Books Recommended by Peter Thiel
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
Rene Girard
Source: "We [followers of Girard], had sort of a sense that we had figured out the truth about the world in a way that nobody else did." - Peter Thiel
Psychopolitics
Jean-Michel Oughourlian
Source: "For a fresh application of Mr. Girard’s insights into power politics, that great international theater of irrationality." - Peter Thiel
Originals
Adam Grant
Source: "It can sometimes seem as if one must learn everything old before one can try anything new. [The author] does a masterful job showing that is not the case; we are lucky to have him as a guide." - Peter Thiel
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
Source: "[The author] has written the first true guide for protecting a startup from self-sabotage." - Peter Thiel
The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World
Edward Shepherd Creasy
Source: "Peter [Thiel] would, at one point, pass me a copy of [this book], the book he had read as he’d mulled his options over." - Ryan Holiday
The Decadent Society
Ross Gregory Douthat
Source: "Sets the stakes for the most urgent public debate of the 2020s: How do we get back to the future?" - Peter Thiel
Discourses on Livy
Niccolò Machiavelli
Source: "Something in these pages planted itself deep into [Peter Thiel]’s mind when he first read it long ago." - Ryan Holiday
The Great Illusion
Norman Angell
Source: "I like the genre of past books written about the future." - Peter Thiel
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand
Source: "When I first read [Ayn Rand's books] in the late 80s, it felt pretty crazy. And in the last decades, it's in many ways felt much more correct." - Peter Thiel
Resurrection from the Underground
Rene Girard
Source: "The great French thinker René Girard’s classic study of Fyodor Dostoevsky." - Peter Thiel
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
Source: "The devil shows up in Stalinist Russia, [...] and gives everybody what they want, and everything goes haywire." - Peter Thiel
100 Plus
Sonia Arrison
Source: "Its message is evergreen: how scientists are directly attacking the problem of aging and death and why we should fight for life instead of accepting decay as inevitable." - Peter Thiel
The Reasonableness of Christianity
John Locke
Source: "Said that Christ obviously had to mislead people, since if he had not done so, the authorities might have tried to kill him." - Peter Thiel
The American Challenge
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber
Source: "I like the genre of past books written about the future." - Peter Thiel
Bloodlands
Timothy Snyder
Source: "Tells how the Nazis and the Soviets drove each other to ever more murderous atrocities as they fought to dominate Eastern Europe." - Peter Thiel
The Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson
Source: "I like the genre of past books written about the future." - Peter Thiel
The Sovereign Individual
James Dale Davidson
Source: "One of the books that tremendously influenced me when I started PayPal." - Peter Thiel
The New Atlantis
Sir Francis Bacon
Source: "I like the genre of past books written about the future." - Peter Thiel
Holy Bible
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Source: Peter Thiel says The New Testament has influenced him more than The Old Testament.
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien
Source: "The classic [novel] I always give." - Peter Thiel
