2025 Reading (Most Recent First)

  1. Abundance: How we Build a Better Future, Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson

  2. John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, Ian Leslie

  3. The Struggle for Taiwan, Sulmaan Wasif Khan

  4. Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet, Katie Hafner & Matthew Lyon

  5. Living the Asian Century, Kishore Mahbubani

  6. More Than A Numbers Game: A Brief History of Accounting, Thomas A. King

  7. Henry James: A Very Short Introduction, Susan Mizruchi

  8. Unended Quest: An Intellectual Biography, Karl Popper

  9. The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius, Patchen Barss

  10. Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass, Frank Close

  11. Beyond a Boundary, C.L.R. James

  12. Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time and Mathematical Transformation, Robyn Arianrhod

  13. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, Susan Blackmore

  14. The Club: How the Premier League Became the Richest Business in Sport, Jonathan Clegg

  15. Fidelity's World: The Secret Life and Public Power of the Mutual Fund Giant, Diana B. Henriques

  16. The Caesar’s Palace Coup, Max Frume and Sujeet Indap

  17. The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, Michael Cox

  18. The Shortest History of Japan, Lesley Downer

  19. The Smartest Kids in the World And How They Got That Way, Amanda Ripley

  20. Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life, Sonia Purnell

2024 Reading

  1. Who’s Afraid of Romanee-Conti?: A Shortcut to Drinking Great Wines, Dan Keeling

  2. Out: How Brexit Got Done and the Tories Were Undone, Tim Shipman

  3. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  4. Why Machines Learn, Anil Ananthaswamy

  5. Checkmate in Berlin, Giles Milton

  6. The Stalin Affair, Giles Milton

  7. Question 7, Richard Flanagan

  8. When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamin Labutut

  9. A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: A Biography of Randy Newman, Robert Hilburn

  10. The NVIDIA Way, Tae Kim

  11. The Maniac, Benjamin Labatut

  12. Our Evenings, Alan Hollinghurst

  13. Stoner, John Williams

  14. The Third Man, Graham Greene

  15. The Comedians, Graham Greene

  16. Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe

  17. How to Steal a Presidential Election, Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman

  18. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

  19. The War Below, Ernest Scheyder

  20. A Guide to the Professional Interview, Asbjorn Rachlew & Geir-Egil Loken & Svein Tore Bergestuen

  21. The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders-in-Chief and Titans of Industry, Tevi Troy

  22. A Piece of the Sun: The Quest for Fusion Energy, Daniel Clery

  23. Reentry: Space X, Elon Musk and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age, Eric Berger

  24. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Ezra F. Vogel

  25. Chernobyl Roulette, Serhii Plokhy

  26. So Much Longing in So Little Space, Karl Ove Knausgaard

  27. Supremacy: AI, Chat GPT and the Race That Will Change the World, Parmy Olson

  28. Numbers Don’t Lie, Vaclav Smil

  29. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, Neil Sheehan

  30. Blue Machine, Helen Czerski

  31. The Corporation in the 21st Century, John Kay

  32. Alone in Berlin, Hans Fallada

  33. In Gratitude, Jenni Diski

  34. The Racket, Conor Niland

  35. Focus: The ASML Way - Inside the Power Struggle Over the Most Complex Machine on Earth, Marc Hijink

  36. Monolithic Undertow, Harry Sword

  37. A Short History of Russia, Mark Galeotti

  38. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Benvenuto Cellini

  39. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Benjamin M. Friedman

  40. Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris

  41. The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen

  42. Open, Andre Agassi

  43. A Short History of England, Simon Jenkins

  44. A History of Britain, Simon Schama

  45. The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross

  46. Soldier Sailor, Claire Kilroy

  47. Cunning Folk, Tabitha Stanmore

  48. Downfall, Anna Arutunyan & Mark Galeotti

  49. Pondlife: A Swimmer’s Journal, Al Alvarez

  50. Groupthink, Christopher Booker

  51. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave Le Bon

  52. Heroes of Progress, Alexander C. Hammond

  53. Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age, Lillian Hoddeson & Michael Riordan

  54. A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean

  55. The Struggle for Taiwan, Sulmaan Wasif Khan

  56. Same as Ever, Morgan Housel

  57. Practicing History, Barbara W. Tuchman

  58. Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking, Cecilia Hayes

  59. The Secret of Our Success, Joseph Henrich

  60. The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch

  61. The Idea of the Brain, Matthew Cobb

  62. Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel

  63. The Long Game: Inside Sinn Fein, Aoife Moore

  64. Humanly Possible, Sarah Bakewell

  65. The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East 1979 - 2003, Steve Coll

  66. The Tiger, John Vaillant

  67. Delight, J.B. Priestly

  68. The Full English, Stuart Maconie

  69. Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish

  70. Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?, Fred Schwed

  71. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, Roger Lowenstein

  72. Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams

  73. So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, Douglas Adams

  74. Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams

  75. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams

  76. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

  77. How Life Works, Philip Ball

  78. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut (rr)

