Rather than read individual books, why not read clusters on related topics? Using AI to summarize, compare, and fact-check?

  • Learning faster, remembering more (2014–2020)
    • Make It Stick (Peter C. Brown, 2014)
    • A Mind for Numbers (Barbara Oakley, 2014)
    • Ultralearning (Scott Young, 2019)
    • How to Take Smart Notes (Sönke Ahrens, 2017)
  • Motivation, grit, and “how people get good” (2016–2019)
    • Grit (Angela Duckworth)
    • Peak (Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool)
    • Range (David Epstein)
  • Tiny-habits + behavior design wave (2018–2020)
    • Atomic Habits (James Clear, 2018)
    • Tiny Habits (BJ Fogg, 2019/2020 editions)
    • The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg)
  • The “Attention Resistance” and Digital Minimalism (2016–2022)
    • Deep Work (Cal Newport, 2016)
    • Digital Minimalism (Cal Newport, 2019)
    • Indistractable (Nir Eyal)
    • How to Do Nothing (Jenny Odell, 2019)
    • Stolen Focus (Johann Hari, 2022)
  • Trauma, healing, and therapy “going mainstream” (2014–2022)
    • What Happened to You? (Bruce Perry & Oprah Winfrey, 2021)
    • The Myth of Normal (Gabor Maté, 2022)
    • The Body Keeps the Score (Bessel van der Kolk, 2014)
    • No Bad Parts (Richard Schwartz)
    • My Grandmother’s Hands (Resmaa Menakem, 2017)
    • Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (Lori Gottlieb)
    • It Didn’t Start with You (Mark Wolynn, 2016)
  • Decision-making, noise, and cognitive bias (2011–2021)
    • Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
    • Superforecasting (Tetlock & Gardner)
    • Noise (Kahneman, Sibony, Sunstein)
    • Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke)
  • Happiness → meaning → the good life (2016–2023)
    • The Happiness Trap (ACT-based)
    • The Power of Meaning (Emily Esfahani Smith)
    • The Good Life (Waldinger & Schulz)
    • Build the Life You Want (Brooks & Winfrey)
  • Relationships + attachment + communication (2010–2018)
    • Attached (Levine & Heller)
    • Nonviolent Communication (Rosenberg)
    • Crucial Conversations
    • The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work (Gottman)
  • Longevity / healthspan “protocol” wave (2017–2023)
    • The Telomere Effect (Blackburn & Epel, 2017)
    • Lifespan (David Sinclair, 2019)
    • Outlive (Peter Attia, 2023)
  • Sleep finally gets its “public health” moment (2016–2018)
    • Why We Sleep (Matthew Walker, 2017)
    • The Sleep Revolution (Arianna Huffington)
    • Sleep Smarter (Shawn Stevenson, 2016)
    • The Power of When (Michael Breus, 2016)
    • The Sleep Solution (W. Chris Winter, 2017)
  • Metabolic health, obesity, and food environment (2015–2023)
    • The Obesity Code (Jason Fung)
    • How Not to Die (Michael Greger)
    • Ultra-Processed People (Chris van Tulleken)
  • Exercise as medicine + movement as mood (2008–2020)
    • Spark (John Ratey)
    • Born to Run (McDougall)
    • The Joy of Movement (Kelly McGonigal)
  • Modern management craft: feedback, coaching, teams (2016–2019)
    • The Coaching Habit (Michael Bungay Stanier)
    • Radical Candor (Kim Scott)
    • The Culture Code (Daniel Coyle)
    • The Fearless Organization (Amy Edmondson)
  • Execution systems: OKRs and operating cadence (2015–2018)
    • Measure What Matters (John Doerr)
    • Radical Focus (Christina Wodtke)
    • The 4 Disciplines of Execution (McChesney et al.)
  • Startups & product-building playbook wave (2011–2016)
    • The Lean Startup (Eric Ries)
    • Zero to One (Peter Thiel, 2014)
    • Sprint (Knapp et al.)
    • Hooked (Nir Eyal)
    • The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz, 2014)
    • Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull, 2014)
  • Strategy “clarity” wave (2011–2017)
    • Good Strategy Bad Strategy (Rumelt)
    • Playing to Win (Lafley & Martin)
    • The Innovator’s Dilemma (Christensen)
    • Seven Powers (Hamilton Helmer)
  • Incentives, misalignment, and corporate pathology (2015–2020)
    • Misbehaving (Thaler)
    • The Undoing Project (Lewis)
    • The Man Who Solved the Market (Zuckerman) (if you like finance angle)
    • No Rules Rules (Hastings & Meyer)
  • “Why nations succeed/fail” + institutions (2012–2015)
    • Why Nations Fail (Acemoglu & Robinson)
    • The Dictator’s Handbook (Bueno de Mesquita & Smith)
    • Prisoners of Geography (Tim Marshall)
  • Big History and the “Sapiens” Effect (2014–2021)
    • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Harari, 2014)
    • The Better Angels of Our Nature (Pinker)
    • The Silk Roads (Peter Frankopan, 2015)
