Books Recommended by Balaji Srinivasan
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Seeing Like a State
How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
James C. Scott
Source: "There’s a sense in which the term 'real name' is a misnomer. A better term is a state name — a name which makes you legible to the state." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
Catching Fire
How Cooking Made Us Human
Richard Wrangham
Source: "Talks about how the invention of fire allowed humans as species to outsource our metabolism to the fire and allocate more of our scarce calories to the brain." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Schaum's Outline of Principles of Accounting I
Joel J. Lerner
Source: "It’s amazing how many people have studied accounting or something, but you just give them Schaums and ask them to do the first 10 problems in accounting, they struggle." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (3 books)
Richard P. Feynman
Source: "If you take all the people who could understand the Feynman Lectures, they could probably appreciate Hamlet. But not conversely." - Balaji Srinivasan
3 recommenders
Rules for Radicals
A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
Saul D. Alinsky
Source: "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
The Craft
How the Freemasons Made the Modern World
John Dickie
Source: "Anyone working on NFT collections should understand the history of the Freemasons. Many of their rituals could be usefully updated for the digital era." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital
The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages
Carlota Perez
Source: "People get really amped about a technology, then you try to actually do it, you find it’s actually hard, most people get demoralized and they quit." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
The Internet of Money (3 books)
Andreas Antonopoulos
Source: "One of the best books on Bitcoin for a broad audience." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
History Has Begun
The Birth of a New America
Bruno Macaes
Source: "[The author's] thesis is that America is increasingly becoming a virtual society, focused on make-believe above all. I have to agree." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
How the Internet Happened
From Netscape to the iPhone
Brian McCullough
Source: "Reminds us that the tech era is very new, only really about 10 years old, and only began in earnest with iPhone adoption." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
Unelected Power
The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State
Paul Tucker
Source: "Decent book — by a central banker! — on the lack of legitimacy of central banking and the regulatory state writ large." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Gulag Archipelago (3 books)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Source: "What the Soviet Union was actually like." - Balaji Srinivasan
China Coup
The Great Leap to Freedom
Roger Garside
Source: "Makes the case that Xi could be felled by his internal enemies (possible!) and that this will lead to democratization (IMO implausible)." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Truth Machine
The Blockchain and the Future of Everything
Paul Vigna
Source: "An accessible explanation of how blockchains allow us to establish certain kinds of truths even in adversarial environments." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Visual Complex Functions
An Introduction with Phase Portraits
Elias Wegert
Source: "Fun book proposes plotting all complex functions as colored contour plots. Kind of an obvious idea, but it's carried through systematically here." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Changing World Order
Why Nations Succeed and Fail
Ray Dalio
Source: "How today’s America resembles the Dutch and British empires of the past in terms of its monetary overextension." - Balaji Srinivasan
Netflixed
The Epic Battle for America's Eyeballs
Gina Keating
Source: "Blockbuster tried to buy Hollywood Video, but the FTC called this off on antitrust (!) grounds. By 2010 Blockbuster was bankrupt and Netflix was soaring." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Indistractable
How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life
Nir Eyal
Source: "Tackles the problem of modern distraction by empowering us to break the bad habits at the root of the issue." - Balaji Srinivasan
3 recommenders
The Cold Start Problem
How to Start and Scale Network Effects
Andrew Chen
Source: "Useful for anyone trying to bootstrap a new community or network, which is virtually every founder these days." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Kill Chain
Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare
Christian Brose
Source: "The US military has a perfect record in its war games with China. China has won every round." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Fourth Turning
What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny
William Strauss
Source: "How a cyclic theory of history forecasts a serious American conflict in the 2020s (written in the mid-1990s)." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
The Little Bitcoin Book
Why Bitcoin Matters for Your Freedom, Finances, and Future
Bitcoin Collective
Source: "Was written in a few days by N people, one chapter each, and then published on Amazon." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
Working in Public
The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software
Nadia Eghbal
Source: "[The author] is very smart and it’s worth reading anything she writes on open source." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations
Mencius Moldbug
Source: "A broad survey of Western historical anomalies, with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Journalist And The Murderer
Janet Malcolm
Source: "Short and well worth reading. Presages much of today's train crash on social media." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
The Nature of Mathematical Modeling
Neil Gershenfeld
Source: "In terms of just packing a punch per page I really enjoyed this back in the day." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
How Innovation Works
Serendipity, Energy and the Saving of Time
Matt Ridley
Source: "How tech founders always had to fight against the establishment, just like the present day." - Balaji Srinivasan
3 recommenders
The Future Is Asian
Commerce, Conflict, and Culture in the 21st Century
Parag Khanna
Source: "The American century is ending. The Asian century is beginning." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Physics from Finance
A gentle introduction to gauge theories, fundamental interactions and fiber bundles
Jakob Schwichtenberg
Source: "A lot of fun. Not exactly art, but novel approach with a lot of visual inspiration." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Reputation and Power
Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA
Daniel Carpenter
Source: "Most people don't really hear bad things about the FDA. This book taught me why." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Who We Are and How We Got Here
Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
David Reich
Source: "The brief argument is: our true history is written in our genes." - Balaji Srinivasan
Test-Driven Development with Python
Obey the Testing Goat Using Django, Selenium, and JavaScript
Harry Percival
Source: "Teaches you how to test things that are bigger than just a simple function." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Great Wave
Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History
David Hackett Fischer
Source: "Gold from the Americas did flood Europe in the 1500s, which helped cause inflation." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
Innumeracy
Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
John Allen Paulos
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book in "The Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan."
