▲ 11 points

Ask YC (and PG): What books do you have on your bookshelf?

by Anon84·18y ago·37 comments·view on hn ↗

I'm trying to come up with a "reading list" for the Summer and I would like to hear what the YC community recommends. Suggestions can range from the highly technical (in the style of SICP or ACP) to the more popish ones (such as "The Long Tail" or "Blink!").

What books would you say have helped you the most in your startup or hackering in general?

Which ones gave you the best ideas or insight?

Which ones do you think every Hacker should read?

Any books you have read recently, that you wish you had read earlier in your career? (I'm thinking business books, for instance)

37 comments

The 33 Strategies of War. - Robert Greene

I am too nice a guy. I am also the leader of my company. The two don't mix. You have to become somewhat detached, and somewhat of an asshole in order to effectively lead. I found out the hard way that sometimes you have to say to your people "because I freekin said so" instead of trying to be nice to them and let them make the mistake you know they are going to make (silly me, I forgot this was a business, not a community college).

The hardest thing for me, by far, has been to fire someone. I did it two months too late, and everyone in my company suffered for it. My lesson? Be an asshole at the right time.

I love the book I mention because the lessons apply everywhere in business: You need to motivate, you need to earn the respect of your people, you need to be decisive, you need to see the bigger goal, and you need to delegate correctly and put together the right structure in your company's leadership.

I've learned a lot from this book. Guess what? Our productivity is about 2-3 times higher now (no joke, 200% to 300% more work gets done every day). We're running fine, everyone is pulling their weight, and everyone is happy to be making professional progress. My own lesson from this book was that I had to get some balls, crack the whip, and turn from a fellow programmer to a leader and mentor. Your lesson from the book might be different, but I bet that almost everyone has something to learn from this book.

The best thing I've been reading lately is E. W. Bovill's English Country Life 1780-1830. Boring title, but a great book. His Golden Trade of the Moors is fabulous.

"Highly technical," says the Times.

"Popish!" raves the Globe.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously though, I bet he's at the library checking it out right now. :)

But while we're recommending books he doesn't want, I would like to suggest W.P. Montague's, The Ways of Knowing.

Particularly, it's explanation of authoritarianism, when it's appropriate and when it's not, has been indispensable.

To whet your appetite, I'll say this much:

Montague asserts that if you want to fill your head with true beliefs (this stuff called knowledge) about reality, then you should be aware of five distinct types of evidence that a human can collect and five distinct logical theories with which to process (Rationalism, Empiricism, Authoritarianism, Pragmatism, Mysticism). The more mastery, the more knowledge.

The book is slow going but not for the usual reasons. Each page made me want to pause and sit and think until I had totally reprocessed all my life's experiences and questioned all my now seemingly ill-formed conclusions in the new light of my increased powers of reasoning.

If I found a genie in a lamp and he granted me one wish, I would wish that everyone in the world would read the first chapter of that book... or for a puppy.

You can get a nice ~1930's copy for like $6 at an antique book store.

Searching online I eventually found one on Amazon for $12 - about the cheapest I saw (lots on Amazon uk, starting at about 15 pounds) - from Powell's.

If you found pg's cities essays interesting or clueless, read Jane Jacobs's trilogy on cities:

The Death and Life of Great American Cities The Economy of Cities Cities and the Wealth of Nations

The quality of the writing, and the thought, more than fully justify the hubris of the last title.

ABE is the place for used books:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=bovill&...

Ineed. Mayson, I hope there are a few copies of the Ways of Knowing left on AbeBooks because that's where I scored about six copies a few months back.

I realize now that in littering my friend's apartments with these books, I've been trying to transform my town into Cambridge (or into what PG says Cambridge is). But I seem to be a size too small for that job. Or as Montague might say, I don't command the prepotency needed to elicit that kind of change... yet.

So I'm taking a break from all that to compare Cities and Ambition with my own experience. My train leaves for Cambridge in a few weeks.

Giddiup.

This summer I've read/am reading/am planning to read:

* The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Robert Caro)

* Options Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques (Sheldon Natenberg)

* Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Edwin Burrows & Mike Wallace)

* Egil's Saga (anonymous)

* Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino)

If you have any interest in the history of New York City at all, or if you're interested in seeing an incredibly well done character study, read "The Power Broker." Probably the best biography I've ever read... Ron Chernow's biographies of J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller, and Hamilton are all great, but Caro's on Robert Moses blew me away.

The Power Broker is awesome. One of the finest books for understanding the 20th century. It's also fascinating to note that today we blame car culture on oil companies and selfish consumers. Turns out that the one of the people most responsible for creating America's car dependent culture was a progressive named Robert Moses ( with a lot of help from the NY Times).

BTW, another great book on urban themes is City: Urbanism and its End, by Doug Rae.

Nooooo! Don't say invisible cities. Evil book about nothing! Unfortunately, its still on my bookshelf because I was required to buy it at art school in Milwaukee. Ugh.

I thought about posting this here after a relative success asking the question on Reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/info/6mikl/comments/

but it looks like you've beaten me to it!