  79. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut (rr)

  80. Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut (rr)

  81. The Prince, Nicolo Machiavelli

  82. The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare

  83. This is Shakespeare, Emma Smith

  84. Keir Starmer, Tom Baldwin

  85. The Political Thought of Xi Jinping, Olivia Cheung and Steve Tsang

  86. The Wild Men: The Remarkable Story of Britain’s First Labour Government, David Torrance

  87. Another Green World, Brian Eno (33 1/3 series), Geeta Dyal

  88. For Blood and Money: Billionaires, Biotech, and the Quest for a Blockbuster Drug, Nathan Vardi

  89. Invitation to a Banquet, Fuchscia Dunlop

  90. Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets, Clair Wills

  91. Bright Star, Green Light: The Beautiful Works and Damned Lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Keats, Jonathan Bate

  92. The Measure of Reality, Alfred W. Crosby

  93. Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth, Adam Zamoyski

  94. Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles, Bernard Cornwell

  95. When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro

  96. Owning the Earth, Andro Linklater (rr)

  97. Tago Mago, Can (33 1/3 series), Alan Warner

  98. Talleyrand, Duff Cooper

  99. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

  100. Nixon Agonistes, Gary Wills

  101. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

  102. The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis, Richard Whatmore

  103. Vines in a Cool Climate, Henry Jeffreys

2023 Reading (most recent first)

  1. Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Charles T. Munger

  2. Scotland, Murray Pittock

  3. World Order, Henry Kissinger

  4. Same as Ever, Morgan Housel

  5. Waverley, Walter Scott

  6. Updike, Adam Begley

  7. Chocolate Wars, Deborah Cadbury

  8. The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World, William Eggington

  9. GOAT: Who Is The Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?, Tyler Cowen

  10. A Year of Reading Dangerously, Andy Miller

  11. Going Infinite, Michael Lewis

  12. Molloy, Samuel Beckett

  13. The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend, Rob Copeland

  14. Coffin, Scarcely Used, Colin Watson

  15. Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton and Me, Bernie Taupin

  16. Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes, Richard Davenport-Hines

