Book Ratings -- Adam Chlipala

Alpha

If I had limited space for sending my past self a list of authors to pay attention to, these would make the cut.

Roberto Bolaño
great 2666[Wikipedia]
good The Savage Detectives[Wikipedia]
good The Skating Rink[Wikipedia]

Douglas Coupland
great Microserfs[Wikipedia]
good Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture[Wikipedia]
good Generation A[Wikipedia]
good JPod[Wikipedia]
good Hey Nostradamus![Wikipedia]
good Miss Wyoming[Wikipedia]

Helen DeWitt
great The Last Samurai[Wikipedia]
good Some Trick: Thirteen Stories

Charles Dickens
great David Copperfield[Wikipedia]
great Great Expectations[Wikipedia]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
great The Idiot[Wikipedia]
great Demons/The Possessed[Wikipedia]
great The Brothers Karamazov[Wikipedia]
great Crime and Punishment[Wikipedia]
great The Adolescent/A Raw Youth[Wikipedia]
great The Gambler[Wikipedia]
good Netochka Nezvanovna[Wikipedia]
good The Village of Stepanchikovo[Wikipedia]
good The House of the Dead[Wikipedia]
good Notes From the Underground[Wikipedia]
good Short stories
bad The Double[Wikipedia] is horrible. Anything else is worth reading.

Umberto Eco
great Foucault's Pendulum[Wikipedia]
great The Prague Cemetery[Wikipedia]
great Baudolino[Wikipedia]
good The Name of the Rose[Wikipedia]
good The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana[Wikipedia]
good Numero Zero[Wikipedia]
bad The Island of the Day Before[Wikipedia]

Ralph Ellison
great Invisible Man[Wikipedia]

Neil Gaiman
great American Gods[Wikipedia]
good The Annotated Sandman, Vol. 1[Wikipedia]
good The Annotated Sandman, Vol. 2[Wikipedia]
good The Annotated Sandman, Vol. 3[Wikipedia]
good Anansi Boys[Wikipedia]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
great The Sorrows of Young Werther[Wikipedia]
great Faust[Wikipedia]
good Faust: Part Two[Wikipedia]
good Elective Affinities[Wikipedia]

Mark Haddon
great The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time[Wikipedia]
good A Spot of Bother[Wikipedia]

Joseph Heller
great Catch-22[Wikipedia]
great Something Happened[Wikipedia]
good Closing Time[Wikipedia]
good Picture This[Wikipedia]
good Now and Then[Wikipedia]
good Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man[Wikipedia]
bad God Knows[Wikipedia]

Hermann Hesse
great Steppenwolf[Wikipedia]
great Demian[Wikipedia]
good Narcissus and Goldmund[Wikipedia]
good Gertrude[Wikipedia]
good Beneath the Wheel[Wikipedia]
good Peter Camenzind[Wikipedia]
good Rosshalde
bad The Glass Bead Game[Wikipedia]
bad Siddartha[Wikipedia]
bad Journey to the East[Wikipedia]
bad Strange News from Another Star[Wikipedia]

John Irving
great The Hotel New Hampshire[Wikipedia]
great A Prayer for Owen Meany[Wikipedia]
great The Cider House Rules[Wikipedia]
great A Son of the Circus[Wikipedia]
great A Widow for One Year[Wikipedia]
great The Water Method Man[Wikipedia]
good The World According to Garp[Wikipedia]
good Until I Find You[Wikipedia]
good The 158-Pound Marriage[Wikipedia]
good Setting Free the Bears[Wikipedia]
good The Fourth Hand
good Last Night in Twisted River[Wikipedia]
good Trying to Save Piggy Sneed[Wikipedia]
good The Imaginary Girlfriend
good Avenue of Mysteries[Wikipedia]

Cixin Liu
great The Three-Body Problem[Wikipedia]
great The Dark Forest[Wikipedia]
great Death's End[Wikipedia]
good Supernova Era[Wikipedia]

H. P. Lovecraft
great The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft
great The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham

Henry Miller
great Sexus[Wikipedia]
great Plexus[Wikipedia]
great Nexus[Wikipedia]
good Moloch
good Tropic of Capricorn[Wikipedia]
good Tropic of Cancer[Wikipedia]
good The Colossus of Maroussi
good The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
bad Black Spring[Wikipedia]

