Book summaries

The big ideas from 312 of the best non-fiction books, each in about 15 minutes: habits, psychology, money, business, history, philosophy and more.

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🌱 Habits & Productivity

• Atomic Habits · James Clear
• Awaken the Giant Within · Tony Robbins
• Building a Second Brain · Tiago Forte
• Can't Hurt Me · David Goggins
• Daring Greatly · Brené Brown
• Deep Work · Cal Newport
• Digital Minimalism · Cal Newport
• Discipline Is Destiny · Ryan Holiday
• Eat That Frog! · Brian Tracy
• Effortless · Greg McKeown
• Essentialism · Greg McKeown
• Four Thousand Weeks · Oliver Burkeman
• Getting Things Done · David Allen
• Grit · Angela Duckworth
• Indistractable · Nir Eyal
• Make Time · Jake Knapp
• Make Your Bed · William H. McRaven
• Mindset · Carol S. Dweck
• Slow Productivity · Cal Newport
• So Good They Can't Ignore You · Cal Newport
• The 4-Hour Workweek · Timothy Ferriss
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People · Stephen R. Covey
• The Compound Effect · Darren Hardy
• The Courage to Be Disliked · Ichiro Kishimi
• The Miracle Morning · Hal Elrod
• The ONE Thing · Gary Keller
• The Power of Habit · Charles Duhigg
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck · Mark Manson
• Tiny Habits · BJ Fogg
• Who Moved My Cheese? · Spencer Johnson

🧠 Psychology

• Behave · Robert M. Sapolsky
• Blink · Malcolm Gladwell
• Drive · Daniel H. Pink
• Emotional Intelligence · Daniel Goleman
• Feeling Good · David D. Burns
• Flow · Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Noise · Daniel Kahneman
• Predictably Irrational · Dan Ariely
• Quiet · Susan Cain
• Stumbling on Happiness · Daniel Gilbert
• The Body Keeps the Score · Bessel van der Kolk
• The Chimp Paradox · Steve Peters
• The Happiness Hypothesis · Jonathan Haidt
• The Paradox of Choice · Barry Schwartz
• Thinking, Fast and Slow · Daniel Kahneman

💬 People Skills

• Attached · Amir Levine
• Bargaining for Advantage · G. Richard Shell
• Captivate · Vanessa Van Edwards
• Crucial Conversations · Kerry Patterson
• Difficult Conversations · Douglas Stone
• Exactly What to Say · Phil M. Jones
• Fanatical Prospecting · Jeb Blount
• Getting to Yes · Roger Fisher
• Hold Me Tight · Sue Johnson
• How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk · Adele Faber
• How to Win Friends and Influence People · Dale Carnegie
• Influence · Robert B. Cialdini
• Just Listen · Mark Goulston
• Models · Mark Manson
• Never Eat Alone · Keith Ferrazzi
• Never Split the Difference · Chris Voss
• Nonviolent Communication · Marshall B. Rosenberg
• Pitch Anything · Oren Klaff
• Pre-Suasion · Robert B. Cialdini
• SPIN Selling · Neil Rackham
• Supercommunicators · Charles Duhigg
• Talk Like TED · Carmine Gallo
• Thank You for Arguing · Jay Heinrichs
• The 5 Love Languages · Gary Chapman
• The Challenger Sale · Matthew Dixon
• The Little Red Book of Selling · Jeffrey Gitomer
• The Psychology of Selling · Brian Tracy
• The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work · John M. Gottman
• To Sell Is Human · Daniel H. Pink
• Way of the Wolf · Jordan Belfort

📈 Business & Leadership

• 7 Powers · Hamilton Helmer
• Blue Ocean Strategy · W. Chan Kim
• Built to Last · Jim Collins
• Competitive Strategy · Michael E. Porter
• Dare to Lead · Brené Brown
• Extreme Ownership · Jocko Willink
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy · Richard Rumelt
• Good to Great · Jim Collins
• High Output Management · Andrew S. Grove
• Leaders Eat Last · Simon Sinek
• Measure What Matters · John Doerr
• Multipliers · Liz Wiseman
• No Rules Rules · Reed Hastings
• Playing to Win · A.G. Lafley
• Principles · Ray Dalio
• Radical Candor · Kim Scott
• Rework · Jason Fried
• Start with Why · Simon Sinek
• Team of Teams · Stanley McChrystal
• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership · John C. Maxwell
• The Culture Code · Daniel Coyle
• The Effective Executive · Peter F. Drucker
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team · Patrick Lencioni
• The Goal · Eliyahu M. Goldratt
• The Innovator's Dilemma · Clayton M. Christensen
• The Making of a Manager · Julie Zhuo
• The Personal MBA · Josh Kaufman
• The Toyota Way · Jeffrey K. Liker
• Thinking in Bets · Annie Duke
• Turn the Ship Around! · L. David Marquet