  17. Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell

  18. The End of the Affair, Graham Greene

  19. Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry

  20. Stay True, Hua Hsu

  21. Toast, Nigel Slater

  22. Time Regained: Remembrance of Things Past, Book 7 , Marcel Proust

  23. I’ve Been Thinking, Daniel C. Dennett

  24. I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter

  25. Hearing Secret Harmonies: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 12, Anthony Powell

  26. Temporary Kings: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 11, Anthony Powell

  27. The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of J.M. Keynes, Zachary D. Carter

  28. The Fugitive: Remembrance of Things Past, Book 6, Marcel Proust

  29. War and Punishment, Mikhail Zygar

  30. The Return of the Russian Leviathan, Sergei Medvedev

  31. Books do Furnish a Room: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 10, Anthony Powell

  32. Politics on the Edge, Rory Stewart

  33. The Military Philosophers: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 9, Anthony Powell

  34. What I Learned About Investing from Darwin, Pulak Prasad (rr)

  35. The Captive: Remembrance of Things Past, Book 5, Marcel Proust

  36. The Soldier’s Art: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 8, Anthony Powell

  37. The Valley of Bones: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 7, Anthony Powell

  38. Sodom & Gomorrah: Remembrance of Things Past, Book 4, Marcel Proust

  39. The Kindly Ones: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 6, Anthony Powell

  40. Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 5, Anthony Powell

  41. The Guermantes Way: Remembrance of Things Past, Book 3, Marcel Proust

  42. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Richard Rhodes

  43. At Lady Molly’s: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 4, Anthony Powell

  44. The Acceptance World: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 3, Anthony Powell

  45. In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: Remembrance of Things Past, Book 2, Marcel Proust

  46. A Buyer’s Market: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 2, Anthony Powell

  47. A Question of Upbringing: A Dance to the Music of Time, Book 1, Anthony Powell

  48. Swann’s Way: Remembrance of Things Past, Book 1, Marcel Proust

  49. Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead

  50. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

  51. Revolutionary Spring, Christopher Clark

  52. Stuff Matters, Mark Miodowink

  53. When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamin Labatut

  54. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins

  55. Material World, Ed Conway

  56. Nick Drake, Richard Morton Jack

  57. Thunderclap, Laura Cumming

  58. Faith, Hope & Carnage, Nick Cave & Sean O’Hagan

  59. The Wager, David Grann

  60. Why Information Grows, Cesar Hidalgo (rr)

  61. What I Learned About Investing From Darwin, Pulak Prasad

  62. Revolutionary Spring, Christopher Clark

  63. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki

  64. On Quality, Robert Pirsig & Wendy M. Pirsig

  65. Masters of Doom, David Kushner

  66. Chip War, Chris Miller (rr)

  67. Vanity Fair, William Thackeray

  68. Palo Alto, Malcom Harris

  69. Scaling People, Claire Hughes Johnson

  70. Hands of Time, Rebecca Struthers

  71. Michael Jordan, Roland Lazenby

  72. Parfit, David Edmonds

  73. Working, Robert Caro

  74. The Evolution of God, Robert Wright

  75. A Guide to the Professional Interview, Asbjorn Rachlew & Geir-Egil Loken

  76. The Last Party, John Harris

  77. The Murder of Professor Schlick, David Edmonds

  78. The Fabric of Civilisation, Virginia Postrel

  79. Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

  80. The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

  81. The Diary of a Nobody, George Grossmith

  82. Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol.2), Robert Caro

  83. The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil

  84. The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol.1), Robert Caro

  85. What’s Our Problem, Tim Urban

  86. Beyond Measure, James Vincent

  87. Genius Makers, Cade Metz

  88. The Romance of Reality, Bobby Azarian

  89. Dark, Salt, Clear, Lamorna Ash

  90. The Pursuit of Power, William H. McNeill

  91. Soft City, Jonathan Raban

  92. Dune, Frank Herbert

  93. A Sentimental Journey, Laurence Sterne

  94. Professor Maxwell’s Duplicitous Demon, Brian Clegg

  95. The Rise of the West, William H. McNeill

  96. Bibi, Benjamin Netanyahu

  97. The Genetic Age, Matthew Cobb

  98. The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich

  99. We Don’t Know Ourselves, Fintan O’Toole

  100. The Great British Dream Factory, Dominic Sandbrook

  101. Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year, Eleanor Parker

  102. The McCartney Legacy, Allan Kozin & Adrian Sinclair

2022 Reading

  1. The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown, Anna Keay

  2. Like, Comment, Subscribe: YouTube’s Chaotic Journey to World Domination, Mark Bergen

  3. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

  4. Dark, Salt, Clear, Lamorna Ash

  5. Richer, Wiser, Happier, William Green (rr)

  6. Jet Man: The Making and Breaking of Frank Whittle, Genius of the Jet Revolution, Duncan Campbell-Smith

  7. Pyramid of Lies, Duncan Mavin

  8. The Hare With Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal

  9. The Song of the Cell, Siddharta Mukherjee

  10. Putin’s Wars, Mark Galeotti

  11. China’s Economy, Arthur R. Kroeber

  12. A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor

  13. Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, Chris Miller

  14. Slouching Towards Utopia, Brad DeLong

  15. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin

  16. Money Men, Dan McCrum

  17. On Some Faraway Beach: The Life & Times of Brian Eno, David Sheppard

  18. The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism, Matthew Continetti

  19. Invested, Charles Schwab

  20. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality, Manjit Kumar

  21. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan

  22. Northline, Willy Vlautin

  23. Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism, Thomas Brothers

  24. The Motel Life, Willy Vlautin

  25. Lean on Pete, Willy Vlautin

  26. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, Neal Gabler

  27. The Price of Time, Edward Chancellor

  28. Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich, Deirdre McKloskey & Art Carden

  29. The Motel Life, Willy Vlautin

  30. MBS, Ben Hubbard

  31. John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed, 1883 - 1920, Robert Skidelsky

  32. Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro, Richard Lapper

  33. The Metaverse, Matthew Ball

  34. The Dream Machine, Mitchell Waldrop (rr)

  35. The Intel Trinity, Michael S. Malone

  36. The Islander, Chris Blackwell

  37. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

  38. Talent, Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross

  39. The World For Sale, Javier Blas & Jack Farchy

  40. Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens

  41. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, Katherine Rundell

  42. The Last Days of Roger Federer, Geoff Dyer

  43. Nazi Billionaires, David de Jong

  44. Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man, Claire Tomalin

  45. The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built and Empire and Lost it All, Mary Childs

  46. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright (rr)

  47. The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman

  48. Rock Me on the Water, Ronald Brownstein

  49. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took back Russian Then Turned on the West, Catherine Belton (rr)

