Reading List

This article contains a series of books I’m interested to read at some point. It’s regularly updated.

There are a lot of obvious books that I didn’t add because my purpose is to make you discover new books you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Do you have any recommendations? Email them using the contact form.

The links either direct you to the summary of the book, or to Amazon where if you buy the book, I will earn a small commission. I haven’t read all of these books, but hopefully will someday.

Total number: 664

Also, you should check out my books Blogging Principles and The European Solopreneur’s Guide to Tax Optimization.

French-speaking readers should check out this book list.

Table of Contents

Business and Money

• Zero to One, Peter Thiel
• Unscripted, MJ DeMarco
• The Millionaire Fastlane, MJ DeMarco
• Efficiency, BowTiedBull
• Venture Deals, Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson
• The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel
• The Tao of Charlie Munger, David Clark
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Eric Jorgenson
• The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason
• The 10 Pillars of Wealth, Alex Becker
• Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh
• Fundraising, Ryan Breslow
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz
• Will it Fly, Pat Flynn
• Rework, Jason Friend, David Heinemeier Hansson
• What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan
• Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, & Alan Eagle
• Build, Tony Fadell
• Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game, Walker Deibel
• Ready Fire Aim, Michael Masterson
• Wooden on Leadership, John Wooden and Steve Jamison
• The Motive, Patrick Lencioni
• Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole, Anthony Scaramucci
• The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, Jimmy Soni, Jonathan Todd Ross
• Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel, Tom Wainwright
• Burn the Business Plan: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do, Carl J. Schramm
• Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore
• How I Lost 170 Million Dollars: My Time as #30 at Facebook, Noah Kagan
• How to Get Rich, Felix Denis
• Founder: Meyer Amschel Rothschild and His Time, Amos Elon

Marketing

• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Jack Ries and Al Trout
• Traction, Justin Mares, Gabriel Weinberg
• Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller
• Hello My Name Is Awesome, Alexandra Watkins
• Growth Hacker Marketing, Ryan Holiday
• Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath
• Contagious, Jonah Berger
• High Growth Handbook, Elad Gil
• Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
• One to Many: The Secret to Webinar Success, Jason Fladlien
• Pre-Suasion, Robert Cialdini
• Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions, Carmen Simon
• The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands, Jean-Noël Kapferer, Vincent Bastien
• The Idea of Luxury, Christopher J. Berry

Branding

• Propaganda, Edward Bernays
• Positioning, Jack Ries and Al Trout
• Brand Seduction, Daryl Weber
• The Brand Flip: Why Customers Now Run Companies and How to Profit from It, Marty Neumeier
• Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands, Marty Neumeier
• The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design, Marty Neumeier
• Designing Brand Identity: A Comprehensive Guide to the World of Brands and Branding, Alina Wheeler, Rob Meyerson
• Different, Youngme Moon
• How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp
• Branding: In Five and a Half Steps, Michael Johnson
• Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities, David Airey
• Color Design Workbook: A Real World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design, Sean Adams, Terry Stone, Noreen Morioka
• Type Matters!, Jim Williams
• Obsessed: Building a Brand People Love from Day One, Emily Heyward
• Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, Douglas Davis
• Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug
• Brand Portfolio Strategy: Creating Relevance, Differentiation, Energy, Leverage, and Clarity, David A. Aaker
• Building the Brand-Driven Business: Operationalize Your Brand to Drive Profitable Growth, Scott M. Davis, Michael Dunn

Sales and Copywriting

• Can’t teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar, David Sandler and David Mattson
• Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal, Oren Klaff
• Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price, Keenan
• The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
• Copywriting Secrets, Jim Edwards
• 100M Offers, Alex Hormozi
• Cashvertising, Drew Eric Whitman
• Breakthrough Advertising, Eugene Schwartz
• Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins
• The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million, Mark Roberge
• Straight Line Selling, Jordan Belfort
• Expert Secrets, Russell Brunson
• Zig Ziglar’s Secret of Closing the Sale, Zig Ziglar
• 50 Scientific Ways of Getting to Yes, Noah J. Goldstein, Robert B. Cialdini, Steve J. Martin
• Predictable Revenue, Aaron Ross

