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Reid Hoffman's Top Book Recommendations

CEO/LinkedIn

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

The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3) book cover1

The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)

J.R.R. Tolkien

4.7
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. A
The Gene: An Intimate History book cover2

The Gene: An Intimate History

Siddhartha Mukherjee

4.5
Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime book cover3

Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime

Julian Guthrie

4.2
An unforgettable story of four women who, through grit and ingenuity, became stars in the cutthroat, high-stakes, male dominated world of venture capital in Silicon Valley, and helped build some of the foremost companies of our time.

In Alpha Girls, award-winning journalist Julian Guthrie takes readers behind the closed doors of venture capital, an industry that transforms economies and shapes h
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future book cover4

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Peter Thiel

4.3
If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.

Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation,
The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World book cover5

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

Melinda Gates

4.5
A debut from Forbes' third most powerful woman in the world, Melinda Gates, a timely and necessary call to action for women's empowerment.

For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission. Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become incr
So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love book cover6

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

Cal Newport

4.3
In an unorthodox approach, Georgetown University professor Cal Newport debunks the long-held belief that "follow your passion" is good advice, and sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving their careers.

Not only are pre-existing passions rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work, but a focus on passion over skill can be dangerous, leadi
Snow Crash book cover7

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson

4.1
In the near future, Americans excel at only two things: writing software and delivering pizza in less than 30 minutes.

Franchises line the Los Angeles freeway as far as the eye can see: Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates, Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza, Incorporated. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the well-guarded borders of the autonomous city-states that la
Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age book cover8

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age

Brad Smith, Carol Ann Browne, Bill Gates

4.2
With a foreword by Bill Gates

From Microsoft's President and one of the tech industry's wisest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates.

Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: when your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world y
Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs book cover9

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

John Doerr

4.3
Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth--and how it can help any organization thrive.

In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin h
The Industries of the Future book cover10

The Industries of the Future

Alec Ross

4.2
This book answers the question: 'What's next?' The Internet had a world-changing impact on businesses and the global community over the twenty years from 1994 to 2014. In the next ten years, change will happen even faster.

As Hillary Clinton's Senior Advisor for Innovation, Alec Ross travelled nearly a million miles to forty-one countries, the equivalent of two round-trips to the moon. From refuge
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind book cover11

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

4.5
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.

How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism?
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements book cover12

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Eric Hoffer

4.4
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer -- the first and most famous of his books -- was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, T
13

This Brave New World: India, China, and the United States

Anja Manuel

4.2
“Incisive...lively and accessible...Manuel shows us that an optimistic path is possible: we can bring China and India along as partners.” —San Francisco Chronicle

In the next decade and a half, China and India will become two of the world’s indispensable powers—whether they rise peacefully or not. During that time, Asia will surpass the combined strength of North America and Europe in economic migh
14

The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them-And They Shape Us

Ray Fisman, Tim Sullivan

3.9
America’s economic revolution isn’t just driven by technology. It’s about markets.

The past twenty-five years have witnessed a remarkable shift in how we get the stuff we want. If you’ve ever owned a business, rented an apartment, or shopped online, you’ve had a front-row seat for this revolution-in-progress. Breakthrough companies like Amazon and Uber have disrupted the old ways and made the econo
15

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks

Joshua Cooper Ramo

4.0
Endless terror. Refugee waves. An unfixable global economy. Surprising election results. New billion-dollar fortunes. Miracle medical advances. What if they were all connected? What if you could understand why?

The Seventh Sense is the story of what all of today's successful figures see and feel: the forces that are invisible to most of us but explain everything from explosive technological change
The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology book cover16

The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

Robert Wright

4.3
Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics--as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies. Illustrations.
The Evolution of God book cover17

The Evolution of God

Robert Wright

4.2
In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure
18

More Human: Designing a World Where People Come First

Scott Hilton, Steve,Bade, Jason,Bade

3.9
Humans don’t always behave as you expect them to, sometimes their responses and actions are completely irrational – we don’t always make perfect decisions – but that’s the model we base everything on. But why? If we design our systems, our government, all the products and services we use for perfect, rational people, is it any wonder why they aren’t working?


With ever increasing globalisation and t
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny book cover19

Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

Robert Wright

3.6
20

The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise

Eric Ries

4.2
Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses ranging from established companies to early-stage startups to grow revenues, drive innovation, and emerge as truly modern organizations poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the 21st century.

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of
The Art of War book cover21
For more than two thousand years, The Art of War has stood as a cornerstone of Chinese culture-a lucid epigrammatic text that reveals as much about human psychology, politics, and economics as it does about battlefield strategy. The influence of Sun-tzu's text has grown tremendously in the West in recent years, with military leaders, politicians, and corporate executives alike finding valuable ins
Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values book cover22

Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values

Fred Kofman

4.5
More and more business leaders are catching on to an often-overlooked fact: consciousness is our basic faculty for survival and success. Without it, we forget what's important to us and lose sight of the steps we might take to reach those goals. Conscious business, explains Fred Kofman, means shining this awareness on every area of your work: in recognizing the needs of others and expressing your
23

Connected Strategy: Building Continuous Customer Relationships for Competitive Advantage

Nicolaj Siggelkow, Christian Terwiesch

4.3
24

The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions . . . and Created Plenty of Controversy

Leigh Gallagher

4.1
This is the remarkable behind-the-scenes story of the creation and growth of Airbnb, the online hotel platform that has become, in under a decade, the largest provider of accommodations in the world. At first just the whacky idea of co-founder CEO Brian Chesky, Airbnb has disrupted the $500 billion hotel industry, its $25.5 billion valuation is now equal to Hilton and larger than Marriott. Airbnb
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus book cover25

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Ludwig Wittgenstein

4.3
Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein published during his life. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme brilliance, it captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers. For Wittgenstein, logic was something we use to conquer a reality which i
On War book cover26

On War

Carl von Clausewitz

4.3
Carl von Clausewitz's On War has been called, "not simply the greatest, but the only truly great book on war." It is an extraordinary attempt to construct an all-embracing theory of how war works. Its coherence and ambition are unmatched by other military literature. On War is full of sharp observation, biting irony, and memorable phrases, the most famous being, "War is a continuation of politics