  50. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, John M. Barry

  51. A Century of Investing: Baillie Gifford’s First 100 Years, Richard Burns

  52. The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of War, Nicholas Mulder

  53. The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, Jimmy Soni

  54. Accidental Gods, Anna Della Subin

  55. Rome, Robert Hughes

  56. Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life, William Green

  57. Working Backwards: Insights, Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon, Colin Bryar & Bill Carr (rr)

  58. The Great Mental Models vol.3: Systems & Mathematics, Farnam Street

  59. America’s First Great Depression, Alasdair Roberts

  60. Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, Fred Reicheld

  61. Barca: The Inside Story of the World’s Greatest Football Club, Simon Kuper

  62. The Future of Money, Ewar S. Prasad

  63. The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, Mary Elise Sarotte

  64. A Life of My Own, Claire Tomalin

  65. The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby

  66. How to Decide, Annie Duke

  67. Lessons From the Titans, Scott Davis & Melius Research Principals

  68. Capital Without Borders: Brooke Harrington

  69. Consilience, E.O. Wilson

  70. How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil

  71. The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich

  72. Very Important People: Status & Beauty in the Global Party Circuit, Ashley Mears

  73. Men, Machines & Modern Times, Elting E. Morison

  74. Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (vol.2), Charles Moore

  75. Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth, Frank Slootman

  76. Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long, Richard D. White Jr

  77. Germinal, Emile Zola

  78. Scientist: E.O. Wilson, A Life in Nature, Richard Rhodes

2021 Reading

  1. Tom Stoppard: A Life, Hermione Lee

  2. Spy Line, Len Deighton

  3. Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad, Michela Wrong

  4. Spy Hook, Len Deighton

  5. London Match, Len Deighton

  6. Mexico Set, Len Deighton

  7. At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien

  8. The Origin of Wealth, Eric Beinhocker (rr)

  9. Berlin Game, Len Deighton

  10. White Noise, Don DeLillo

  11. Beautiful World, Where Are You?, Sally Rooney

  12. The Asian Financial Crisis, Russell Napier

  13. Vassily Grossman & The Soviet Century, Alexandra Popoff

  14. Stalingrad, Anthony Beevor

  15. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

  16. Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy, Adam Tooze

  17. The Ipcress File, Len Deighton

  18. Unnatural Death, Dorothy L. Sayers

  19. The Trials of Rumpole. John Mortimer

  20. The Beatles, Hunter Davies

  21. This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race, Nicole Perlroth

  22. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Sanders

  23. Railroader, Howard Green

  24. The Stranger, Albert Camus

  25. Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win, Jeff Lawson

  26. Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800–1906, David Cannadine (rr)

  27. Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, and Corruption in Today’s China, Desmond Shum

  28. The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life, Tom Reiss

  29. The Man from the Future: The Visonary Life of John von Neumann, Ananyo Bhattacharya

  30. Digital Cash, Finn Brunton

  31. Seize the Day, Saul Bellow

  32. Extraterrestrial, Avi Loeb

  33. Eat the Buddha, Barbara Demick

  34. The Genetic Lottery, Kathryn Paige Harden

  35. Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald, Carole Angier

  36. The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald

  37. Shift Into Freedom, Loch Kelly

  38. Helgoland, Carlo Rovelli

  39. The Great Depression and the New Deal, Eric Rauchway

  40. Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through: The Surprising Story of Britain's Economy from Boom to Bust and Back Again, Duncan Weldon

  41. Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich 1945-1955, Harald Jahrer

  42. The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand

  43. Vaxxers, Sarah Gilbert & Catherine Green

  44. Index: A History of The, Dennis Duncan

  45. My Phantoms, Gwendoline Riley

  46. Grow the Pie, Alex Edmans

  47. The Turning Point: A Year that Changed Dickens and the World, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

  48. Bewilderment, Richard Powers

  49. Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman

  50. Freedom, Sebastien Junger

  51. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles

  52. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Patrick Radden Keefe

  53. The Age of Napoleon (The Story of Civilization, vol.11), Will & Ariel Durant

  54. Rousseau & Revolution (The Story of Civilization, vol.10), Will & Ariel Durant

  55. Rumpole for the Defence, John Mortimer

  56. The Age of Voltaire (The Story of Civilization, vol.9), Will & Ariel Durant

  57. The Age of Louis XIV (The Story of Civilization, vol.8), Will & Ariel Durant

  58. Mr Five Per Cent: The Many Lives of Calouste Gulbenkian, Jonathan Conlin

  59. 100 Baggers, Christopher W. Mayer (rr)

  60. The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells

  61. Amazon Unbound, Brad Stone

  62. Working Backwards: Insights, Stories & Secrets from Inside Amazon, Colin Bryar & Bill Carr

  63. The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery, Michael Taylor

  64. Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell, John Preston

  65. Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman & the Ways of American Power, Zachary Karabell