---

Self-Development

• The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey
• The Science of Likability, Patrick King
• Psycho-cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz
• Personality Isn’t Permanent, Benjamin Hardy
• Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, Héctor García & Francesc Miralles
• Essentialism, Greg McKeown
• Mindset: The Psychology of Success, Carole Dweck
• The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone
• Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins
• Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
• 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson
• Healing the Shame That Binds You, John Bradshaw
• Wanting, Luke Burgis
• Give and Take, Adam Grant
• The 50th Law, Robert Greene
• The Winner Effect, Ian H. Robertson
• Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke
• Beyond Order, Jordan Peterson
• The Magic of Thinking Big, David Schwartz
• Your Brain on Porn, Gary Wilson
• The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks
• The Dip, Seth Godin
• Atomic Habits, James Clear
• The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz
• The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene
• Who Moved My Cheese, Spencer Johnson
• The One Thing, Gary Keller
• Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss
• Quit, Annie Duke
• Outwitting the Devil, Napoleon Hill
• Addicted to Drama, Dr. Scott Lyons
• Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t, Jeffrey Pfeffer
• Deep Work, Cal Newport
• Mastery, Robert Greene
• 4-Hour Chef, Timothy Ferriss
• The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin
• Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior, Mark Goulston and Philip Goldberg
• Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got, Jay Abraham
• Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins
• The Surrender Experiment, Michael A. Singer
• The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery, Brianna Wiest
• Change Your Brain Change Your Life, Daniel G. Amen
• The Untethered Soul, Michael A. Singer
• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Scott Adams
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz
• The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future, Skip Prichard
• Going on Being, Mark Epstein
• Undoing Yourself, Christopher S. Hyatt
• Indistractable, Nir Eyal
• The Master Game: Pathways to Higher Consciousness, Robert S. de Ropp
• The Jealousy Cure, Robert L. Leahy
• How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett
• Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are, Kevin J. Mitchell
• The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt
• Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable, Tim S. Grover
• Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel
• The Art of Happiness, Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler
• I Can’t Make This Up, Neil Strauss and Kevin Hart
• The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, Olivia Fox Cabane
• Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, Vanessa Van Edwards
• Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success, Scott Adams
• Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter, Scott Adams
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr
• Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich, Jason Zweig
• Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool
• The Eureka Factor, John Kounios & Mark Beeman
• Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career, Scott H. Young
• Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi
• True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, Thich Nhat Hanh
• Charisma on Command, Charlie Houpert

Psychology

• Psychology, David G. Myers, C. Nathan DeWall
• Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams
• Maps of Meaning, Jordan Peterson
• How to Be an Adult, David Richo
• The Assertiveness Workbook, Randy J. Paterson
• Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis, Eric Berne
• The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, Erich Neumann
• Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam
• The Elephant in the Brain, Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman
• The Origins and History of Consciousness, Erich Neumann
• Symbols of Transformation, Carl Gustav Jung
• Psychological Types, Carl Jung
• King Warrior Magician Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette
• The Heroic Ideal: Western Archetypes from the Greeks to the Present, Gregory Kendrick
• The Masculine Journey: Understanding the Six Stages of Manhood, Robert Hicks
• The Art of Being, Erich Fromm
• Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis, Stephen A. Mitchell
• Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, Jay R. Greenberg and Stephen A. Mitchell
• Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson
• Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Gregory Bateson
• The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm
• Childhood and Society, Erik Erikson
• Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, Abigail Shrier
• Left and Right: The Psychological Significance of a Political Distinction, John T. Jost
• Political Beliefs: A Philosophical Introduction, Oliver Traldi

Trauma

• How to Live 365 Days a Year, Dr. Schindler
• Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, Peter A. Levine
• Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, John E. Sarno
• Somatics: Reawakening The Mind’s Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health, Thomas Hanna
• The Body Never Lies, Alice Miller
• When the Body Says No, Gabor Maté
• The Biogenealogy Sourcebook: Healing the Body by Resolving Traumas of the Past, Christian Flèche
• The Great Pain Deception: Faulty Medical Advice Is Making Us Worse, Steven Ray Ozanich
• In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, Peter A. Levine
• Energy Medicine: How to Use Your Body’s Energies for Optimum Health and Vitality, Donna Eden
• The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk
• It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma, Mark Wolynn
• The Body Heals Itself: How Deeper Awareness of Your Muscles and Their Emotional Connection Can Help You Heal, Emily A. Francis
• Bodyfulness: Somatic Practices for Presence, Empowerment, and Waking Up in This Life, Christine Caldwell
• Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder, Gabor Maté
• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor
• Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic, Paul Conti