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
great Watchmen: The Annotated Edition[Wikipedia]

Haruki Murakami
great 1Q84[Wikipedia]
great Norwegian Wood[Wikipedia]
great Kafka on the Shore[Wikipedia]
great Wind/Pinball
great A Wild Sheep Chase[Wikipedia]
great Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World[Wikipedia]
great South of the Border, West of the Sun[Wikipedia]
great The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle[Wikipedia]
good Sputnik Sweetheart[Wikipedia]

Thomas Pynchon
great Mason and Dixon[Wikipedia]
great Gravity's Rainbow[Wikipedia]
great Vineland[Wikipedia]
great V.[Wikipedia]
great Bleeding Edge[Wikipedia]
great The Crying of Lot 49[Wikipedia]
great Slow Learner[Wikipedia]
good Against the Day[Wikipedia]
good Inherent Vice[Wikipedia]

Salman Rushdie
great The Satanic Verses[Wikipedia]
good Midnight's Children[Wikipedia]

J.D. Salinger
great The Catcher in the Rye[Wikipedia]

Jean-Paul Sartre
great The Reprieve[Wikipedia]
great The Age of Reason[Wikipedia]
good The Wall[Wikipedia] (American collection of short stories)
good Nausea[Wikipedia]
bad Troubled Sleep[Wikipedia]

Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
great Illuminatus![Wikipedia]
bad Schrödinger's Cat[Wikipedia]

Neal Stephenson
great Cryptonomicon[Wikipedia]
great Snow Crash[Wikipedia]

Lev Tolstoy
great War and Peace[Wikipedia]
bad Anna Karenina[Wikipedia] was rather disappointing. It was full of absurd Christian conversions and pointless and detailed descriptions of social activities, without the redeeming qualities of War and Peace.

John Updike
great Rabbit is Rich[Wikipedia]
good Rabbit Redux[Wikipedia]
good Rabbit, Run[Wikipedia]
good Rabbit at Rest[Wikipedia]
good Licks of Love
good Bech: A Book[Wikipedia]
good The Witches of Eastwick[Wikipedia]

Vernor Vinge
great A Fire Upon the Deep[Wikipedia]
great A Deepness in the Sky[Wikipedia]
good The Peace War[Wikipedia]
good The Children of the Sky[Wikipedia]
good Rainbows End[Wikipedia]

David Foster Wallace
great Infinite Jest[Wikipedia]
great The Pale King[Wikipedia]
great Brief Interviews with Hideous Men[Wikipedia]
great Oblivion[Wikipedia]
great Girl with Curious Hair[Wikipedia]
great A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again[Wikipedia]
great Consider the Lobster[Wikipedia]
good Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity[Wikipedia]
good The Broom of the System[Wikipedia]

Tom Wolfe
great The Bonfire of the Vanities[Wikipedia]
great A Man In Full[Wikipedia]
good I am Charlotte Simmons[Wikipedia]
good Back to Blood[Wikipedia]

Nonfiction

I'm not going to bother comparing these books to each other. I'll just say that I found each worth reading.

Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson
great The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty
good Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty[Wikipedia]

Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi
good The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline

Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton
good Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality

Thomas Armstrong
good Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences

Bill Aulet
good Disciplined Entrepreneurship

Robert Axelrod
good The Evolution of Cooperation

Safi Bahcall
great Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries

Philip Ball
great How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology

E. Digby Baltzell
good Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
good Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty[Wikipedia]

Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc.
great The Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1958-1974

William Barrett
good Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy[Wikipedia]

Ananyo Bhattacharya
great The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann

David T. Beito, Peter Gordon, and Alexander Tabarrok
good The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society[Wikipedia]

Bill Bishop
great The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart

Christopher Boehm
great Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
good Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life[Wikipedia]

Jason Brennan
good Against Democracy[Wikipedia]
good Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know

David Brooks
great On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense[Wikipedia]
great Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There[Wikipedia]
good The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement[Wikipedia]
good The Road to Character[Wikipedia]

Frederick Brooks
good The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering[Wikipedia]
good The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist

Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
great Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
good The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

Marty Cagan
good Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

Pierre Cahuc and André Zylberberg
good The Natural Survival of Work: Job Creation and Job Destruction in a Growing Economy

