A log of all the books I've read since ~2021. See my instapaper for the more blog-post shaped things I consume. Italics indicate I only skimmed/partially read.
Suggestions always welcome.
2025
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn, 1962)
- The Kingdom (Emmanuel Carrère, 2014)
- The Rise of Christianity (Rodney Stark, 1996)
- The Final Pagan Generation (Edward J. Watts, 2015)
- The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (Deborah Harkness, 2007)
- How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth (Mark Koyama & Jared Rubin, 2022)
- Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery (Adam Hochschild, 2005)
- To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (Edmund Wilson, 1940)
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Joan Didion, 1968)
- From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Fred Turner, 2008)
- Quran 30 for 30: Thematic Tasfir (Omar Suleiman & Ismail Kamdar, 2025)
- The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley (Michael S Malone, 1985)
- The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (M. Mitchell Waldrop, 2001)
2024
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2010-15)
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Peter Thiel & Blake Masters, 2014) [my summary]
2022
- Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference (William MacAskill, 2015)
- Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control (Stuart Russell, 2019)
- Superforecasting: The Art of Science and Prediction (Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner, 2015)
- The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't (Julia Galef, 2021)
- Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Decisions (Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths, 2016)
- Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Nick Bostrom, 2014)
2021
- Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams (Matthew Walker, 2017)
- The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (Toby Ord, 2020)