  66. The Sign of Four, Arthur Conan Doyle

  67. The Code Breaker, Walter Isaacson

  68. Rumpole on Trial, John Mortimer

  69. My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

  70. Flash Boys, Michael Lewis

  71. Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie

  72. A Short History of Russia, Mark Galeotti

  73. The Last London, Iain Sinclair

  74. The Peregrine, J.A. Baker

  75. Lost in Thought, Zena Hitz

  76. The Razor’s Edge, Somerset Maugham

  77. The Age of Reason Begins (The Story of Civilisation, vol.7), Will & Ariel Durant

  78. The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters, Adam Nicholson

  79. The Idea of the Brain, Matthew Cobb

  80. Saturday, Ian McEwan

  81. This Sovereign Isle, Robert Tombs

  82. The Thirty Years’ War, C.V. Wedgwood

  83. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Benjamin M. Friedman

  84. Written in Bone, Professor Sue Black

  85. The Reformation (The Story of Civilisation, vol. 6), Will Durant

  86. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Adam Tooze (rr)

  87. Freedom from Fear (Oxford History of the United States), David M. Kennedy

  88. From Colony to Superpower (Oxford History of the United States), George C. Herring

  89. The Creation of the American Republic (Oxford History of the United States), Gordon S. Wood

  90. The Artful Dickens, John Mullan

  91. Grand Expectations (Oxford History of the United States), James T. Patterson

  92. London in the Eighteenth Century, Jerry White

  93. Restless Giant (Oxford History of the United States), James T. Patterson

  94. Monsoon, Robert D. Kaplan (rr)

2020 Reading

  1. Rise of the Data Cloud, Frank Slootman

  2. Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974, James T. Patterson

  3. Berlin Game, Len Deighton

  4. London Match, Len Deighton

  5. The Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith

  6. George F. Kennan: An American Life, John Lewis Gaddis

  7. The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World, Barry Gewen

  8. Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat (Pax Britannica Trilogy vol.3), Jan Morris

  9. Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire (Pax Britannica Trilogy vol.2), Jan Morris

  10. Heaven’s Command (Pax Britannica Trilogy vol.1), Jan Morris

  11. The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch

  12. The Bridge, Thane Gustafson

  13. The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman

  14. Samsung Rising, Geoffrey Cain

  15. Billion Dollar Loser, Reeves Wiedeman

  16. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

  17. How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand (rr)

  18. The Story of China, Michael Wood

  19. Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns

  20. MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang, Steven Dudley

  21. Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens

  22. A Concise History of the Arabs, John McHugo

  23. My Promised Land, Ari Shavit

  24. The Secret of Our Success, Joseph Henrich (rr)

  25. Inside Story, Martin Amis

  26. Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

  27. World Order, Henry Kissinger

  28. The Renaissance (The Story of Civilisation, vol. 5), Will Durant

  29. Radical Uncertainty, Mervyn King & John Kay

  30. Why We Don’t Learn From History, B.H. Liddell Hart

  31. Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake

  32. Left Out, Gabriel Pogrund & Patrick Maguire

  33. The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel

  34. The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady

  35. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

  36. Stalingrad, Vasily Grossman

  37. Exhalation, Ted Chiang

  38. Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, Stephen Kotkin

  39. Intimations, Zadie Smith

  40. At Swim Two Birds, Flann O’Brien

  41. The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brien

  42. The Age of Faith (The Story of Civilisation, vol. 4), Will Durant (rr)

  43. Arts & Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation, Anton Howes

  44. How to Write Like Tolstoy, Richard Cohen

  45. Facebook: The Inside Story, Steven Levy

  46. Small Hours: The Long Night of John Martyn, Graeme Thompson

  47. One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time, Craig Brown

  48. Coffeeland, Augustine Sedgewick

  49. Self Care, Leigh Stein

  50. Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson (rr)

  51. Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physics, Anthony Aguirre

  52. Why Spencer Perceval had to Die, Andro Linklater

  53. Embracing Defeat, John W. Dower

  54. Summer Lightning, P.G. Wodehouse

  55. Heavy Weather, P.G. Wodehouse

  56. The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander (rr)

  57. Miles: The Autobiography, Miles Davis

  58. Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott (rr)

  59. How Innovation Works, Matt Ridley

  60. Money, Martin Amis (rr)

  61. Gandhi Before India, Ramachandra Guha

  62. The Innovation Stack, Jim McKelvey

  63. The Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko

  64. The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, & the Life of J.M. Keynes, Zachary D. Carter

  65. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

  66. Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership, Andro Linklater

  67. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Turned on the West, Catherine Belton