Susan Cain
good Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking[Wikipedia]

T. Colin Campbell
great The China Study: Revised and Expanded Edition: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health[Wikipedia]
good The Low-Carb Fraud

Bryan Caplan
great The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
good Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think[Wikipedia]
good Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
good Don't Be a Feminist: Essays on Genuine Justice

Fritjof Capra
good The Tao of Physics[Wikipedia]
bad The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture[Wikipedia]

Dale Carnegie
good How to Win Friends and Influence People[Wikipedia]

Noam Chomsky
good Keeping the Rabble in Line
good Necessary Illusions[Wikipedia]
good Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order[Wikipedia]

Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending
good The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution[Wikipedia]

JL Collins
great The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life

Geoff Colvin
great Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will

Steven Conn
good Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century

Tyler Cowen
great Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation[Wikipedia]
good The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better[Wikipedia]
good An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies
good What Price Fame?
good The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
good Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
good Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero

Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross
good Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World

Daniel M. Davis
good The Compatibility Gene: How Our Bodies Fight Disease, Attract Others, and Define Our Selves

Richard Dawkins
great The Selfish Gene[Wikipedia]
great The Ancestor's Tale[Wikipedia]
good The God Delusion[Wikipedia]
good A Devil's Chaplain[Wikipedia]

Felicia Day
good You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)

Daniel Dennett
good Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon[Wikipedia]
good Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life[Wikipedia]
good Consciousness Explained[Wikipedia]

Anita Dhake
good Operation Enough!: How to Retire Remarkably Early

Jared Diamond
good Guns, Germs, and Steel[Wikipedia]

Lars A. Doucet
good Land is a Big Deal: Why rent is too high, wages too low, and what we can do about it

David Scott Duncan
good The Secret Lives of Customers: A Detective Story About Solving the Mystery of Customer Behavior

Kevin Dutton
great The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success

David Eagleman
great Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain[Wikipedia]

Umberto Eco
good How to Write a Thesis

Barbara Ehrenreich
good Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America[Wikipedia]

Jeremy England
good Every Life Is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things

Nathan Ensmenger
great The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise

Greg Epstein
good Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

Richard Epstein
good Simple Rules for a Complex World

Rip Esselstyn
good The Engine 2 Diet: The Texas Firefighter's 28-Day Save-Your-Life Plan that Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds

Zeke Faux
good Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall[Wikipedia]

Peter J. Feibelman
good A Ph.D. Is Not Enough!

Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
good Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist

Rob Fitzpatrick
good The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

Richard Florida
great Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life[Wikipedia]
good The Rise of the Creative Class--Revisited: Revised and Expanded[Wikipedia]
good The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class-and What We Can Do About It

Martin Ford
good Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

Robert Frank
good Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich

Benjamin Franklin
good The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin[Wikipedia]

Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman
good Free to Choose[Wikipedia]

Thomas L. Friedman
great The Lexus and the Olive Tree[Wikipedia]
great The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century[Wikipedia]
great From Beirut to Jerusalem[Wikipedia]
good Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America[Wikipedia]

Carol Frieze and Jeria Quesenberry
good Kicking Butt in Computer Science: Women in Computing at Carnegie Mellon University

William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins
good Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes

John Taylor Gatto
great The Underground History of American Education[Wikipedia]
good Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

Jon Gertner
great The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Bruce Cannon Gibney
good A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
good The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System

Elad Gil
good High Growth Handbook

Malcolm Gladwell
good Outliers: The Story of Success[Wikipedia]

Edward Glaeser
good Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

Mark Goldman
good City on the Edge: Buffalo, New York, 1900 - present

Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
good The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement[Wikipedia]

Gary B. Gorton
good Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007

Stephen Jay Gould
good The Mismeasure of Man[Wikipedia]

Henry Grabar
good Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

Michael J. Graetz
good 100 Million Unnecessary Returns: A Simple, Fair, and Competitive Tax Plan for the United States

Alan Greenspan
good The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World[Wikipedia]

Michael Greger
great How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
great How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older

Jonathan Haidt
great The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion[Wikipedia]
great The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom[Wikipedia]
good The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness[Wikipedia]

