header logo

Every Book Paul Graham Mentioned on Twitter (with Tweets!)

I've read every Paul Graham essay (and summarized them in these 3 posts).

This is why I had a list of "all" the books he mentioned (or so I thought) and added it to Most Recommended Books. Surely people would love it!

And nowhere, I thought, would they love it more than in the house pg built, Hacker News.

Alas… As soon as I posted, reality hit me in the face:

Hacker News... Where your pride goes to die

"Ouch," I thought. "But maybe Elof is right?"

So I decided to double down and read all of pg's tweets (the same way I did with Elon Musk and Naval Ravikant).

I found 95 books pg has mentioned/ recommended over the years just on Twitter!

And here is that list, for your reading pleasure.

I hope you enjoy it :)

Sidenote: If you like this post, please share it on Twitter . It would be awesome if pg sees it.


Paul Graham Books


  1. With the Old Breed - E. B. Sledge

  2. The Battle of Alcazar - E.W. Bovill

  3. Early Middle English Literature - R. M. Wilson

  4. The Oxford History of Britain - Peter Salway

  5. Blankie - Leslie Patricelli

  6. The Gun Seller - Hugh Laurie

  7. In The Plex - Steven Levy

  8. To Conquer the Air - James Tobin

  9. The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry

  10. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

  11. The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

  12. Diocletian and the Roman Recovery - Stephen Williams

  13. Maisy Mouse Collection - Lucy Cousins

  14. Very Good, Jeeves! - P. G. Wodehouse

  15. Sunset at Blandings - P.G. Wodehouse

  16. The Confessions - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  17. No Easy Day - Mark Owen

  18. The Copernican Revolution - Thomas S. Kuhn

  19. Marriage - Susan Ferrier

  20. Flying Start - Hugh Dundas

  21. A Thread Across the Ocean - John Steele Gordon

  22. Guns, Sails, and Empires - Carlo M. Cipolla

  23. Clocks and Culture - Carlo M. Cipolla

  24. Kelly - Clarence L. Johnson

  25. Why the Allies Won - Richard Overy

  26. Towns, Villages and Countryside of Celtic Europe - Francoise Audouze

  27. Medieval Technology and Social Change - Lynn White

  28. To Explain the World - Steven Weinberg

  29. Land of Promise - Michael Lind

  30. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy - Michael Baxandall

  31. The Box - Marc Levinson

  32. On Bullshit - Harry G. Frankfurt

  33. On Inequality - Harry G. Frankfurt

  34. A Story Lately Told - Anjelica Huston

  35. The Jet Engine - Rolls Royce

  36. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Bryan Caplan

  37. Free-Range Kids - Lenore Skenazy

  38. My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell

  39. Fauna & Family - Gerald Durrell

  40. Good Night, Little Bear - Patsy Scarry

  41. The Population Bomb - Paul R Ehrlich

  42. Ever the Diplomat - Sherard Cowper-Coles

  43. Autobiographies - Charles Darwin

  44. Memoirs of My Life - Edward Gibbon

  45. An Autobiography of Anthony Trollope - Anthony Trollope

  46. The Man Who Knew Infinity - Robert Kanigel

  47. Eyes on the Street - Robert Kanigel

  48. Wheels for the World - Douglas Brinkley

  49. The Ancient City - Peter Connolly

  50. The Kings Depart - Richard M Watt

  51. Moorish Spain - Richard Fletcher

  52. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

  53. Sea Flight - Hugh Popham

  54. Carbonel - Barbara Sleigh

  55. The Black Riders - Violet Needham

  56. How to Be Topp - Ronald Searle

  57. The Origin of Species - Charles Darwin

  58. Moab Is My Washpot - Stephen Fry

  59. The Inimitable Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse

  60. A Mathematician's Apology - G. H. Hardy

  61. The Iliad - Homer

  62. The Trachtenberg Speed System of Basic Mathematics - Jakow Trachtenberg

  63. Carl Friedrich Gauss - Guy Waldo Dunnington

  64. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes - Bill Watterson

  65. The Spectator - Joseph Addison

  66. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

  67. Itinerarium Regis Ricardi - T. M. Stead

  68. The Startup Way - Eric Ries

  69. Plagues and Peoples - William McNeill

  70. Concorde - Geoffrey Knight

  71. The Making of Europe - Robert Bartlett

  72. The Principia - Isaac Newton

  73. The Government of the Tongue - Richard Allestree

  74. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas S. Kuhn

  75. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin

  76. The Gallic Wars - Julius Caesar

  77. Wing Leader - Johnnie Johnson

  78. Life in the English Country House - Mark Girouard

  79. The German Generals Talk - Basil H. Liddell Hart

  80. The Collected Works of P. G. Wodehouse - P. G. Wodehouse

    **sidenote: pg LOVES every book by his nicknamesake ❤️❤️❤️


  81. Dog Man - Dav Pilkey

  82. Boyd - Robert Coram

  83. The Double Helix - James D. Watson Ph.D.

  84. Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling

  85. History of the World - J.M. Roberts

  86. The Quest for El Cid - Richard Fletcher

  87. Albert Einstein - Banesh Hoffmann

  88. A Mind at Play - Jimmy Soni

  89. A Sense of Where You Are - John McPhee

  90. The Complete Novels of Jane Austen - Jane Austen

  91. Barbarian Days - William Finnegan

  92. The Conquest of Gaul - Jane P. Gardner

  93. Richard Feynman - John Gribbin

  94. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein

  95. The Launch Pad - Randall Stross

P.S.: If you want to see every book pg has mentioned (in essays, interviews, etc...), we've put as many as we could find on this page.