100 Best Survey Books of All Time

Barack Obama

Former USA President

Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads. [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Both Melinda and I read this one, and it has sparked lots of great conversations at our dinner table. Harari takes on a daunting challenge: to tell the entire history of the human race in just 400 pages. He also writes about our species today and how artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and other technologies will change us in the future. Although I found things to disagree with—especially Harari’s claim that humans were better off before we started farming—I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species. [source]

Reid Hoffman

CEO/LinkedIn

A grand theory of humanity. [source]

Arianna Huffington

Founder/The Huffington Post

I find this book so inspirational and instructive, it lives on my nightstand. [source]

Chip Conley

I have given this book away to a number of people. [source]

Marvin Liao

Partner/500 Startups

My 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 sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]

Brian Leiter

Yes, I think that’s right. It touches on almost all Nietzsche’s central concerns – on truth, on the nature of philosophy, on morality, on what’s wrong with morality, will to power. [source]

Simon Critchley

What did you think of it then? We should talk about your reaction to it! [source]

Bill Liao

The human world occurs in language so best get good at it! [source]

Catherine Plano

The one that really resonates with me and still to this day is The Power of NOW from Eckhart Tolle because as an entrepreneur we get so caught up in the future that we fail to be 'present'. The reality of it all when you really think about it - the present is all we have that is real, it requires no effort, nor time. I practice this daily, if I feel uncomfortable then I know I am trying too hard and not being present but when I am being present it is easier to think about what I have to do right now, because now is all that matters. [source]

Darrah Brustein

Others include The Power Of Now which is powerful reminder that all we have is the present and helps give you meaningful ways to live in it, not in the past or the future. [source]

Reid Hoffman

CEO/LinkedIn

Reid read Carl von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu as a boy, which informed his strategic thinking. [source]

Evan Spiegel

After meeting Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel immediately bought every Snapchat employee a copy of 'The Art Of War'. [source]

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist, Author & Science Communicator

Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? … The Art of War (Sun Tsu) to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. [source]

Marc Andreessen

Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz

Best (?) walk through the ancient/current philosophy of Stoicism. You can't control other people but you can control yourself, so do that. [source]

Jason Fried

Co-Founder/Basecamp

The book that had the biggest impact on me this year was “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy”. [source]

Phil Libin

CEO/Evernote

A very interesting read. [source]

James Altucher

Founder/StockPickr

You ask about success. To be successful you have to avoid being “fragile” – the idea that if something hurts you, you let collapse completely. You also have to avoid simply being resilient. Bouncing back is not enough. Antifragile is when something tries to hurt you and you come back stronger. That is real life business. That is real life success. Nassim focuses on the economy. But when I read the book I kept asking myself, “how can I apply this to the areas of my life where I feel most fragile?” [source]

Marvin Liao

Partner/500 Startups

My 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 sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]

Vlad Tenev

The general concept is applicable to many fields beyond biology, for instance finance, economics and monetary policy. [source]

Angela Duckworth

Author

Ryan Holiday is among the most psychologically wise writers I know. I'm a fan of all of his work, including this new gem, Stillness is the Key. If you struggle—as I do—to find your center in the increasingly noisy and frenetic world we live in, then this book is for you. [source]

Arianna Huffington

Founder/The Huffington Post

Whether you are an athlete, an investor, a writer or an entrepreneur, this little but wise and soulful book will open the door to a healthier, less anxious and more productive life and career. [source]

Cal Newport

Author

Some authors give advice. Ryan Holiday distills wisdom. This book is a must read for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the frenetic demands of modern life. [source]

Steve Jobs

Founder/Apple

One book in particular stayed with Jobs his entire life, and Isaacson noted that it was the only book Jobs had downloaded on his iPad 2: “Autobiography of a Yogi,” “the guide to meditation and spirituality that he had first read as a teenager,” Isaacson writes, “then re-read in India and had read once a year ever since.” [source]

