Book Recommendations
This book is a compilation of tweets, podcast discussions and essays of Naval and his learnings on everything from starting up, education, money to meditation, philosophy and life itself .
Every sentence in this book is deeply insightful and noteworthy. It's like a modern philosophy and a business book combined into one seamless read.
Sapiens - A brief History of Humankind is a summary on the evolution of humans. The factors leading up to civilization in its current form and the subsequent effects on humans.
The detailed description of how our current social structure, with all its intricacies, inventions, discoveries, collective imaginations came to be makes for a fascinating read.
Animal Farm is a political satire. The start of a potential better life for animals on a farm through rebellion takes turn for the worst when certain governing animals, through seemingly small and assertive steps, quickly turn dictators.
Gem of a book to understand the evolution of any form of authoritative rule.
Shoe dog is a memoir by the creator of Nike. Phil Knight has written a very honest and humble story of the beginnings of a shoe company and his passion and determination through problems, that eventually led to the creation Nike as we know it today.
A very good book on business and leadership . The best part of this book is how honest and comprehensive he is in describing his failures and shortcomings.
Atomic Habits is a wonderful book that breaks down the process of habits into actionable insights. It explains the power of compounding of these incremental changes over time. By far the book with the highest density of easily implementable ideas with perceptible results that I have read.
A must read for everyone!
A beautiful book by an author who realizes his real life story lacks elements that are considered vital in a good-story-structure for a movie that is to be based on his own life.
The author then makes conscious changes based on these ideas to better his own life and in turn making his story worth telling.
A very candid and well-written book.
A beautifully warm story of a lawyer father dealing with a racial case based in a small town in the 30s, narrated through his six year old daughter's innocent world view. I remember reading this book while in a quaint university town in the US during my Masters that just added to the easy-flowing, mellow experience of this read.
A must read classic fiction book even for readers who predominantly read non-fiction.
Deep Work deals with the importance of distraction free work for extended periods of time. its effect on productivity and eventually on individual accomplishments.
The various frameworks laid out are very insightful towards achieving deep work - a skill becoming increasingly rare and something that might be disproportionately rewarded in a world where distraction has become the new norm.
A Promised Land is a memoir by Barack Obama former US president where he documents his journey to being the first black president, the challenges he faced both on this journey and his experience in the White House. A fascinating and detailed personal account of Obama's early life experiences right up to the end of his first term.
This was my first audiobook and listening to one of the best public orators describe his life is a treat in itself! Highly recommended in audiobook format!
The Everything store is a biography on Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. It narrates the origin of Amazon from primarily an online bookseller to the behemoth 'everything store' it has become today. An engrossing read on how the culture of Amazon evolved, how it expanded into technology and the tactics it used to deal with competition.
Along with being a good biography it also provides for a good case study on brand building and developing company culture.
The most comprehensive biography on Steve Jobs. An intriguing tale of perhaps one of the most famous business personalities of our times. The book does a good job of detailing the aspects of his complex personality, his vision and his immense contribution to the tech world.
I remember reading this book while I was working in the silicon valley and the familiar places of the events mentioned in the book along with a visit to the garage where he co-founded Apple, made it a special experience. A must read.!
This is a biography on the life of Elon Musk. Elon Musk is probably the most important business and tech personalities of our time. The book chronicles the journey of Elon Musk through his early life and the various companies he co-founded. The relentless pace at which some ground breaking and innovative work was done at these companies and the personal challenges and failures that were overcome are detailed in this book.
I read the book while I was employed at Tesla Motors and could witness first hand this immense drive and the culture that permeated through the company. Highly recommended.!!
The book is based on the crazy and fascinating life story of David Goggins. The numerous hurdles, hardships and injustice that David faces throughout his life would make most of our life struggles look small.
The book describes how by adopting a tough mental attitude and constantly living out of his comfort zone David overcame these hurdles and became a part of the elite US armed forces and an elite endurance athlete.
Would highly recommend the audiobook version done in a podcast style where David explains the details of his mind-space going through a particular incident/ phase.
One of those must read classic books that will always keep it's influence on guiding people how to better deal with people. The book is filled with little gems of wisdom on how taking .what seems like an unconventional behavioral approach in the moment, might result in surprising and beneficial results.
