Reading

George Orwell

★★★★★

Just an insane classic.

Isaac Asimov

★★★☆☆

I did not love it as much as I though I would. The father of Science Fiction narrating a precursor to Star Wars.

Liu Cixin

★★★★★

The most incredible science fiction saga I ever put my hands on. A continuous population-scale psychological thriller that mixes cool semi-ficitional science with a captivating plot. Keeps you glued to the book for 1000+ pages.

Walter Ellis

★★★★★

Novel with double time setting: modernity and Caravaggio's time. Intrigues, church's dark power, just cool shit.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

★★★★☆

Fydor was troubled, but his books were just too good. The main character's life is wrecked once his double starts stealing his life from under his nose.

Douglas Adams

★★★★★

The most incredible novel I've ever read. Futurama-like trip in the cosmos with sprinkles of philosophy and science fiction.

Franz Kafka

★★★★☆

Kafka is a freak, and he makes this poor dude transform in a stinky giant bug. Lots of dark fun.

Ken Follett

★★★★☆

Ken Follet's premonition of a COVID-like virus (except worse) escaping from Wuhan.

Chris Miller

★★★★☆

Super granular history of chips and chipmaking. Miller is great at looking at the geopolitical implications without getting lost on the tech.

Vaclav Smil

★★★★★

Probably the best book out there to think about the world in terms of thermodynamics. Vaclav Smil is just a G.

Nancy Forbes

★★★★★

F. and M. are my two favourite scientists in history. This book explores their life, their personality and their overlapping scientific efforts to bring us the marvels of electromagnetism.

Vaclav Smil

★★★★★

Smil never misses. Technology curves and market reactions explained well.

Eric Berger

★★★★★

This is the Elon that I was completely in love with while studying engineering.

Vaclav Smil

★★★★★

How to get smarter in a weekend by reading 71 cool facts from thermodynamics of engines to population trends.

Vaclav Smil

★★★★★

Probably the only book I'll ever read about Oil as a non-expert. From extraction to usage. From economics to Physics. Just Smil nailing it again.

Carlo Rovelli

★★★★★

Rovelli nailing it again with some philosophical and scientific tales of his work on Quantum Gravity.

Carlo Rovelli

★★★★★

It doesn't matter if you're a physicists or don't know what kinetic energy is. This is a must read for people willing to get transported by the wave of Rovelli's scientific exposition matery.

Michael J. Neufeld

★★★★★

This is the book to recommend to the friend that says: "SO IF WE WENT TO THE MOON WITH SHITTY COMPUTERS IN THE 60s, WHY ARE WE NOT GOING AGAIN NOW?!?!?!?!"

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

★★★★★

Don't know how to categorize this one, but it's worldview-changing: once you understand Taleb's framework for luck, decisions start having another flavor.

Brian Greene

★★★★☆

String theory has gotten a bit vintage after we spent $XX billion dollars on LHC and didn't find much evidence for it. Yet, Greene explains the theory beautifully for non-PhDs

Dean Burnett

★★★★☆

A lot of your brain farts are explained in this book.

Carlo Rovelli

★★★★★

Rovelli's masterpiece on time. Every curious person should read this.

Aldo Giannuli

★★★★★

One of the best Italian journalists out there writing about how our intelligence agency works.

Aldo Giannuli

★★★★☆

One of the best Italian journalists out there writing about how intelligence agencies shape world events.

Steve Coll

★★★★★

An incredibly detailed and referenced account of how the CIA got played by the Pakistani intelligence in their Afghanistan operations post-9-11.

Larry Siedentop

★★★★☆

A trip in the christian-born western concept of individualism.

Walter Isaacson

★★★★★

Isaacson has made reconsider how much I hated my Art History professor in high school. It travels through Leonardo's mind as a scientist-artist by carefully going through the thousands of pages of right-to-left written notes.

Antonio Scurati

★★★★☆

Mussolini's twentyish-year rule was one of Italy's darkest times and Scurati does an incredible job capturing the psychological state of the Italian people post-great-war that made his ascent possible. I stopped at the second volume out of 5.

Glenn Greenwald

★★★★★

Ed Snowden's history told by Pulitzer Price Glenn Greenwald. This is just a must read.

Ray Dalio

★★★★★

Ray Dalio's masterpiece. One of the few worldview-changing books I've ever read. His theory of short-term and long-term debt cycle underpins how I think about the future.

Paul Collier

★★★★★

Very well needed reality check on what's missing in today's capitalism.

Daron Acemoğlu

★★★☆☆

The core concept is cool (nations' destinies are not written by external factors, but by their institutions) but the book reads a bit redundant.

J.K. Rowling

★★★★★

Do I need to say anything?

Benjamin Graham

★★★★☆

The hardest read in my life tbh. Amazing granularity, but to my idiot brain it felt impossible to finish.

Sebastian Mallaby

★★★★★

Early venture was badass.