Marc Benioff

CEO/Salesforce

If you haven't read it, and if you want to understand Steve Jobs, it's a goood idea to dip into this book. [source]

Dan Engle

One of the more impactful books for me when I was living down in the jungle and experiencing more of the deeper reflections through the medicine space. [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

I read The Bhagavad Gita, which is something I wasn’t ready for before, but glad to finally understand. [source]

Bernard Tan

The “Tao Te King” by Lao Tzu probably resonated with me the strongest, but others like the “Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “Bhagavad Gita” or Zen Buddhist scriptures were also real eye-openers, even for a non-religious person like myself. [source]

Bill Liao

The human world occurs in language so best get good at it! [source]

David Heinemeier Hansson

Camus’ philosophical exposition of absurdity, suicide in the face of meaninglessness, and other cherry topics that continue on from his fictional work in novels like The Stranger. It’s surprisingly readable, unlike many other mid 20th century philosophers, yet no less deep or pointy. It’s a great follow-up, as an original text, to that book The Age of Absurdity, I recommended last year. Still working through it. [source]

Kenan Malik

The Myth of Sisyphus is a small work, but Camus’s meditation on faith and fate has personally been hugely important in developing my ideas. Writing in the embers of World War II, Camus confronts in The Myth of Sisyphus both the tragedy of recent history and what he sees as the absurdity of the human condition. There is, he observes, a chasm between the human need for meaning and what he calls “the unreasonable silence of the world”. Religion is a means of bridging that chasm, but a dishonest one. “I don’t know if the world has any meaning that transcends it,” he writes. “But I know that I do not know this meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.” [source]

Antonio Eram

This book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. [source]

Oliver Burkeman

This is a very thin book but a mind-blowing one. In many ways it was part of my motivation to write my book. Alan Watts was a philosophical populariser. He called himself a “spiritual entertainer”, and went around the world giving lectures and writing popular books about Eastern philosophies such as Zen Buddhism and Taoism. This book is about non-dualism – the theory that in some sense, everything is one. It’s the principle encapsulated in the symbols of yin and yang. These days it is often seen as cheesy and New Age. But there’s vastly more to it than that. [source]

Naval Ravikant

CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList

Great book. I really like how it summarizes some of the larger themes of history. Very incisive and, unlike most history books, is actually kind of small and it covers a lot of ground. [source]

Ray Dalio

Founder/Bridgewater Associates

The book I’d give every graduating senior in college or high school would be 'Lessons From History'. This is the Durants, they were maybe the greatest historians of all time. Anyway, of 5,000 years of history, probably wrote 5,000 pages on it, and they took this book - I think it’s 104 pages - and they took the themes of history, it could be from religion, natural resources, who knows, each one of these things, and they looked at it for themes of history through history. I think that, that would be great. [source]

Kevin Systrom

A great book. [source]

Peter Attia

Founder/Attia Medical

Modulating hormones as necessary - we’ve not really talked about that. Fixing anything that needs to be fixed, on top of that pharmacologically, and I’m a huge proponent of pharmacotherapy under the right setting. The final component is managing your stress. So as a guy who’s thinking about this, I became really interested after actually reading Dan Harris’s book. [source]

Chelsea Frank

I read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness. [source]

Chris Goward

I remember reading 10% Happier by Dan Harris on one of my many flights to speak at a conference a couple years ago. I had been practicing meditation for a few years, and had tried to get deeper into learning about it, I struggled with the religious aspect many Buddhist authors brought, which seemed to bring more confusion than clarity. The way Dan described his process of skepticism and discovery of the practical benefits without religion involved was a breath of fresh air. [source]

Bogdan Lucaciu

I recently read “The Book of Joy”. It’s a series of dialogues between Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu (beautifully narrated in the audio version). They share their view on living a happy life in the face of adversity. The book brought profound clarity on topics like compassion, gratitude, generosity, and it deeply resonated with my worldview. If there’s one book you end up reading from my list, I hope it’s this one. [source]