  68. Men at Arms, Evelyn Waugh

  69. Anthony Powell: Dancing to the the Music of Time, Hilary Spurling

  70. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, Richard White (rr)

  71. The Great Mental Models (Volume 2), Shane Parrish & Farnam Street

  72. The Ratline, Phillipe Sands

  73. These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore

  74. Hearing Secret Harmonies, (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 12), Anthony Powell

  75. Temporary Kings, (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 11), Anthony Powell

  76. Books Do Furnish a Room, (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 10), Anthony Powell

  77. The Military Philosophers, (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 9), Anthony Powell

  78. The Soldier’s Art, (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 8), Anthony Powell

  79. The Valley of Bones (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 7), Anthony Powell

  80. Red Plenty, Francis Spufford (rr)

  81. The Kindly Ones (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 6), Anthony Powell

  82. Globalists, Quinn Slobodian

  83. Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 5), Anthony Powell

  84. Sea People, Christina Thompson

  85. At Lady Molly’s (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 4), Anthony Powell

  86. The Acceptance World (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 3), Anthony Powell

  87. A Buyer’s Market (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 2), Anthony Powell

  88. A Question of Upbringing (A Dance to the Music of Time, vol. 1), Anthony Powell

  89. Confessions, Jean-Jaques Rousseau

  90. A Distant Mirror, Barbara W. Tuchman

  91. The Age of Faith (The Story of Civilisation, vol. 4), Will Durant

  92. Learn or Die, Edward D. Hess (rr)

  93. Deep Work, Cal Newport (rr)

  94. The Patriarch, David Nasaw

  95. The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell

  96. Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell

  97. Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell

  98. Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, David Farrier

  99. Black Wave, Kim Ghattas

  100. A Short History of London, Simon Jenkins

  101. The Great Influenza, John M. Barry

  102. Kraftwerk, Uwe Schutte

  103. Hitler: Only the World Was Enough, Brendan Simms

  104. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro (rr)

  105. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs

  106. Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs, Robert Kanigel

  107. The Economists’ Hour, Binyamin Appelbaum

  108. The Unwomanly Face of War, Svetlana Alexievich

  109. One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon, Charles Fishman

  110. The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991, Eric Hobsbawm

  111. The Age of Empire: 1875-1914, Eric Hobsbawm

  112. The Age of Capital: 1848 - 1875, Eric Hobsbawm

  113. The Age of Revolution: 1789 - 1848, Eric Hobsbawm

  114. The Odyssey, Homer, trans. Emily Wilson

  115. How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Arthur Herman

  116. The Pursuit of Power, William H. McNeill

  117. Organizing Genius, Warren Bennis & Patricia Ward Biedermann

  118. The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History, Kassia St Clair

  119. Stillness is the Key, Ryan Holiday

  120. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

  121. My Early Life, Winston Churchill

  122. The Shareholder Value Myth, Lynn Stout

  123. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff

  124. Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium, Lucy Inglis

  125. Uncanny Valley, Anna Weiner

  126. Victorious Century: The United Kingdom 1800-1906, David Cannadine

  127. Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer

  128. On Photography, Susan Sontag

  129. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of my Years at Lockheed, Ben R. Rich

  130. Extreme Economies, Richard Davies

  131. What It Takes, Stephen Schwarzman

  132. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, Eric Foner

  133. The AI Does Not Hate You, Tom Chivers

  134. The Secret of Our Success, Joseph Heinrich

  135. The Light That Failed, Ivan Krastev & Stephen Holmes

  136. The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books, Elif Batuman

  137. Yoga For People Who Can’t be Bother to Do It, Geoff Dyer

  138. The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells

  139. Liquid, Mark Miodownik

  140. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

  141. Winners Take All, Anand Ghiridharas

  142. Life at the Speed of Light, J. Craig Venter

  143. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut (rr)

  144. Maoism, Julia Lovell

  145. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

  146. Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport

2019 Reading 

  1. Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (rr)

  2. The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald

  3. What You Do is Who You Are, Ben Horowitz

  4. The Regency Revolution, Robert Morrison

  5. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak

  6. Looking for Transwonderland, Noo Saro-Wiwa

  7. The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard

  8. Somewhere Becoming Rain, Clive James

  9. My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead

  10. Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa, Paul Kenyon (rr)

