tech, health, 3D printing, and a bunch of other areas, and the impact that that has on jobs in the... (Source)

Santiago BasultoFounders at Work and Coders at Work are really good ones too. They’re filled with interesting and inspiring stories. (Source)

Vicki BoykisIt’s about how those people got into programming and how they think about it. It’s a very conversational book that really helps you to learn the culture of this industry you’re coming into, and some of its terminology. (Source)