Chelsea Frank

I read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness. [source]

Brad Feld

Co-Founder/Foundry Group

I think every entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur should read the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was written in the 1970s by a guy named Robert Pirsig. It was his first book, it's kind of a hippie philosophy treatised journey. The word that sort of came out of it was Chautauqua, he's like having a conversation with his son as they do a motorcycle trip across the country, and it's just this incredible treatise on philosophy, product, quality, accomplishing what your goal is, against the backdrop of the narrator, the author, going crazy and having a psychotic break. And so it's this very powerful mix of accessible philosophy, combined with this pretty captivating journey in a book that, again, anybody who builds anything, there's so much in it that's so worth reading and just soaking in. But it's not what you'd expect, it's not a "here's how you do it", you have to read it slowly and think about it. So, it's one of my favorites. [source]

Drew Houston

CEO/Dropbox

There are engineers who dismiss all these things that can’t be fit into an algorithm, or that don’t have some kind of mathematical rigor underpinning them, this book is about that question. [source]

Tyler Cowen

Founder/Marginal Revolution University

Honorable mentions: Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and The Joy of Sex, all given to me by my mother. I believe they helped inculcate some of the 1960s-70s ethos of individual freedom into my thinking. [source]

Kevin Lamping

Not a business book, but *The Book* is one that I can say shines out among the other stars. It's hard to pick a book that's had the most impact on me, because they always have some effect. But there was something so calming, so reassuring about *The Book* that really helped me in a time of lots of self-doubt. I know this is supposed to focus on less "spiritual" books, and I'm not a religious guy, but I really enjoyed the notions put forth by *The Book*. Watts, the author, has some really profound thinking, and his writing guides you through Eastern thought for Western thinkers. I highly recommend this book for anyone searching for answers to the unknown. [source]

Kyle Russell

Book 20 Lesson: Distinction is not separation. To understand something, you must also understand its relationships with other parts of the environment or context around it. https://t.co/DB453aY565 [source]

Andra Zaharia

I’ve gone through quite a few experiences brought on or shaped by what I’ve learned from books. … a more frivolous example is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying. I read this one when moving apartments a few years ago and it made me throw or give away ⅓ of my stuff. The result: freeing up space, both physical and mental, and acquiring some home organizing skills that have stuck with me ever since. My home is tidier and my mind is clearer because of this book. [source]

Annie Loves Covfefe

@Benny29143790 @Thereal_ssteele Oh how I love Kondo cleaning. Her first book is fantastic too!! [source]

Benjamin Spall

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo … I started reading on vacation. I interviewed Marie for my own book and while the translation is somewhat quirky in places, her book is worth the hype. [source]

Timothy Ferriss

Author & Entrepreneur

This is a letter from Stoic heavyweight Seneca the Younger — who lived a mere 2,000 years or so ago — to his friend Lucilius. It’s from a collection of letters that comprise, effectively, my favorite book of all time. I’ve read it dozens of times, and I loved it so much that I turned it into The Tao of Seneca, a three-volume set of audiobooks. [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

After Marcus Aurelius, this is one of my favorite books. While Marcus wrote mainly for himself, Seneca had no trouble advising and aiding others. In fact, that was his job—he was Nero’s tutor, tasked with reducing the terrible impulses of a terrible man. His advice on grief, on wealth, on power, on religion, and on life are always there when you need them. [source]

Jerzy Gregorek

From this book, I learned self-mastery: to constantly improve myself so I would be ready for any possible disaster. I also learned that when disaster happens, it means that something is being asked of me. I need to improve. [source]

Bryan Van Norden

It’s very readable even if you aren’t a professional philosopher. Take the story of ‘The Ring of Gyges,’ which raises the question of whether you would continue to act like a good person if you had a ring of invisibility that let you get away with doing whatever you wanted to do. That’s a fascinating thought experiment that anybody can appreciate. [source]