Loneliness (and the Impacts of Technology)

• A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion, Fay Bound Alberti
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr
• Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam
• The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, Reuel Denney
• The Lonely Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That’s Pulling Apart, by Noreena Hertz
• Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by Neil Postman
• Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkle
• The Pursuit of Loneliness, by Philip Slater
• The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection, Michael Harris
• Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships, by Robin Dunbar
• Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation, Richard Sennett
• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, Matthew D. Lieberman
• Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek H. Murthy
• Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope, Johann Hari

---

Human Biology and Sciences

Relationships and Evolutionary Biology and Psychology

• The Evolution of Desire, David Buss
• Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, David Buss
• My Secret Garden, Nancy Friday
• Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, Helen Fisher
• Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha
• Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, Esther Perel
• Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, John T. Cacioppo & William Patrick
• The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, & the Problem of Domination, Jessica Benjamin
• Attachment and Loss, John Bowlby
• Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find – and Keep – Love, Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
• Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community, Kenneth J. Gergen
• Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, Nancy Etcoff
• Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes, Joyce F. Benenson
• A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, Matt Ridley
• The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions, Paul D. MacLean
• Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations – From Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between), Cindy M. Meston, David M. Buss
• Keeping Together in Time, William H. McNeill
• Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, Stephanie Coontz
• Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Dale Peterson, Richard Wrangham
• The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime, Adrian Raine
• The Dark Side of Man: Tracing the Origins of Male Violence, Michael P. Ghiglieri
• The History Of Human Marriage, Edward Westermarck
• Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Edward O. Wilson

Genetics

• The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, David Epstein
• Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, David Reich
• The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Spencer Wells
• Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings, Jean Manco
• The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, Gregory Cochran & Henry Harpending
• The History and Geography of Human Genes, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
• Genes, Peoples, and Languages, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
• The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility, Gregory Clark
• Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, Robert Plomin
• Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature, Steven Rose, R. C. Lewontin, & Leon J. Kamin
• The Anatomy of Violence, Adrian Raine
• Human Genetics, Ricki Lewis
• Behavioral Genetics, Valerie S. Knopik, Jenae M. Neiderhiser, John C. DeFries, Robert Plomin
• Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors, Nicholas Wade
• The Gene: An Intimate History, Siddhartha Mukherjee
• The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture, Matt Ridley
• The Developing Genome: An Introduction to Behavioral Epigenetics, David S. Moore
• A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe, Johannes Krause, Thomas Trappe
• How Humans Evolved, Robert Boyd and Joan B. Silk
• Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, Eva Jablonka, Marion J. Lamb
• Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, Richard Lynn
• The Gene’s-Eye View of Evolution, J. Arvid Ågren

Intelligence and Personality

• Intelligence: All That Matters, Stuart Ritchie
• The Neuroscience of Intelligence, Richard J. Haier
• Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, Daniel Nettle
• Birth of Intelligence: From RNA to Artificial Intelligence, Daeyeol Lee
• An Introduction to Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence, Nick Haslam, Luke Smillie
• The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, Carl Sagan
• Making Sense of Heritability, Neven Sesardic
• The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Judith Rich Harris
• A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, Nicholas Wade
• The Social Conquest of Earth, Edward O. Wilson
• The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, Michael Tomasello
• Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, Diane F. Halpern
• At Our Wits’ End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future, Edward Dutton, Michael A. Woodley of Menie Yr.
• Genius: The Natural History of Creativity, Hans Eysenck
• Sexuality and Crime: A Neo-Darwinian Perspective, Anthony Walsh
• Education, Social Background and Cognitive Ability, Gary N. Marks
• A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains, Max Solomon Bennett

Socio-economic Inequalities

• The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, Walter Scheidel
• The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution, Cailin O’Connor
• Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700, Peter H. Lindert, Jeffrey G. Williamson
• A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty
• The Anatomy of Inequality: Its Social and Economic Origins- and Solutions, Per Molander
• The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, Kathryn Paige Harden
• How to Think Better About Social Justice: Why Good Sociology Matters, Bradley Campbell