I did create a listing of the most popular books mentioned on the comment thread, if you're interested. The following were mentioned by 4 or more people:

14 The C Programming Language

11 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

8 Introduction to Algorithms

7 Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools

6 Programming Erlang

5 The Mythical Man-Month

5 The Pragmatic Programmer

5 Applied Cryptography

4 Beautiful Code

4 The Little Schemer

4 Programming Perl

more here: http://www.reddit.com/info/6mikl/comments/c04abpy

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - by Robert Cialdini. This book will pretty much change your life when it comes to figuring out marketing and why people do things, and what not to do when you're trying to get people to buy into your ideas.

I have to strongly second this: one of the best psychology books around.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135185

Books I wish I had on my bookshelf:

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (Seth Godin, Oct. 21st)

Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't (Malcolm Gladwell, Nov. 18th)

Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition (Guy Kawasaki, Oct. 30th)

If you're the kind of person who lines up at bookstores to get the newest non-fiction books the day they come out then it's going to be an awesome fall.

I just like books with post-colonic explanatory subtitles, but it looks like I'll be taken care of as well.

Yes, I made that word up.

You could call them prolapsed titles.

Interestingly enough, W.P. Montague's book The Way of Knowing, had a post-sesquicolonic explanatory subtitle:

The way of knowing;: Or, the methods of philosophy

at least in early editions, the sesquicolon seems to have been replaced by a mere comma in the latest reprintings.

"colons: why bother to come up with clear title when you can explain yourself"

From the same author as "How to become extremely successful at writing self-help books"

The Triumph of Conservatism by Gabriel Kolko - the book for understanding the rise of corporate serfdom

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig - will make you nostalgic for the days of monarchy

World on Fire by Amy Chua - the single best book for understanding globalization that I have read. The antidote to Tom Friedman.

America's Great Depression by Murray Rothbard - very different from the story you get in school. Is he right?

Two favorite tech books are Inside Intuit and The Manager Pool

V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain changed my life.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks solidified my interest in neuroscience

And The Three Pound Enigma solidified my fascination with medicine in general.

If you only read one, read Phantoms in the Brain. It's like the bible of science, providing the crumbs for future research into the deeply interesting and previously philosophical realms of the human brain and who we are.

* The Pragmatic Programmer

* Becoming a Technical Leader

* In Search of Stupidity

* Hackers & Painters

* Blockbusters

* Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity

* The Best Software Writing I

* Behind Closed Doors

* Managing Humans

* The Mythical Man-Month

* Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

* The Non-Designers Design Book

* Founders at Work

* Good to Great

* Dreaming in Code

* The Art of the Start

* Maverick

* The Design of Everyday Things

* The Art of Project Management

* The Art of Innovation

The World is Flat The Post American World

Losing My Virginity - Richard Branson's Autobiography

Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs Inside Steve's Brain

The Seven Day Weekend- Book by Ricardo Semler of Semco on company organization and management, Semco essentially operates as a socialist enterprise with election of bosses, profit sharing, open information, flex-time, etc, but with the twist that Ricardo is the majority stock owner. Fascinating book and well-written to boot.

Founders at Work should go without saying :)

On my desk: Getting Real (37Signals), Hardball (Chris Mathews), Prioritizing Web Usability (Jakob Nielsen)

Nearby shelf: The Design of Everyday Things, Maverick, Founders at work, A Brief History of Time, A Pattern Language, Peopleware, Made to stick, Web Standards Solutions, Designing Interactions, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man-Month, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Other good reads: Blink, Tipping Point, Long Tail, Freakonomics

I recently read Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart by Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, and the ABC Research Group and The Nothing That Is: A Natural History Of Zero by Robert Kaplan.

Both were great reads and left me energized. Neither had much to do with technology or startups. But I felt more prepared and motivated to solve problems after I read them.

I've been coding for quite a few years, but it was Godel's Proof that got me into the theoretical parts of computer science (even though it's a logic book). Strongly recommended. Godel, Escher, and Bach is the usual book to read after Godel's Proof.

Universal Principles of Design - great when you need some UI inspiration.

Wow. I forgot to mention Code Complete by Steve McConnell. Don't miss it.

-Black Swan & Fooled by Randomness

-The C Programming Language

-The Non-Designers Design Book

-How to Read a Book

-Never Eat Alone

-Art of War

-Bill Bryson's a History of Everything(~)

The Non-Designer's design book has helped me 1 of every 5 days in the past month. I also recommend it.

Here is a list for your referece: http://www.bookhuddle.com/list/491/Recommended-Technical-and...

I've added another powerful book to my library since the last time we had this discussion:

Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die... - Chip and Dan Heath.

Essential startup reading.

AMOP was a good read.

First person to say "The Long Tail" gets expelled.

It's trendy to bash Long Tail, but doesn't your comment imply that it's prevalent enough that a entrepreneur should read, disagree or agree with it?

It's a flawed conclusion based on flawed data. You read about it, and it sounds compelling, and then you find out that reality just doesn't work that way.

I'd say it's not worth the time spent.

See ya later Matt :-)

SQL for Smarties SQL programming style

both are by Joe Celko

* Selling the Wheel * Growing a business