Books
Reading List
Books I’ve actually read and recommend. Each one comes with a note on why it earned a spot here.
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Tech, AI & Silicon Valley
How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University
Theo Baker · 2026
An incredibly thorough and well-written first-person account of experiences at Stanford, and Silicon Valley in general, for promising young tech talent. Theo Baker's accounts helped add color and perspective to so many conversations I've had with entrepreneurs over the years who started their journey wanting to change the world and sometimes shifted to wanting to rule it instead. I look forward to reading more of Baker's work on technology and any other investigative topic he covers in what I expect to be a phenomenal career.
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI
Carissa Véliz · 2026
This recommendation came from Nicholas Thompson, whose assessments and perspectives on AI and tech development I very much enjoy. The book helped further put into perspective the mindset of effective altruists and why they think they are doing good, even when they are committing fraud. It is a fascinating history of how predictions screw with outcomes and how self-proclaimed prophets use their power to benefit themselves. Carissa Véliz makes me wish I had studied philosophy instead of business, or at least minored in it to better understand the psychology of people who make predictions, and I very much hope she writes more books. As far as educational AI ethics texts go, it was fantastic.
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
Sarah Wynn-Williams · 2025
I so appreciated Sarah Wynn-Williams's vulnerability and willingness to be candid about her experiences at Meta. If you were tracking tech news through the time period covered in the book, none of what she describes will be much of a surprise, but her experience corroborates so much of what privacy activists and consumer protection groups were telling us throughout that time. We should all remember the history of decisions of the companies now building surveillance devices for everyday users.
Burn Book: A Tech Love Story
Kara Swisher · 2024
I have nothing but admiration for Kara Swisher. Whether it's her podcasts On with Kara Swisher or Pivot (with Scott Galloway, who I also adore), her CNN series Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever, or Burn Book, she says out loud what so many of us are thinking, with evidence to back up her perspective. The book is great, Kara is awesome, definitely worth a read, listen, or watch.
Related: On with Kara Swisher · Pivot · Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever (CNN)
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Yuval Noah Harari · 2024
Just like with Sapiens, Harari zooms all the way out and goes from stone tablets to large language models to argue that every information network in history has traded truth for order, and that AI is the first one that can make decisions without us. I don't agree with every conclusion, but it gave me a vocabulary for conversations I have constantly about what AI systems are actually for. If you want the big-picture frame before diving into the policy details, Nexus is a good place to start.
Your Face Belongs to Us
Kashmir Hill · 2023
Kashmir Hill's reporting on Clearview AI is the clearest account I've read of how facial recognition quietly ended anonymity in public and was built by a tiny company most people had never heard of until it had already scraped billions of photos. This one sits squarely on the privacy beat I write about, and it's a case study in how the "it's already public data" argument gets used to justify almost anything. Essential reading for understanding where consumer surveillance is headed.
Chip War: The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology
Chris Miller · 2022
Chip War explains the hardware and geopolitical foundation of AI. Chris Miller makes a compelling argument that control of the semiconductor ecosystem has become a decisive source of economic, military, and technological power. While it is pretty dense for the recreational tech reader, it is a very detailed accounting of how we got to where we are with AI systems today if you have the time and stamina.
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Walter Isaacson · 2021
The Code Breaker was one of my favorite reads because it combined an incredible scientific story with a deeply personal one. I loved learning about Jennifer Doudna's role in the race to develop CRISPR, the breakthroughs and rivalries that shaped the field, and the profound ethical questions surrounding gene editing. As someone who enjoys reading about innovation, I especially appreciated seeing a woman at the forefront of a scientific revolution in a field that has historically been dominated by men. That achievement was recognized in 2020 when Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for CRISPR, becoming the first all-woman team to win a science Nobel.
An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination
Sheera Frenkel & Cecilia Kang · 2021
Frenkel and Kang document, with receipts, how Facebook's growth machine repeatedly won out over safety. Reading it alongside Careless People is a useful exercise as the outside investigative view and the inside account tell remarkably consistent stories. It's a reminder that the problems privacy advocates flagged for years weren't edge cases; they were actually the business model.
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
Anna Wiener · 2020
The best "fictional" prose anyone has written about what it actually feels like to work inside startup culture. Wiener never names the companies (although most of us will know who) which somehow makes the observations sharper. You'll recognize the optimism, the surveillance-adjacent products, and the moment the idealism curdles. A quick, literary counterweight to the more dense business books on this list.
Privacy Is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your DataUp next
Carissa Véliz · 2020
Next on my list, to better understand where we were in 2020.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff · 2019
Zuboff coined the term surveillance capitalism years before this 2019 book, which developed and popularized the concept. Her argument is precise. Behavioral data becomes raw material, and the surplus gets turned into prediction products sold to advertisers and other customers. The book is long and academic in places, but it exposed an enormous amount of bad behavior and gave us the vocabulary we still use to talk about it. What strikes me most in hindsight is how selectively the tech world absorbed the critique. There were real regulatory and industry responses, yet the underlying practices largely persisted. If you want to understand the economics underneath the privacy debates, this is the foundational (although, not a textbook) text.
The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
Brad Stone · 2017
Brad Stone's account of how Uber and Airbnb bulldozed their way from idea to institution, including the regulatory fights they picked on purpose and how they won. Reflecting on this story years later, it is amazing how much of the "ask forgiveness, not permission" playbook the AI companies inherited. Useful history for anyone trying to understand why tech regulation always seems late to the party.
Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy
Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne & Sangeet Paul Choudary · 2016
Still the clearest framework I've found for why platform businesses behave the way they do. Network effects, winner-take-all dynamics, and why the middleman always seems to end up with the power. It's a business school book, so expect frameworks rather than storytelling, but the mental models hold up remarkably well in the agentic-commerce era.
The Industries of the Future
Alec Ross · 2016
Alec Ross wrote this in 2016 as a preview of the industries that would define the next twenty years. He covers robotics, genomics, big data, cyber, and others. Reading it now is like grading a decade-old forecast, and he got more right than most. Worth it less for the predictions themselves than for practicing the skill of evaluating tech forecasts critically.
Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy
Robert Scoble & Shel Israel · 2013
Scoble and Israel mapped the sensor-and-data world back in 2013. They covered location, wearables, ambient computing, and were refreshingly honest that the price of all that convenience would be privacy. We're now living in the world they described, mostly without the informed consent they hoped would come with it. An interesting time capsule from when these trade-offs were still hypothetical.
The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge
Doc Searls · 2012
Doc Searls argued back in 2012 that customers rather than marketers should control their own data and signal their own intentions to the market. More than a decade later, as AI shopping agents start negotiating on consumers' behalf, his "intention economy" framing feels more like a specification than a manifesto. This book is sort of a founding text for the consumer-empowerment beat this site covers.
Business, Economics & Big Ideas
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
Adam Grant · 2023
Grant makes the case that growth beats raw talent, and he backs it with research.
Activate Your Greatness
Alex Toussaint · 2023
The Peloton instructor's story and mindset playbook, with motivation that feels earned.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know
Adam Grant · 2021
A practical argument for rethinking your own positions, useful in an era when everyone is certain.
The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World
Dorie Clark · 2021
Clark on making career and business decisions with a decade-long horizon.
Why Trust Matters: An Economist's Guide to the Ties That Bind Us
Benjamin Ho · 2021
An economist's tour of trust as the hidden infrastructure of markets, institutions, and everyday life.
When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner · 2015
A grab bag of Freakonomics blog favorites. Economics as entertainment.
Modern Romance: An Investigation
Aziz Ansari & Eric Klinenberg · 2015
A comedian teams up with a sociologist to study dating in the app era. It is funnier than a research project has any right to be.
Think Like a Freak
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner · 2014
The Freakonomics duo on reframing problems. Short, contrarian, and fun.
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
Michael Lewis · 2014
Lewis turns high-frequency trading into a thriller about who really pays when markets get faster.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell · 2000
The classic on how ideas spread, and still the fastest introduction to thinking about social contagion.
Science
White Holes
Carlo Rovelli · 2023
Rovelli follows a black hole past its horizon and out the other side. A short, strange trip to the edge of known physics.
Women in Science Now: Stories and Strategies for Achieving Equity
Lisa M. P. Munoz · 2023
Research and firsthand stories on what actually moves the needle for equity in science.
General Relativity: The Essentials
Carlo Rovelli · 2021
A compact, serious introduction to Einstein's theory. Short enough to finish, deep enough to matter.
Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity
Carlo Rovelli · 2017
Rovelli on loop quantum gravity. Physics writing that reads like poetry while staying rigorous.
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Carlo Rovelli · 2016
The tiny classic that made modern physics feel human, readable in an afternoon.
Memoir & Biography
The Woman in Me
Britney Spears · 2023
Britney in her own words, a firsthand account of fame, control, and the conservatorship.
Educated: A Memoir
Tara Westover · 2018
From a survivalist childhood with no schooling to a Cambridge PhD. One of the great memoirs of the last decade.
I Am Malala
Malala Yousafzai & Christina Lamb · 2013
The story behind the Nobel laureate, and a reminder of what education costs in much of the world.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Cheryl Strayed · 2012
Strayed's solo hike as grief therapy. Raw, funny, and impossible to put down.
Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison
Piper Kerman · 2010
The memoir behind the series, sharper on the machinery of incarceration than the show ever was.
Comedy & Celebrity Memoir
XOXO, Cody: An Opinionated Homosexual's Guide to Self-Love, Relationships, and Tactful Pettiness
Cody Rigsby · 2023
Peloton's Cody Rigsby, exactly as unfiltered on the page as he is on the bike.
Hello, Molly!: A Memoir
Molly Shannon · 2022
Molly Shannon's story is far more moving than you'd expect from the woman behind Mary Katherine Gallagher.
The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There
Jenna Fischer & Angela Kinsey · 2022
Pam and Angela's behind-the-scenes scrapbook. Pure comfort reading for Office fans.
So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y'all Don't Even Know
Retta · 2018
Parks and Rec's Retta on her unlikely path from Duke pre-med to comedy, with 'treat yo self' energy throughout.
I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons
Kevin Hart · 2017
Hart's relentless-work-ethic origin story, told with the timing you'd expect.
Yes Please
Amy Poehler · 2014
Poehler on improv, ambition, and motherhood. Warm and quotable.
Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"
Lena Dunham · 2014
Dunham's essay collection is confessional, divisive, and very much of its moment.
Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good
Kevin Smith · 2012
Kevin Smith on making a career out of doing it your own way. Crude, sincere, and useful.
Bossypants
Tina Fey · 2011
Still the gold standard of comedian memoirs.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Mindy Kaling · 2011
Kaling's breezy first essay collection. The audiobook version feels like a long call with a funny friend.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Audiobook)
Jon Stewart · 2010
The Daily Show's guide to the human race, written for the aliens who find our ruins.