See also:Resources

Meta

• 10 Days to Faster Reading by The Princeton Language Institute
  Read this first, you’ll be faster so you’ll have time to read the rest of these faster.
• How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler
  Then read this, and you’ll understand how to read a book.

Life

• Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff
  How do you finish a project? By finishing it.
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink
  Wake up, get after it and GET SOME at 4:30AM.

History

Tech History

Read this section in order - Dream Machine, Hacker Crackdown, Soul of a New Machine, and finally Cuckoo’s Egg.

Historically Accurate

• The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop
  Allegedly a biography of J.C.R Licklider, is really a study of those who were around him and the work that they did in computing. Excellent read.
• The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier by Bruce Sterling
  Secret Service raids, phone phreaks, politics, you name it.

Romanticized Tech

• The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
  The computer revolution from the 1970s, we follow the adventures of a team building one of the first 32-bit minicomputers in just one year.
• The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll
  A really interesting (allegedly true!) read about tracking a spy through a time sharing system (and the early internet).

Military History

• Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram

General Interest/Career

• Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track by Will Larson
  Probably the most influential work for my career to date, outside of Jocko Willink and Cal Newport.
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

Fiction

All of these are series (or should be). With the exception of Stranger in a Strange Land, all are good audiobooks.

• Galaxy’s Edge Series by Jason Anspach
  Start with Legionnaire. If you aren’t interested in KTF-ing by the end, the rest of the series won’t click.
• Spells, Swords, & Stealth Series by Drew Hayes
  What happens when D&D non-player characters become sentient and go on quests?
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
  A very enjoyable read, one that approaches science fiction from another angle - namely, what if there is another civilization, and they perceive time, space and matter so differently from us that we must have a bridge?

Also the origin of “grok” is in this book, and it means far more than anything I ever expected.

• We Are Legion - We Are Bob (Bobiverse, #1) by Dennis E. Taylor
  What happens when you freeze a software developer and then turn him loose on the galaxy as an AI? Well, if you’re lucky, you get Bob. Sarcastic, fluff, great stuff.
• The Expanse Series by James S.A. Corey
  Gritty scifi. Star Trek says “We solved all of humanities problems with technology!”, Star Wars is “love story with a rebellion in space!” and The Expanse is “It’s the future. We have space ships. But everything still sucks because, well, humans. LOL”
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
  What happens if 1776 happens on the moon? What about if it has a sentient computer as a critical ally? You get this. Also you’ll understand why some jokes are funny once.