1 recommender
Physics for Scientists and Engineers
Volume 1
Paul A. Tipler
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book in "The Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan."
1 recommender
One Thousand Exercises in Probability
Geoffrey Grimmett
Source: "Requires more energy to read, but it keeps you sharp." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book in "The Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan."
The Man Who Knew Infinity
A Life of the Genius Ramanujan
Robert Kanigel
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book in "The Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan."
3 recommenders
End the Fed
Ron Paul
Source: "[The author] was to Bitcoin what Andrew Yang is to startup societies." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
The Forgotten Man
A New History of the Great Depression
Amity Shlaes
Source: "Useful as an alternate perspective on the era." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
The Great CEO Within
The Tactical Guide to Company Building
Matt Mochary
Source: "[Brian Armstrong] and I used parts of this at Coinbase." - Balaji Srinivasan
4 recommenders
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
The Remarkable True Story of the American Capitalists Who Financed the Russian Communists
Antony Cyril Sutton
Source: "How different groups of capitalists funded the communist revolution." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
War and Peace and War
The Rise and Fall of Empires
Peter Turchin
Source: "How quantitative methods can identify recurrent cycles." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
The Astonishing True Story of the American Financiers Who Bankrolled the Nazis
Antony Cyril Sutton
Source: "How different groups of capitalists funded the fascist revolution." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
Has China Won?
The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy
Kishore Mahbubani
Source: "One may have to set aside ego to read it." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
The Gray Lady Winked
How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History
Ashley Rindsberg
Source: "I put it up there with the top five books I recommend." - Balaji Srinivasan
3 recommenders
The Sovereign Individual
Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
James Dale Davidson
Source: "If you want to find startup ideas here’s the book." - Balaji Srinivasan
Where Is My Flying Car?
A Memoir of Future Past
J Storrs Hall
Source: "Don't judge this self-published book by its cover, just read it." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
AI Superpowers
China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
Kai-Fu Lee
Source: "A history of the Chinese tech ecosystem." - Balaji Srinivasan
Three Felonies A Day
How the Feds Target the Innocent
Harvey A. Silverglate
Source: "All about enforcement discretion." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The House of Government
A Saga of the Russian Revolution
Yuri Slezkine
Source: "How the Soviet Union actually worked." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Great Influenza
The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
John M. Barry
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book on Twitter.
3 recommenders
The Knowledge
How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
Lewis Dartnell
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book on Twitter.
2 recommenders
From Third World to First
The Singapore Story: 1965-2000
Lee Kuan Yew
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book on Twitter.
1 recommender
Pandemic 1918
Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History
Catharine Arnold
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book on Twitter.
2 recommenders
Flu
The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It
Gina Kolata
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book on Twitter.
2 recommenders
Pale Rider
The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World
Laura Spinney
Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book on Twitter.
1 recommender
Virtual Economies
Design and Analysis
Vili Lehdonvirta
Source: "A good read for crypto people." - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
The Princeton Companion to Mathematics
Timothy Gowers
Source: "The desert island book. So good." - Balaji Srinivasan
2 recommenders
1 recommender
Only the Paranoid Survive
How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
Andrew S. Grove
Source: "We've all read Grove." - Balaji Srinivasan
The Man Who Invented Fidel
Castro, Cuba, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times
Anthony DePalma
Source: Balaji Srinivasan mentioned this book on Twitter.
1 recommender
1 recommender
Merchants of Truth
The Business of News and the Fight for Facts
Jill Abramson
Source: Balaji Srinivasan mentioned this book on Twitter.
1 recommender
My Brother Ron
A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill
Clayton E. Cramer
Source: Balaji Srinivasan mentioned this book on Twitter.
1 recommender
1 recommender
Start-up Nation
The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle
Dan Senor
Source: "I love [this] book!" - Balaji Srinivasan
1 recommender
100 books
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