  11. The Ride of a Lifetime, Bob Iger

  12. Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson

  13. Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky

  14. The Blair Years, Alastair Campbell

  15. Rise and Kill First, Ronen Bergman

  16. The Great British Dream Factory, Dominic Sandbrook

  17. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

  18. Grand Union, Zadie Smith

  19. Talking to Strangers, Malcom Gladwell

  20. Educated, Tara Westover

  21. Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America, Chris Arndade

  22. A Month in Siena, Hisham Matar

  23. One Day in the Life of Alexander Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  24. How Fascism Works, Jason Stanley

  25. The Value of Everything: Makers & Takers in the Global Economy, Mariana Mazzucato

  26. Caesar and Christ (The Story of Civilization, pt.3), Will Durant

  27. Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald

  28. The Last Leonardo, Ben Lewis

  29. The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un, Anna Fifield

  30. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles

  31. Means of Ascent, Robert Caro (rr)

  32. The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, Thomas Philippon

  33. The Topeka School, Ben Lerner

  34. No Such Thing as Society, Andy McSmith

  35. Capital Account, Marathon Asset Management ed. Edward Chancellor (rr)

  36. A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf

  37. Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens (rr)

  38. The Man Who Solved the Market, Gregory Zuckerman

  39. Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941, Stephen Kotkin

  40. Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner

  41. Your Duck is my Duck, Deborah Eisenberg

  42. The History of Physics, J.L Heilbron (rr)

  43. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

  44. From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries, Emilio Segre

  45. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

  46. Simple But Not Easy, Richard Oldfield

  47. Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo

  48. Nine Lives, Aimen Dean

  49. Kochland, Christopher Leonard

  50. The Little Book that Builds Wealth, Pat Dorsey (rr)

  51. The Courage to be Disliked, Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga

  52. Nothing is Real, David Hepworth

  53. This is Not Propaganda, Peter Pomerantsev

  54. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Philip Fisher

  55. Me, Elton John

  56. The Boy with the Topknot, Sathnam Sanghera

  57. Quality Investing, Lawrence Cunningham, Torkell Eide & Patrick Hargreaves (rr)

  58. The Beautiful Struggle, Ta Nehisi-Coates

  59. The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray

  60. The Life of Greece (The Story of Civilization, pt.2), Will Durant

  61. The Order of the Day, Eric Vuillard

  62. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic, Alfred Lansing

  63. The Art of Execution, Lee Freeman-Stor

  64. Cosmos, Carl Sagan

  65. Everything is Horrible and Wonderful, Stephanie Wittels Wachs

  66. The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli (rr)

  67. Professor Maxwell’s Duplicitous Demon, Brian Clegg

  68. The Overstory, Richard Powers

  69. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe, Arthur Koestler

  70. Faraday, Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field, Nancy Forbes & Basil Mahon

  71. Wilding, Isabella Tree

  72. Exterminate All The Brutes, Sven Lindqvist (rr)

  73. Genius, James Gleick (rr)

  74. Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution, Lee Smolin

  75. Asymmetry, Lisa Halliday

  76. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell

  77. American Cosmic, D.W. Paskula

  78. Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, Bill Janeway

  79. Made in America, Sam Walton

  80. The Battle for Sky: The Murdochs, Disney, Comcast and the Future of Entertainment, Christopher Williams

  81. Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Life of Three American Families, J. Anthony Lukas

  82. Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs, Gina Keating

  83. Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein

  84. Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition, Sonia Purnell

  85. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass

  86. Science: A History: 1534-2001, John Gribbin

  87. The Demon in the Machine, Paul Davies

  88. Seinfeldia: How A Show About Nothing Changed Everything, Jennifer Armstrong

  89. The Nature of Technology, Brian Arthur (rr)

  90. Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No-one’s Land, Sven Lindqvist

  91. My Life and Work, Henry Ford (rr)

  92. The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse

  93. The Frayed Atlantic Edge, David Grange

  94. 1931: Debt, Crisis and the Rise of Hitler, Tobias Straumann

  95. The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers

  96. Talking to Terrorists, Jonathan Powell

  97. Not in My Neighborhood, Antero Pietila

  98. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr & The Great Debate About the Nature of Reality, Manjit Kumar

  99. Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, Paul Barrett

  100. Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook, Edward Luttwak

  101. Stars: A Very Short Introduction, Andrew King

  102. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Peter Frankopan

  103. Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood

  104. The End of Accounting, Baruch Lev

  105. The History of Physics: A Very Short Introduction, J.L. Heilbron

  106. An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management, Will Larson

  107. Unraveling the Double Helix: The Story of DNA, Gareth Williams

  108. From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves, Emilio Segrè

  109. Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction, Peter Atkins

  110. Personal History, Katharine Graham

  111. Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution and why America Might Miss It, Susan Crawford

  112. Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, Natasha Dow-Schull (rr)