🚀 Startups & Marketing

• $100M Leads · Alex Hormozi
• $100M Money Models · Alex Hormozi
• $100M Offers · Alex Hormozi
• Alchemy · Rory Sutherland
• Anything You Want · Derek Sivers
• Blitzscaling · Reid Hoffman
• Breakthrough Advertising · Eugene M. Schwartz
• Building a StoryBrand · Donald Miller
• Built to Sell · John Warrillow
• Buy Then Build · Walker Deibel
• Company of One · Paul Jarvis
• Contagious · Jonah Berger
• Crossing the Chasm · Geoffrey A. Moore
• Crushing It! · Gary Vaynerchuk
• Hooked · Nir Eyal
• How Brands Grow · Byron Sharp
• How I Built This · Guy Raz
• Made to Stick · Chip Heath
• Main Street Millionaire · Codie Sanchez
• Million Dollar Weekend · Noah Kagan with Tahl Raz
• Monetizing Innovation · Madhavan Ramanujam
• Never Enough · Andrew Wilkinson
• Obviously Awesome · April Dunford
• Ogilvy on Advertising · David Ogilvy
• Positioning · Al Ries
• Profit First · Mike Michalowicz
• Purple Cow · Seth Godin
• The $100 Startup · Chris Guillebeau
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing · Al Ries
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant · Eric Jorgenson
• The Cold Start Problem · Andrew Chen
• The Diary of a CEO · Steven Bartlett
• The E-Myth Revisited · Michael E. Gerber
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things · Ben Horowitz
• The Lean Startup · Eric Ries
• The Minimalist Entrepreneur · Sahil Lavingia
• The Mom Test · Rob Fitzpatrick
• The Tipping Point · Malcolm Gladwell
• This Is Marketing · Seth Godin
• Traction · Gabriel Weinberg
• Venture Deals · Brad Feld
• Zero to One · Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

💰 Money & Economics

• A Random Walk Down Wall Street · Burton G. Malkiel
• Antifragile · Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Basic Economics · Thomas Sowell
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century · Thomas Piketty
• Die with Zero · Bill Perkins
• Economics in One Lesson · Henry Hazlitt
• Freakonomics · Steven D. Levitt
• I Will Teach You to Be Rich · Ramit Sethi
• Misbehaving · Richard H. Thaler
• Naked Economics · Charles Wheelan
• Nudge · Richard H. Thaler
• One Up on Wall Street · Peter Lynch
• Poor Economics · Abhijit V. Banerjee
• Rich Dad Poor Dad · Robert T. Kiyosaki
• Same as Ever · Morgan Housel
• The Big Short · Michael Lewis
• The Black Swan · Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Intelligent Investor · Benjamin Graham
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing · John C. Bogle
• The Millionaire Next Door · Thomas J. Stanley
• The Psychology of Money · Morgan Housel
• The Richest Man in Babylon · George S. Clason
• The Simple Path to Wealth · JL Collins
• The Total Money Makeover · Dave Ramsey
• The Undercover Economist · Tim Harford
• The Wealth of Nations · Adam Smith
• The Worldly Philosophers · Robert L. Heilbroner
• Think and Grow Rich · Napoleon Hill
• Why Nations Fail · Daron Acemoglu
• Your Money or Your Life · Vicki Robin

🔭 Science & Nature

• A Brief History of Time · Stephen Hawking
• A Short History of Nearly Everything · Bill Bryson
• An Immense World · Ed Yong
• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry · Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Cosmos · Carl Sagan
• Entangled Life · Merlin Sheldrake
• I Contain Multitudes · Ed Yong
• On the Origin of Species · Charles Darwin
• Seven Brief Lessons on Physics · Carlo Rovelli
• Silent Spring · Rachel Carson
• The Demon-Haunted World · Carl Sagan
• The Elegant Universe · Brian Greene
• The Gene · Siddhartha Mukherjee
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks · Rebecca Skloot
• The Selfish Gene · Richard Dawkins

💪 Health & Fitness

• Bigger Leaner Stronger · Michael Matthews
• Born to Run · Christopher McDougall
• Breath · James Nestor
• How Not to Die · Michael Greger with Gene Stone
• In Defense of Food · Michael Pollan
• Lifespan · David A. Sinclair with Matthew D. LaPlante
• Outlive · Peter Attia with Bill Gifford
• Spark · John J. Ratey with Eric Hagerman
• Starting Strength · Mark Rippetoe
• The Body: A Guide for Occupants · Bill Bryson
• The Emperor of All Maladies · Siddhartha Mukherjee
• The Obesity Code · Jason Fung
• The Omnivore's Dilemma · Michael Pollan
• Ultra-Processed People · Chris van Tulleken
• Why We Sleep · Matthew Walker