Biology and Health

• Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert M. Sapolsky
• Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Robert M. Sapolsky
• Genius Food, Max Lugavere
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, John J. Ratey
• Lies My Doctor Told Me, Ken D. Berry
• The Great Plant Based Con, Jayne Buxton
• Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Antonio Damasio
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker
• The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation, Peter Ulric Ulric Tse
• Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, Robert M. Sapolsky
• Drink? The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health, David Nutt
• Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, Stephen Cope

---

Male Psychology and Dating For Men

• Of Boys and Men, Richard Reeves
• The Game, Neil Strauss
• Models, Mark Manson
• The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed, Mystery
• Practical Female Psychology for the Practical Man, Joseph, David, Franco
• Dating Essentials for Men, Robert Glover
• What Women Want, Tucker Max, Geoffrey Miller
• The Art of Seduction, Robert Greene
• The Way of the Superior Man, David Deida
• No More Mr Nice Guy, Dr. Robert Glover
• The Setup, Dan Bilzerian
• The Multi-Orgasmic Man, Mantak Chia, Douglas Abrams
• Iron John: A Book About Men, Robert Bly
• Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea, Gilbert H. Herdt
• To Be a Man, Robert Masters
• The Rites of Passage, Arnold van Gennep
• Man Up: How to Cut the Bullshit and Kick Ass in Business, Bedros Keuilian
• Aspects of the Masculine, Carl Gustav Jung
• When Men Behave Badly, David M. Buss
• Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy, Mantak Chia and Michael Winn
• Violence: Reflections on Our Deadliest Epidemic, James Gilligan
• Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel, Bertrand Russell

Articles:

• The Function of Male Initiation Ceremonies at Puberty, John W.M. Whiting, Richard Kluckhohn, and Albert Anthony
• Male Initiation: Imagining Ritual Necessity, Diederik F. Janssen
• Explaining Male Initiation Ceremonies: New Cross-Cultural Tests, Frank W. Young

---

Culture and Society

• Pathways to Bliss, Joseph Campbell
• The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve, Steve Stewart-Williams
• The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan
• How Culture Makes Us Human: Primate Social Evolution and the Formation of Human Societies, Dwight W Read
• Everybody Lies, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
• Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), Christian Rudder
• The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt
• The Status Game, Will Storr
• A Billion Wicked Thoughts, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam
• On Writing Well, William Zinsser
• The Art of War, Sun Tzu
• Propaganda, Edward Bernays
• I Make Things Happen, Gnomo Orzo
• The Culture Transplant: : How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left, Garett Jones
• The Culture of Shame, Andrew P. Morrison
• The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer
• The Tyranny of Experts, William Easterly
• The Next 100 Years, George Friedman
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein
• The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli
• Manufacturing Consent, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
• The Innovators, Walter Isaacson
• The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Ruth Benedict
• Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Francis Fukuyama
• On Guilt: : The Force Shaping Character, History, and Culture, John Carroll
• Freedom’s Delayed: Political Legacies of Islamic Law in the Middle East, Timur Kuran
• Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson
• Einstein, Walter Isaacson
• Leonardo Da Vinci, Walter Isaacson
• Evil Men, James Dawes
• The Anatomy of Evil, Michael H. Stone
• Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, Roy F. Baumeister
• The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker
• The Incerto, Nassim Taleb
  • Fooled by Randomness
  • The Black Swan
  • The Bed of Procrustes
  • Antifragile
  • Skin in the Game
• I See Satan Falling Like Lightning, René Girard
• The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, Bryan Caplan
• The Mind and Society, Vol. 1: Treaty of General Sociology, Vilfredo Pareto
• Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, Peter Turchin
• Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, Samuel P. Huntington
• The Essays of Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon
• A Theory of Everyone: The New Science of Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going, Michael Muthukrishna
• Aelian: Historical Miscellany, Aelian
• The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Joseph Henrich
• The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World, Daniel M. Bell Jr.
• Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, Keith B Richburg
• Desire: A History of European Sexuality, Anna Clark
• Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, Jacob Mchangama

Storytelling

• Poetics, Aristotle
• Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, Robert McKee
• Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, Blake Snyder
• The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, John Truby
• Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate, Brian McDonald
• The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better, Will Storr
• On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction, Brian Boyd
• Blogging Principles, Aure’s Notes
• The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
• Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, Douglas Rushkoff