The best part of this book is one can apply these principles readily in one's daily life and see the results instantly.
Highly recommended book for everyone!
The Millionaire Fastlane, as dodgy as the name sounds, is an incredibly good book on business.
It details the 'fastlane' of creating exponential value through a business over a relatively short period of time such that you are still young to cherish the fruits of this work. The author contrasts this with the 'slowlane' process of traditional job-based careers where your upside is limited and your net worth compounds into something substantial only at an old age where you might not get to enjoy it.
The author expands the intricacies of the 'fastlane' process that does not discount hard work whilst clearly distinguishing it from a 'get-rich-quick' scheme.
Made In America is the autobiography of Sam Walton the founder of Wal-Mart.
Sam details his humble beginnings and journey from serving in the military, working at and for other retailer franchises to finally opening his own discount retailer franchise- Wal-Mart.
An extremely earnest story of someone who primarily started business from the small towns of the US, worked tirelessly through obstacles and continuously improved the business to finally create the retailer behemoth that Wal-Mart is today.
A classic must-read American success story.
The book is written by a former FBI negotiator, Chris, and is fascinating to say the least.
The book delves into negotiating techniques and how to apply them into any sort of negotiations you might find yourself in.
Framework for each technique has been developed and honed by the author over a course of time dealing with real-life situations and some of it also goes against conventional wisdom on the same topic.
Each technique is supplemented with a real-life story and makes for a very interesting and easy-flowing read.
The book is about how to get started and make the most of your work, in the current digital age, whatever stage your work may be at.
It outlines the importance of sharing your work everyday, more importantly the process behind the work as much as possible and make it visible for others to discover. The author explains how by following this process, your work can find audiences who connect most with it from where you can grow it further.
Must read for everyone stuck with how to start a creative business or side hustle.
The book is about society's relationship with money and how it is influenced by our personal experiences, surroundings and our behavior. The author presents valuable lessons on personal finance and how one can optimize the role of money in one's life.
It is filled with stories of how managing money is more emotions driven than based on rigid practical rules and also how some of the author's own financial decisions are based on personal preferences that sometime go against conventional wisdom or practical conclusions.
Must read book on personal finance.
Creativity, Inc is a part memoir and part business management book. Ed Catmull outlines his early professional life, the story of founding of Pixar studios and draws important lessons on management and culture from managing Pixar.
The author details the process of how a culture of creativity was fostered at Pixar through some innovative management structure and techniques and how this led to the massive success of Pixar.
The story of Pixar's merger with Disney and how it's values and the scrappy, open culture was fiercely defended and preserved despite merging with a bigger, hierarchical company, makes for a particularly fascinating read.
The book is about Robert's life growing up with learnings from his own dad and his friend's dad.
Robert's dad is a learned man but is not very successful financially falling into all the misgivings of money and finance prevalent in the society, he calls him, his 'poor dad'. His friend's dad owns multiple businesses is not necessarily the most learned according to society but is successful financially, Robert calls him his 'rich dad'.
Robert lays out in detail all the principles of personal finance and business he learns from his 'Rich dad' that has helped him achieve financial success.
A brilliant, must read classic book for understanding how money works in the world.
The book is about seven Indian companies and breaking down the principles implemented by the founders of these companies to achieve enormous success and consequently to deliver high stock market returns over multiple decades.
The book is full of surprising details of the journeys of what might initially seem as traditional Indian companies but were way ahead of their time in their innovation.
Some of the amazing stories in the book are about how Asian Paints was the first Indian company to buy a mainframe computer in the 1970s for demand forecasting and how Marico in the 1990 had the first open office where top management did not sit in cabins!
The book is like a crash course on some of the most important concepts of Physics like the origin of space, its nature, gravity, relativity, black holes and other related topics by one of the most renowned physicists.
A must read book for everyone interested in space and physics. The book also contains personal views of Stephen Hawking on some of the famous scientists of the past.
A thoroughly insightful must-read classic book!
Ray Dalio is one of the most prominent investor and hedge fund manager. The book Principles is split in two sections Life Principles and Work Principles.