🏛️ History & Biography

• 1776 · David McCullough
• A People's History of the United States · Howard Zinn
• Alexander Hamilton · Ron Chernow
• Collapse · Jared Diamond
• Dominion · Tom Holland
• Educated · Tara Westover
• Einstein: His Life and Universe · Walter Isaacson
• Elon Musk · Walter Isaacson
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World · Jack Weatherford
• Greenlights · Matthew McConaughey
• Guns, Germs, and Steel · Jared Diamond
• Leonardo da Vinci · Walter Isaacson
• Long Walk to Freedom · Nelson Mandela
• Open · Andre Agassi
• Postwar · Tony Judt
• Sapiens · Yuval Noah Harari
• Shoe Dog · Phil Knight
• SPQR · Mary Beard
• Steve Jobs · Walter Isaacson
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! · Richard P. Feynman
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · Benjamin Franklin
• The Dawn of Everything · David Graeber
• The Guns of August · Barbara W. Tuchman
• The Ride of a Lifetime · Robert Iger
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich · William L. Shirer
• The Silk Roads · Peter Frankopan
• The Sleepwalkers · Christopher Clark
• The Snowball · Alice Schroeder
• The Splendid and the Vile · Erik Larson
• Total Recall · Arnold Schwarzenegger

🗿 Philosophy & Meaning

• 10% Happier · Dan Harris
• 12 Rules for Life · Jordan B. Peterson
• Beyond Good and Evil · Friedrich Nietzsche
• Ego Is the Enemy · Ryan Holiday
• Ikigai · Héctor García
• Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? · Michael J. Sandel
• Letters from a Stoic · Seneca
• Man's Search for Meaning · Viktor E. Frankl
• Meditations · Marcus Aurelius
• Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle
• Radical Acceptance · Tara Brach
• Tao Te Ching · Laozi
• The 48 Laws of Power · Robert Greene
• The Art of Happiness · Dalai Lama
• The Art of War · Sun Tzu
• The Book of Joy · Dalai Lama
• The Consolations of Philosophy · Alain de Botton
• The Enchiridion · Epictetus
• The Four Agreements · Don Miguel Ruiz
• The Miracle of Mindfulness · Thich Nhat Hanh
• The Myth of Sisyphus · Albert Camus
• The Obstacle Is the Way · Ryan Holiday
• The Power of Now · Eckhart Tolle
• The Prince · Niccolò Machiavelli
• The Republic · Plato
• The Road Less Traveled · M. Scott Peck
• The Untethered Soul · Michael A. Singer
• Waking Up · Sam Harris
• When Things Fall Apart · Pema Chödrön
• Wherever You Go, There You Are · Jon Kabat-Zinn

🌍 Society & Culture

• Amusing Ourselves to Death · Neil Postman
• Bowling Alone · Robert D. Putnam
• David and Goliath · Malcolm Gladwell
• Enlightenment Now · Steven Pinker
• Factfulness · Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling
• Humankind · Rutger Bregman
• Invisible Women · Caroline Criado Perez
• Outliers · Malcolm Gladwell
• Range · David Epstein
• Talking to Strangers · Malcolm Gladwell
• The Anxious Generation · Jonathan Haidt
• The Better Angels of Our Nature · Steven Pinker
• The Coddling of the American Mind · Greg Lukianoff
• The Righteous Mind · Jonathan Haidt
• The Tyranny of Merit · Michael J. Sandel

🤖 Technology & AI

• AI Superpowers · Kai-Fu Lee
• Chip War · Chris Miller
• Co-Intelligence · Ethan Mollick
• Homo Deus · Yuval Noah Harari
• Human Compatible · Stuart Russell
• Life 3.0 · Max Tegmark
• Nexus · Yuval Noah Harari
• Superintelligence · Nick Bostrom
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism · Shoshana Zuboff
• The Alignment Problem · Brian Christian
• The Coming Wave · Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar
• The Innovators · Walter Isaacson
• The Second Machine Age · Erik Brynjolfsson
• The Singularity Is Near · Ray Kurzweil
• Weapons of Math Destruction · Cathy O'Neil

🎨 Creativity & Writing

• Big Magic · Elizabeth Gilbert
• Bird by Bird · Anne Lamott
• Creativity, Inc. · Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace
• Mastery · Robert Greene
• On Writing · Stephen King
• On Writing Well · William Zinsser
• Originals · Adam Grant
• Save the Cat! · Blake Snyder
• Show Your Work! · Austin Kleon
• Steal Like an Artist · Austin Kleon
• Story · Robert McKee
• The Artist's Way · Julia Cameron
• The Creative Act · Rick Rubin
• The Elements of Style · William Strunk Jr.
• The War of Art · Steven Pressfield