---

History

• A Short Story of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
• The Penguin History of the World, J. M. Roberts
• A Political History of the World, Jonathan Holslag
• The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant
• Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
• The Changing World Order, Ray Dalio
• A Little History of Art, Charlotte Mulins
• Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall, Peter Turchin
• War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, Peter Turchin
• Secular Cycles, Peter Turchin
• Slavery: A New Global History, Jeremy Black
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
• The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Paul Kennedy
• Bibliotheca historica, Diodorus Siculus
• After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC, Steven Mithen
• A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, Gregory Clark
• War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley
• The Civilizing Process, Norbert Elias

Asian History

• The Rape of Nankin, Iris Chang
• A Short History of the Jewish People: From Legendary Times to Modern Statehood, Raymond P. Scheindlin
• Jerusalem: The Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore
• The Ottoman Empire – Sultan, Society and Economy, Halil Inalcik
• The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Bernard Lewis
• The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs, Marc David Baer

Americas

• The Penguin History of Latin America, Edwin Williamson
• The Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Diaz Del Castillo

Africa

• Africa: A Biography of the Continent, John Reader

European History

• Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Tony Judt
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer
• The Penguin History of Europe, J. M. Roberts
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard
• The Oxford History of Byzantium, Cyril Mango
• A Short History of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich
• A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Warren Treadgold
• The Shortest History of Greece, John Freely
• The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors, Dan Jones
• War and Social Change in Modern Europe: The Great Transformation Revisited, Sandra Halperin
• The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome, Susan Wise Bauer
• Memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev
• Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, Nigel Biggar
• The Case For Colonialism, Bruce Gilley
• Napoleon: A Life, Andrew Roberts
• Saddam Hussein: A Biography, Shiva Balaghi
• Stalin: A Biography, Robert Service
• The Birth of the West, Paul Collins
• Sacred Foundations, Anna Grzymala
• The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan
• The History of Religious Ideas, Mircea Eliade
  • Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries
  • Vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity
  • Vol. 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms
• The Dutch Seaborne Empire: 1600-1800, Charles Ralph Boxer
• Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, Timothy Brook
• The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, William Dalrymple
• The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Christopher Clark
• Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, Charles Murray 
• The House of Rothschild, Niall Ferguson
  • Volume 1: Money’s Prophets 1798-1848
  • Volume 2: The World’s Banker: 1849-1999
• The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, Amin Maalouf
• Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World, Roger Crowley
• The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt

The Middle Ages

• The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, Matthew Gabriele, David M. Perry
• The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West, Tom Holland
• The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000, Chris Wickahm
• The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science, Seb Falk
• God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, James Hannam
• Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages, Frances Gies and Joseph Gies
• The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain, Dario Fernandez-Morera

The Enlightenment

• Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, John Ralston Saul
• A Secular Age, Charles Taylor
• The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790, Ritchie Robertson
• Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752, Jonathan I. Israel

Individualism

• Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Charles Taylor
• Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, Larry Siedentop
• Individualism and Economic Order, Friedrich Hayek
• The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom, Robert Nisbet

Decadence

• Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Eugene (Seraphim) Rose
• The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler
• Sex and Culture, Joseph Daniel Unwin
• The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, Ross Douthat
• The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen
• Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia
• The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch
• After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre
• The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, Philip Rieff
• The Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset
• Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
• The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity, by Harry Oldmeadow
• Modernity and Cultural Decline: A Biobehavioral Perspective, Matthew Alexandar Sarraf, Michael Anthony Woodley of Menie, Colin Feltham
• From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, Jacques Barzun

---

Religion and Mythology

Christianity

• The Story of Christianity, David Bentley Hart
• The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware (also known as Kallistos Ware)
• The Orthodox Way, Kallistos Ware
• How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization, Mary Eberstadt
• The Confessions, Saint Augustine
• The City of God, Saint Augustine
• Summa Theologica, Saint-Thomas d’Aquin
• The Way of Perfection, Saint Theresa of Avila
• The Bible
• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Karen Armstrong
• What Is Christianity, Pope Benedict XVI
• Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI
  • Vol. I: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration
  • Vol. II: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection
  • Vol. III: The Infancy Narratives
• Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, David Bentley Hart
• The Origins of the Liturgical Year, Thomas J. Talley
• Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices, Frank Viola, George Barna
• Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith, Robert Barron
• The Formation of Christendom, Judith Herrin
• Cochem’s Explanation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Masses, Martin von Cochem
• The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton

Mythology

Egypt

• Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Richard H. Wilkinson

Greece

• The Library of Greek Mythology, Apollodorus
• Theogony, Hesiod
• Works and Days, Hesiod
• The Iliad, Homer
• The Odyssey, Homer
• Metamorphoses, Ovid
• Description of Greece, Pausanias
• Fabulae, Hyginus
• Poeticon Astronomicon, Hyginus
• The Oresteia, Aeschylus
• Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
• Antigone, Sophocles
• Medea, Euripides
• The Bacchae, Euripides
• Pythian Odes, Pindar
• Olympian Odes, Pindar

Nordics

• The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes, Jackson Crawford
• The Prose Edda: Norse Mythology, Snorri Sturluson
• The Saga of the Volsungs, Snorri Sturluson
• The Saga of the Ynglings, Snorri Sturluson
• Heimskringla, Snorri Sturluson

Others

• The History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth
• Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales, Grimm Brothers
• Myths and Epopées, Georges Dumézil

Paganism and Others

• In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon, The Dalai Lama, Bhikkhu Bodhi
• European Paganism, Ken Dowden
• A Little History of Religion, Richard Holloway
• The World’s Religions, Oliver Sacks
• The House of Islam: A Global History, Ed Husain
• Islam: A Short History, Karen Armstrong
• Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim Civilisation from the Past, Firas Alkhateeb
• Introduction to Islam: Beliefs and Practices in Historical Perspective, Carole Hillenbrand
• Islam: A New Historical Introduction, Carole Hillenbrand
• Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism, and Slavery, M.A. Khan
• The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade
• The Pagan Book of Days: A Guide to the Festivals, Traditions, and Sacred Days of the Year, Nigel Pennick

---

Political Science

• The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt
• The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin
• The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, Russell Kirk
• Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke
• Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, Roger Scruton
• Ideas Have Consequences, Richard M. Weaver
• The Left in Europe Since 1789, David Caute
• The Red Flag: A History of Communism, David Priestland
• Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre, Jonathan Israel
• The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville
• A History of Political Theory, George Sabine
• Political Philosophy: A Complete Introduction, Phil Parvin, Clare Chambers
• The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution and Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama
• The Concept of the Political, by Carl Schmitt
• Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left, Roger Scruton
• The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, Christopher Lasch
• Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, Valerie M. Hudson, Andrea M. den Boer
• The Fourth Political Theory, Aleksander Dugin (the book is banned in the West, for some reason).
• End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, Peter Turchin
• Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac, Steven D. Smith
• Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies, Kristian Niemietz
• Democracy: The God That Failed, Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• The Populist Delusion, Neema Parvini
• The Geometry of Genocide: A Study in Pure Sociology, Bradley Campbell

Feminism

• In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Carol Gilligan
• The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry
• A Brief History of Feminism, Antje Schrupp
• Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Work

• Work: The Last 1,000 Years, Andrea Komlosy
• The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt
• Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx
• Capital: Volume 1, Karl Marx
• The Sociology of Work: Continuity and Change in Paid and Unpaid Work, Stephen Edgell
• The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, Richard Sennett

---

Philosophy

• Being and Time, Martin Heidegger
• The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers, Will Durant (actually, this book might be retarded.)
• Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Mind, Self, and Society, George Herbert Mead
• Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, David Benatar
• Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, René Girard
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
• On the Shortness of Life, Seneca
• Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu
• Evil: A Philosophical Investigation, Luke Russell
• Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy, Costin Alamariu (lmao)
• What’s Wrong with Rights?, Nigel Biggar
• Alienation, Richard Schacht