The life principles section provides a framework for progressing in life and breaks it down into individual loops of failure, feedback and success and the principles underlying each stage.
The Work Principles section provides detailed processes and is a comprehensive guide on how to create, build and grow an organization. These processes are again broken down according to the underlying thinking and frameworks.
Highly recommended book for everyone venturing out on their own and in the process realize their personal potential.
The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga
The Courage to Be Disliked is a brilliant book in the form of a dialogue between a student and a master explaining the Adlerian psychology. The Adlerian psychology at its core is about how an individual can be successful and happy irrespective of one's past and present situation.
The conversation format of the books makes it a very easy-to-read book where the questions that arise from the student are exactly the questions you'll have whilst reading the book.
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs and Steel chronicles the events from the evolution of humans to the present history of colonization and takes a deep dive into the reasons that led certain indigenous people; owing to natural and geographical advantages; to dominate and shape the current landscape of human society.
This Pulitzer prize winning book on history is unputdownable and reads like a fiction book with its brilliant documentation and reasoning of the rise of human civilization.
A must read!
Leonardo Da Vinci - The Biography - by Walter Issacson
The biography chronicles the life of Leonardo Da Vinci, perhaps one of the most famous painters of our times and his pursuit for learning and perfecting his craft across disciplines.
The book goes into details of how his penchant for learning through observations, constant note taking and perfecting his art made him into a polymath well versed in several fields as optics, geometry, anatomy, fluid mechanics among others.
Highly recommended!
Build by Tony Fadell
The book is written by Tony Fadell based on his experiences creating some of the most path breaking products like the iPod, iPhone and creating and building one of the most innovative companies in silicon valley, Nest.
Tony Fadell takes a deep dive into his learnings from working and leading in the tech industry over several years and on building everything from processes to products and people, culture to organizations.
Must read for everyone interested in tech and entrepreneurship!
Influence by Robert Cialdini
The book is about how psychology plays a pivotal role in how we are influenced and make decisions in our everyday lives. It explains the 'levers of influence' that are traits inbuilt in everyone and that are activated by a set of external triggers followed by an almost unconscious execution of a set pattern of behavior.
The author details 7 principles of persuasion that these influence tactics are based on and how they are exploited for sales, marketing and other compliance related social areas and how one can be mindful of them. Must read book for everyone!
Algorithms to live by; by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
This fascinating book is written by computer scientists and is about how commonly used algorithms in computer science can be used effectively to take everyday decisions of common problems and the probability based mathematical explanation behind each.
Excellent book that goes into quantifying a decision making problem into a lot of different variables and scenarios and presents the statistically best algorithm option that can be used as a rule of thumb for future related problems. Nice read!
Small Giants by Bo Burlingham
Small Giants is a book about companies that chose to be relatively small instead of growing like a tumor that most modern day companies or start-ups lust after.
It takes an in depth look at the culture, community and values shared by these very similar yet different companies operating in disparate fields. The book also highlights some of the conditions where the very culture fostered by these small giants may lead to their downfall.
Highly recommended for entrepreneurs not chasing after exponential growth at the cost of everything.
No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
In this book Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings details the evolution of the open culture that Netflix has been famous for. Netflix has been known for its culture of giving employees full freedom to do their jobs while eliminating the rigid rules that come with them at most big companies/startups.
The authors also do a brilliant job in outlining the framework within which such a culture can thrive and the process of incredibly detailed research & thought that goes behind successfully implementing these decisions to empower its employees.
Brilliant take on how to go about building culture at your organisation.
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
It explores the concept of human choices being primarily governed by emotions & intuitions and how critical reasoning & statistical thinking are rare.
Every time I've read books authored by subject experts or Nobel laureates, I've been pleasantly surprised by how clearly & simply the concepts are explained, despite an initial assumption of them being overly theoretical.
This book requires deliberate, slow & re-reading to fully comprehend the breadth of its wisdom. Highly recommended!
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson in this book delves into the history of our planet right from the initial stages of formation of the earth to evolution to the subsequent discoveries made by humans.
Listened to the audiobook version of this book and it is a treat to listen to the story of everything since the beginning of time on long quiet walks.
Beautiful book, must read!