    • Homo Deus (Yuval Noah Harari, 2016)
    • The Dawn of Everything (David Graeber & David Wengrow, 2021)
  • Geopolitics reboot (2012–2020)
    • The Revenge of Geography (Robert Kaplan, 2012)
    • Prisoners of Geography (Tim Marshall, 2015)
    • The Future is Asian (Parag Khanna)
    • Connectography (Parag Khanna, 2016)
  • Inequality, capitalism, and who wins (2012–2019)
    • Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Piketty, 2013/2014)
    • Winners Take All (Anand Giridharadas)
    • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (Shoshana Zuboff)
    • The Price of Inequality (Joseph Stiglitz, 2012)
    • Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Anthony Atkinson, 2015)
    • After Piketty (Heather Boushey et al., 2017)
  • Race, systems, and social structure (2019–2020)
    • How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi)
    • White Fragility (Robin DiAngelo)
    • Caste (Isabel Wilkerson)
  • Social contagion, networks, and how behavior spreads (2009–2013)
    • Connected (Christakis & Fowler)
    • Contagious (Jonah Berger)
    • The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt)
  • AI and the future of work (2017–2023)
    • Life 3.0 (Tegmark)
    • AI Superpowers (Kai-Fu Lee)
    • The Alignment Problem (Brian Christian)
    • The Coming Wave (Mustafa Suleyman)
  • Climate “this is the constraint” wave (2014–2021)
    • The Sixth Extinction (Kolbert)
    • Drawdown (Hawken, ed.)
    • The Uninhabitable Earth (Wallace-Wells)
    • How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (Gates)
  • Physics/cosmology for humans (2014–2017)
    • Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (Rovelli)
    • The Big Picture (Sean Carroll)
    • Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Tyson)
  • Modern Stoicism and Ego Management (2014–2019)
    • The Obstacle Is the Way (Ryan Holiday, 2014)
    • Ego Is the Enemy (Ryan Holiday, 2016)
    • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck (Mark Manson, 2016)
    • Stillness Is the Key (Ryan Holiday, 2019)
  • The “Wood Wide Web”: Plant and Fungal Intelligence (2015–2021)
    • The Hidden Life of Trees (Peter Wohlleben, 2015)
    • The Overstory (Richard Powers, 2018)
    • Entangled Life (Merlin Sheldrake, 2020)
    • Finding the Mother Tree (Suzanne Simard, 2021)
  • Breathwork and Respiratory Health (2015–2020)
    • The Oxygen Advantage (Patrick McKeown, 2015)
    • Just Breathe (Dan Brulé, 2017)
    • Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (James Nestor, 2020)
  • The Microbiome and Gut-Brain Axis (2014–2016)
    • Missing Microbes (Martin Blaser, 2014)
    • The Good Gut (Justin & Erica Sonnenburg, 2015)
    • 10% Human (Alanna Collen, 2015)
    • I Contain Multitudes (Ed Yong, 2016)
  • The Psychedelic Renaissance (2018–2021)
    • How to Change Your Mind (Michael Pollan, 2018)
    • The Psychedelic Renaissance (Ben Sessa, 2012/2018 edition)
    • Acid Revival (Danielle Giffort, 2020)
    • This Is Your Mind on Plants (Michael Pollan, 2021)
  • CRISPR and the Gene Editing Revolution (2017–2021)
    • A Crack in Creation (Jennifer Doudna & Samuel Sternberg, 2017)
    • The Gene (Siddhartha Mukherjee)
    • Hacking Darwin (Jamie Metzl, 2019)
    • Editing Humanity (Kevin Davies, 2020)
    • The Code Breaker (Walter Isaacson, 2021)
  • The Meritocracy Trap (2019–2020)
    • The Meritocracy Trap (Daniel Markovits, 2019)
    • The Tyranny of Merit (Michael Sandel, 2020)
    • The Cult of Smart (Fredrik deBoer, 2020)
  • The Crisis of Democracy and Authoritarianism (2018–2020)
    • How Democracies Die (Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, 2018)
    • Fascism: A Warning (Madeleine Albright, 2018)
    • The People vs. Democracy (Yascha Mounk, 2018)
    • Twilight of Democracy (Anne Applebaum, 2020)
  • The Gender Data Gap and Invisible Labor (2019–2021)
    • Invisible Women (Caroline Criado Perez, 2019)
    • Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters (Deborah Stone, 2020)
    • The Authority Gap (Mary Ann Sieghart, 2021)
  • The “Unicorn” Fall: Corporate Fraud and Failure (2018–2021)
    • Bad Blood (John Carreyrou, 2018)
    • Super Pumped (Mike Isaac, 2019)
    • Billion Dollar Loser (Reeves Wiedeman, 2020)
    • The Cult of We (Eliot Brown & Maureen Farrell, 2021)
  • New Urbanism and Walkable Cities (2012–2019)
    • Walkable City (Jeff Speck, 2012)
    • Happy City (Charles Montgomery, 2013)
    • Streetfight (Janette Sadik-Khan, 2016)
    • Soft City (David Sim, 2019)

Here are books I’d like to cluster:

  • The Silk Roads (Peter Frankopan, 2015)