David Heinemeier Hansson

I’m about a third through this and still can’t tell whether Plato is making a mockery of Socrates ideas for the idyllic society or not. So many of the arguments presented as Socrates’ are so tortured and with so disconnected leaps of logic that it’s hard to take it at face value. Yet still, it’s good fun to follow the dialogue. It reads more like a play than a book, and again, immensely accessible. It’s fun to see the lines that continue from a book like this to the considerations of the Stoics all the way to Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations and then onto a modern critique and history in that Debt: First 5,000 Years. A conversation spanning millennia. [source]

Jonathan Glover

It contains a tremendous amount of nonsense about what the ideal society would be like. But it is an unmissable book because of Socrates. He invented the method of doing and teaching philosophy that has never been improved on. [source]

Rick Rubin

It’s a great book if you’ve never meditated, and if you’ve been meditating for 50 years. [source]

Henry Medine

I promote range and diversity. Thus, I recommend readers to expose themselves to as many different topics as possible. I usually have 2-4 books I refer back to at any given time. They range in topics from management, art, spirituality and philosophy. Trying to get the engineering thing going but don't much of a mind for science. [source]

Naval Ravikant

CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList

So good that it may as well be non-fiction. [source]

Bryan Johnson

Love this book. [source]

David Blaine

He says, 'Love is stronger than hate. Soft is stronger than hard. Water is stronger than stone.' [source]

Sam Harris

Just a great example of how English should be written and just a great voice to have in your head as a result. [source]

Peter Atkins

It reviews how people have really grappled in a seemingly very intelligent way with very deep questions. [source]

Steve Jurvetson

Steve Jurvetson recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show". [source]

Seth Godin

Author, Marketer, Entrepreneur

In the last week, I discovered that at least two of my smart friends hadn't read Godel, Escher, Bach. They have now. You should too. [source]

Cory Zue

More recently books like Godel, Escher, Bach and Sapiens have influenced my thinking a lot. [source]

Carlos Fraenkel

Reading Plato can be a Socratic exercise because you’re reading a text that is part of the canon of philosophy but it advances views that are opposed to everything you believe in. [source]

Kenan Malik

Unlike earlier Greek philosophers, such as Diagoras and Democritus, Plato believed in the divine, and much of his philosophy flowed from his concept of a transcendental reality. He provided the resources for the later Christian view of goodness as a transcendental quality. But in his dialogue Euthyphro he also provides the classic argument against looking to God as the source of moral values, an argument that still resonates 2,000 years later. [source]

M M McCabe

The philosophical content creeps up on you when you think all this is merely a rhetorical flourish: it’s completely extraordinary. [source]

Arianna Huffington

Founder/The Huffington Post

Great Thrive Questionnaire by @smlafleur, founder of M.M.LaFleur. On the book that changed her life, The Second Sex: "it changed my entire perception about what it means to be a woman, and it may be the unconscious reason behind why I started my company." https://t.co/tudVOb28J2 [source]

Belinda Jack

In making a distinction between sex and gender she drew attention to how much of what women had to contend with was actually something that society imposes. [source]

Erica Jong

The French literary world is incredibly sexist and here was one of their darlings pointing out how much they discriminate. [source]

Steve Jobs

Founder/Apple

often used the methods found in this book to center himself during difficult moments in his career. He was such an avid practitioner that he considered going to Japan to continue his practice, but was advised against it. [source]

Kevin Rose

Co-founder/Digg

Isn’t a religious book, but more on self-realization, study on yourself, breathing exercises, relaxation and understanding human nature. Really cool book, very short read and you will really enjoy reading. [source]

Andy Puddicombe

I really think it’s one of the best books on the planet. Every time I read it, even now when I reckon I’ve read it more than 40 or 50 times, it still has the effect of pulling me out of everyday thinking, out of everyday life, and making me see the world in a very different way. [source]