J. Storrs Hall
good Where Is My Flying Car?

Sam R. Hamburg
good Will Our Love Last?: A Couple's Road Map

Robin Hanson
good The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth[Wikipedia]

Yuval Noah Harari
great Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow[Wikipedia]
great Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind[Wikipedia]
good 21 Lessons for the 21st Century[Wikipedia]

Tim Harford
good Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy
good The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World[Wikipedia]

Paul Hawken
great Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

Malcolm Harris
good Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

Hamilton Helmer
good 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy

Joseph Henrich
great The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray
great The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life[Wikipedia]

Karen Ho
good Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh
good The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age

Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
great Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

Ben Horowitz
good The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
good What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

Philip K. Howard
good Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions

Neil Irwin
good How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World: The Definitive Guide to Adapting and Succeeding in High-Performance Careers

Robert Jackall
good Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers[Wikipedia]

Daniel Jackson
good The Essence of Software: Why Concepts Matter for Great Design

Jane Jacobs
good The Death and Life of Great American Cities[Wikipedia]

Garett Jones
great Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own[Wikipedia]
great 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less

Daniel Kahneman
great Thinking, Fast and Slow[Wikipedia]

Jerome Karabel
good The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton[Wikipedia]

Eric Kaufmann
good Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities

John Kay
great Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance

Melissa S. Kearney
good The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind

Stephanie Kelton
great The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy

Alec Klein
good A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools

Ezra Klein
great Why We're Polarized[Wikipedia]

Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz
good From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and the Lasting Triumph over Scarcity

Torkel Klingberg
good The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory

Steve Krug
good Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability[Wikipedia]

Ray Kurzweil
great The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence[Wikipedia]

David Kushner
great Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture[Wikipedia]

Gary Lachman
good Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson

George Lakoff and Rafael E. Nunez
good Where Mathematics Comes From[Wikipedia]

Susan Lammers
good Programmers at Work: Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry

Steven E. Landsburg
great The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics
great More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics

Nick Lane
good Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life[Wikipedia]
good The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life[Wikipedia]

Jaron Lanier
good Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

Agustin Lebron
great The Laws of Trading: A Trader's Guide to Better Decision-Making for Everyone

Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
good Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything[Wikipedia]

Harry R. Lewis
good Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education

Brink Lindsey
great Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter--and More Unequal

David Lipsky
great Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace[Wikipedia]

Jessica Livingston
great Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

Annie Lowrey
good Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
great The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure[Wikipedia]

David J. C. MacKay
great Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air

John Mackey, Alona Pulde, and Matthew Lederman
good The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity

Sebastian Mallaby
good The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
good More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite[Wikipedia]

Jerry Mander
good Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television[Wikipedia]

Jim Manzi
good Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society

John Markoff
good What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry[Wikipedia]

W. David Marx
good Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

Wednesday Martin
good Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir

D. T. Max
great Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace

Tucker Max and Geoffrey Miller
good Mate: Become the Man Women Want

Megan McArdle
good The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success

Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman
great Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud

James E. McWilliams
great Just Food: How Locavores are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly

Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows
good Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update[Wikipedia]

Ashley Mears
great Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit
great Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model

Chris Miller
great Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology[Wikipedia]

Geoffrey Miller
good The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature
good Virtue Signaling: Essays on Darwinian Politics & Free Speech

David A. Mindell
good Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy

Dan Moller
good Governing Least: A New England Libertarianism

Charles Montgomery
great Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design[Wikipedia]

Geoffrey A. Moore
great Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers[Wikipedia]

Ian Morris
good Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve

Robert F. Moss
good Barbecue: The History of an American Institution

Charles Murray
good Coming Apart: The State of White America[Wikipedia]
good The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don'ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life
good In Our Hands: A Plan To Replace The Welfare State
good By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission
good Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class

Charles Muscatine
good Fixing College Education: A New Curriculum for the Twenty-First Century

David Niose
good Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans

Richard Nisbett
good Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count

Ara Norenzayan
good Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict

David Nutt
good Drink?: The New Science of Alcohol and Health

Henry Oliver
good Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life

Richard A. Oppenlander
good Comfortably Unaware

Jennifer Pahlka
great Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

Scott E. Page
good The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy

Tom G. Palmer
good Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice

Ron Paul
good The Revolution: A Manifesto[Wikipedia]

Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie
good The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect[Wikipedia]

Louise Perry
good The Case Against the Sexual Revolution[Wikipedia]

James Pethokoukis
good The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised

Steven Pinker
good The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature[Wikipedia]
good The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined[Wikipedia]
good Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress[Wikipedia]
good The Sense of Style
good The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window Into Human Nature[Wikipedia]
good The Language Instinct[Wikipedia]
good Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters[Wikipedia]

Susan Pinker
great The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap[Wikipedia]

Richard Posner
good Sex and Reason

William Poundstone
good Fortune's Formula

Richard O. Prum
great The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us

Robert D. Putnam
good Bowling Alone[Wikipedia]
good Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
good The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

Emily Ratajkowski
great My Body

Jonathan Rauch
good Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy

Richard Reeves
great Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

Richard Restak
good The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind

Al Ries and Jack Trout
good Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

Eric Ries
great The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses[Wikipedia]

David Riesman
good The Lonely Crowd[Wikipedia]

Stuart Ritchie
good Intelligence: All That Matters

Amanda Ripley
great The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

Lauren A. Rivera
good Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs

John Robbins
good The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World

Rich Roll
good Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself

Hans Rosling
great Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think[Wikipedia]

Jonathan Rottenberg
good The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic

Joan Roughgarden
good The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness

Christian Rudder
good Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá
good Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality[Wikipedia]

Carl Sagan
good The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark[Wikipedia]

Elyn R. Saks
great The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr.
great Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It

David E. Sanger
great The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

Ben Sasse
great Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal

Lynn Saxon
good Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn

Eric Schlosser
good Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal[Wikipedia]

Peter Seibel
great Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming[Wikipedia]

Jeffrey J. Selingo
great There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow
great Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions

Robert J. Shiller
good Irrational Exuberance[Wikipedia]

Clay Shirky
good Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations[Wikipedia]

Donald Shoup
great The High Cost of Free Parking[Wikipedia]
good Parking and the City

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
good The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

Rachel Simmons
good The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

Vaclav Smil
good How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going

B. Mark Smith
great Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market

Jimmy Soni
good The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley

Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
good The Millionaire Next Door[Wikipedia]

Andrew Steele
great Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old

Will Storr
great The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It

Cass Sunstein
good How Change Happens
good Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It

Steven H. Strogatz
good Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe

Alex Tabarrok
good Launching The Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast

Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
good Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness[Wikipedia]

Clive Thompson
good Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

Henry David Thoreau
good Walden[Wikipedia]

Bob Tinker and Tae Hea Nahm
good Survival to Thrival: Building the Enterprise Startup - Book 1: The Company Journey
good Survival to Thrival: Building the Enterprise Startup - Book 2: Change or Be Changed

Alexis de Tocqueville
good Democracy in America, Volume I[Wikipedia]

Michael Tougias and John S. Burk
good AMC's Best Day Hikes Near Boston

Sherry Turkle
good Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

Avi Tuschman
good Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us

Mark Twain
good Life on the Mississippi[Wikipedia]

Jean M. Twenge
great iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us
great Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents--and What They Mean for America's Future

J. D. Vance
good Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis[Wikipedia]

William T. Vollmann
good Imperial

Nicholas Wade
good A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History[Wikipedia]

Meik Wiking
good The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

Colin Wilson
great The Outsider[Wikipedia]
good Religion and the Rebel
good The Occult: A History[Wikipedia]
good The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries with Damon Wilson
good Alien Dawn
bad The Age of Defeat

Edward O. Wilson
good Letters to a Young Scientist[Wikipedia]

Gordon S. Wood
great The Radicalism of the American Revolution[Wikipedia]

Colin Woodard
great American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
bad American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good
good Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood

Robert Wright
great Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny[Wikipedia]
great The Moral Animal[Wikipedia]
great The Evolution of God[Wikipedia]
great Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

Andrew Yang
great Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy
good The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

Eliezer Yudkowsky
good Rationality: From AI to Zombies

Matt Yglesias
good The Rent is Too Damn High

Fareed Zakaria
good Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

Amy B. Zegart
good Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

Peter Zeihan
good Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World

Howard Zinn
great A People's History of the United States[Wikipedia]
good You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
good Declarations of Independence

Alpha

Beta

Gamma

Nonfiction