  113. Capital Returns, Marathon Asset Management (ed. Edward Chancellor) (rr)

  114. Loonshots, Safi Bahcall

  115. Our Oriental Heritage (The Story of Civilization, pt.1), Will Durant

  116. Keynes: Universal Man, Richard Davenport-Hines (rr)

  117. The Day the Universe Changed, James Burke

  118. Led Zeppelin IV, Barney Hoskyns

  119. Born Standing Up, Steve Martin (rr)

  120. Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey

  121. Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport

  122. Deep Work, Cal Newport (rr)

  123. So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport (rr)

  124. Born to Run, Christopher Macdougall

  125. Origin Story, David Christian

  126. The Second Mountain, David Brooks

  127. Antifragile, Nasim Taleb

  128. Exterminate all the Brutes, Sven Lindqvist

  129. Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, Rana Mitter

  130. The Secret Barrister, Anonymous

  131. This is Going to Hurt, Adam Kay

  132. This is Shakespeare, Emma Smith

  133. Infinite Powers: The Story of Calculus, Stephen Strogatz

  134. Cataloging the World, Alex Wright

  135. Working, Robert Caro

  136. Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, Jason Stearns

  137. The Wright Brothers, David McCullough

  138. The Wild Places, Robert Macfarlane

  139. Kill All Normies, Angela Nagle

  140. The Gifts of Athena, Joel Mokyr

  141. The Great Economists, Linda Yueh

  142. The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner

  143. The Debatable Land, Graham Robb

  144. Creating the 20th Century, Vaclav Smil

  145. High Growth Handbook, Elad Gil

  146. Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News, Emily Maitlis

  147. The Fun Stuff: and Other Essays, James Wood

  148. American Nations, Colin Woodard

  149. Persuasion, Jane Austen (rr)

  150. The Age of Eisenhower, William Hitchcock

  151. Life 3.0, Max Tegmark

  152. Exactly, Simon Winchester

  153. The Complacent Class, Tyler Cowen

  154. Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows

  155. The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang

  156. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

  157. The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age, Gino Segre and Bettina Hoerlin

  158. A Mathematician’s Apology, G.H. Hardy

  159. A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor, John Berger

  160. Crashing Through: The Extraordinary True Story of the Man Who Dared to See, Robert Kurson (wnf)

  161. A Political History of the World, Jonathan Hoslag

  162. Lone Star: A History of Texas, T.R. Fehrenbach

  163. Normal People, Sally Rooney

  164. Reality Is Not What it Seems, Carlo Rovelli (rr)

  165. Power, Pleasure and Profit, David Wootton (rr)

  166. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid McCullough

  167. AI Superpowers, Kai-Fu Lee

  168. The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli (rr)

  169. The Greatest Story Ever Told, Lawrence Krauss

  170. Failure: Why Science is Successful, Stuart Firestein

  171. Who is Michael Ovitz?, Michael Ovitz

  172. When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead, Jerry Weintraub

  173. The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore

  174. The Corporation That Changed the World, Nick Robins

  175. Hello World, Hannah Fry

  176. Triumphs of Experience, George E. Vaillant

  177. Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment's Encounter with Asia, Jurgen Osterhammel

  178. Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber

  179. Valley of Genius, Adam Fisher

  180. Zucked, Roger MacNamee

  181. The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick

  182. The Beatles, All These Years (Vol.1), Mark Lewisohn (rr)

  183. Quench Your Own Thirst, Jim Koch

  184. Chocolate Wars, Deborah Cadbury

  185. The Gene Machine, Venki Ramakrishnan

  186. The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (rr)

  187. Behemoth: A History of the Factory, Joshua Freeman

  188. Armageddon Averted, The Soviet Collapse, 1960-2000

  189. Moonwalking With Einstein, Joshua Foer

  190. Nonzero, The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright

  191. The Color of Money, Mehrsa Baradaran

  192. Bourgeois Dignity, Deirdre McCloskey

  193. Bourgeois Equality, Deirdre McCloskey

  194. The Bourgeois Virtues, Deirdre McCloskey

  195. Essentialism, Greg McKeown

  196. 100 Baggers, Christopher Mayer

  197. Atomic Habits, James Clear

  198. Has The West Lost It?, Kishore Mahbubani

  199. Things I Don’t Want to Know, Deborah Levy

  200. The Cost of Living, Deborah Levy

  201. Becoming, Michelle Obama

  202. 1944, Jay Winik

  203. The Myth of Capitalism, Jonathan Tepper

  204. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge

  205. The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph, Albert Hirschman

  206. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Kenneth Jackson

  207. Bring it on Home: Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin and Beyond: The Story of Rock's Greatest Manager, Mark Blake

    ‘rr’ = re-read