Jonathan Haidt

The Dhammapada is one of the greatest psychological works ever written, and certainly one of the greatest before 1900. It is masterful in its understanding of the nature of consciousness, and in particular the way we are always striving and never satisfied. You can turn to it – and people have turned to it throughout the ages – at times of trouble, at times of disappointment, at times of loss, and it takes you out of yourself. It shows you that your problems, your feelings, are just timeless manifestations of the human condition. It also gives specific recommendations for how to deal with those problems, which is to let go, to accept, and to work on yourself. So I think this is a kind of tonic that we ambitious Westerners often need to hear. [source]

Dr. Gabor Maté

The Buddhist collection of sayings. And it begins with, basically, the idea that we create the world with our minds. [source]

Johanna Hanink

The main subject of his Histories is the Persian invasion of Greece, but he does a lot more than just write about the Greco-Persian wars. He’s very interested in ethnography and documenting the specificities of different cultures beyond Greece [source]

Timothy Garton Ash

He is the father of us all. I read it when I was at school and he’s really the first one who goes around with his eyes and ears and notebook open, recording all these fantastic stories and trying to put it all together to work out what happened and why. [source]

Antonio Eram

This book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. [source]

Brian Leiter

I don’t know I would single it out as the masterpiece, but it’s a fascinating book which follows on many of the themes of Beyond Good and Evil. It’s unusual because it’s less aphoristic, but rather three essays. The essays have more structure and extended argumentation than is typical in most of Nietzsche’s works. [source]

Bryan Callen

Of course, I read Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality, etc, where the truths and the truisms are really cut and dried in a lot of ways. It's the equivalent of, I guess, intellectual red meat. [source]

Adrian Moore

This is the greatest philosophical book of all time. This is Kant’s masterpiece. [source]

Luciano Floridi

I find reading Kant a bit like understanding cricket as a foreigner: hard to get at first, but once you get it, it’s very enjoyable. [source]

Simon Blackburn

An illuminating way to think of the Critique is as a kind of prolonged wrestling match with Hume. [source]

Alex Bellos

Unlike Ifrah, Charles Seife is a brilliant popular science writer who has here written the ‘biography’ of zero. And even though he doesn’t talk that much about India, it works well as a handbook to Ifrah’s sections on India. Because Seife talks about how zero is mathematically very close to the idea of infinity, which is another mathematical idea that the Indians thought about differently. Seife gives you the context and it explains why, really, without zero, you can’t do anything. The difficulty of understanding zero is similar to the difficulty of understanding infinity. The Greeks had no zero, Roman numerals have no zero, and they had no infinity. He plays with this idea that we were afraid of infinity and then gradually we learnt not to be afraid of it. [source]

Bryan Johnson

Chronicles how hard it was for humanity to come up with and hold onto the concept of zero. No zero, no math. No zero, no engineering. No zero, no modern world as we know it... [source]

Marc Andreessen

Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz

How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love—All versions of a bigger question: How do you live? [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

Montaigne is one of humanities greatest treasures. If you've not read any of his essays or Sarah Bakewell's magnificent book How To Live … you are missing out. [source]

Austin Kleon

Book that introduced me to one of my new favorite thinkers: Sarah Bakewell’s How To Live: Or A Life Of Montaigne. [source]

Jonathan Sumption

The best reason for reading Hobbes is that no other philosopher has ever used the English language to such powerful effect. It is a really remarkable feat of dialectic. You find yourself agreeing with him at each stage of the reasoning as he builds up his case then, quite suddenly, you find that you’ve arrived at a conclusion which seems intolerable. [source]

Jonathan Wolff

Written more than three-and-a-half centuries ago in the shadow of the English Civil War, Leviathan remains a profound and relevant study. [source]

Michael Peel

The idea of ‘the war of all against all’, what a man wins through strength is what he gets, has parallels in modern Nigeria. [source]