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Josh Waitzkin's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Josh Waitzkin recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Josh Waitzkin's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

For Whom the Bell Tolls book cover1

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway

4.0
Hemingway's classic novel of the Spanish Civil War. In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war; three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. Surpassing hi
Green Hills of Africa: The Hemingway Library Edition book cover2

Green Hills of Africa: The Hemingway Library Edition

Ernest Hemingway

4.0
The most intimate and elaborately enhanced addition to the Hemingway Library series: Hemingway's memoir of his safari across the Serengeti; presented with archival material from the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library, and with the never-before-published safari journal of Hemingway's second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.

First published in 1935, Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's
The Dharma Bums book cover3

The Dharma Bums

Jack Kerouac

4.1
Two ebullient young men search for Truth the Zen way: from marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, and "yabyum" in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude in the high Sierras and a vigil atop Desolation Peak in Washington State. Published just a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums is sparked by Kerouac's expansiveness, humor, and a contagious zest for
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values book cover4

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Robert M Pirsig

4.1
This lyrical, evocative, thought-provoking journal of a man's quest for truth - and for himself - has touched and changed an entire generation, and is ready to reach out to a new one. At its heart, the story is all too simple: a man and his son take a motorcycle trip across America. But this is not a simple trip at all, for around every corner, through mountain and desert, wind and rain, and seari
Shantaram book cover5

Shantaram

Gregory David Roberts

4.4
"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured."

So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security pri