---

Tech, Science, and Economics

• The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch
• The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch
• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil deGrasse Tyson
• The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, Roger Penrose
• A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
• The Future Is Faster Than You Think, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
• Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy, George Gilder
• Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari
• The Sovereign Individual: Jacob Rees-Mogg, James Dale Davidson
• How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, And Vanish Without A Trace, Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan
• How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, Jordan Ellenberg
• Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
• The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew, Alan Lightman
• The Ten Equations That Rule the World: And How You Can Use Them Too, David Sumpter
• Why Most Things Fail, Paul Ormerod
• Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
• Where Is My Flying Car? A Memoir of Future Past, J. Storrs Hall
• Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government, Paul A. Volcker, Christine Harper
• Blockchain Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction in 25 Steps, Daniel Drescher
• The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking, Saifedean Ammous
• Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money, Nathaniel Popper
• Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, Thomas Sowell
• Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics, Henry Hazlitt
• The Great Stagnation, Tyler Cowen
• Taxation: A Very Short Introduction, Stephen Smith
• The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, Matt Ridley
• What Is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods, Richard Courant

---

Energy, Trade, and Climate Change

• Global Energy Politics, Thijs Van de Graaf, Benjamin K. Sovacool
• How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going, Vaclav Smil
• Oil 101, Morgan Downey
• The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Daniel Yergin
• The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, Daniel Yergin
• The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations, Daniel Yergin
• Energy: A Beginner’s Guide, Vaclav Smil
• The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources, Javier Blas, Jack Farchy
• Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, Steven E. Koonin
• Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Michael Shellenberger
• False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, Bjorn Lomborg
• Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas – Not Less, Alex Epstein
• Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate, Rose George
• Dynamic Shipping and Port Development in the Globalized Economy, Paul Tae-Woo Lee, Kevin Cullinane
• The Geography of Transport Systems, Jean-Paul Rodrigue
• The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, Marc Levinson
• The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade, Pietra Rivoli
• Logistics Clusters: Delivering Value and Driving Growth, Yossi Sheffi
• The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization, Richard Baldwin

---

Foreign

French language books

• La Grande Histoire de la Belgique, Patrick Weber
• Le Péché et la Peur, Jean Delumeau
• La Tyrannie de la Pénitence, Pascal Bruckner
• Pour l’Histoire, Léopold III
• Armes de déstabilisation massive, Pierre Gastineau
• L’Arabie Saoudite en 100 questions, Fatiha Dazi-Héni
• Africanistan: L’Afrique en crise va-t-elle se retrouver dans nos banlieues ?, Serge Michaïlof
• L’identité malheureuse, Alain Finkielkraut
• La crise de la masculinité, Francis Dupuis-Déri
• Le petit terroriste, Omar Youssef Souleimane
• Le dinosaure: Le Zaïre de Mobutu, Colette Braeckman
• L’offensive chinoise en Europe, Philippe Le Corre
• L’invention de Dieu, Thomas Römer
• Qatar papers, Georges Malbrunot et Christian Chesnot
• La dictature des identités, Laurent Dubreuil
• Le sabordage de la noblesse: Mythe et réalité d’une décadence, Fadi El Hage
• Les guerres de l’ombre de la DGSI, Alex Jordanov
• Histoire de l’Europe de l’Est, de la Seconde Guerre mondiale à nos jours, Jean-François Soulet
• L’art de la méditation, Matthieu Ricard
• La France made in China, Régis Soubrouillard et Pierre Tissens
• Les ingénieurs du chaos, Giuliano da Empoli
• Le siècle des dictateurs, Olivier Guez
• L’Iran, une histoire de 4000 ans, Yves Bomati et Houchang Nahavandi
• La fin de l’individu: Voyage d’un philosophe au pays de l’intelligence artificielle, Gaspard Koenig
• Une escroquerie légalisée, Alain Deneault
• La Suisse et l’argent sale: 60 ans d’affaires bancaires, Roland Rossier
• Pour en finir avec la colonisation, Bernard Lugan
• Le Labyrinthe des égarés. L’Occident et ses adversaires, Amin Maalouf
• Atlas du Mondialisme, Pierre Hillard
• La Fin du Sacré, Sylvain Durain
• Le Livre noir de la psychanalyse, Catherine Meyer
• L’Invention de Dieu, Thomas Römer
• Histoire des idées politiques, Olivier Nay
• Le livre d’or des légendes de Belgique, Michel Elsdorf
• Histoire des Habsbourg: Des origines à nos jours, Henry Bogdan
• Eloge du duel: L’honneur au-dessus de la vie, Bernard Lugan
• Histoire de l’Afrique – Des origines à nos jours, Bernard Lugan
• Le Siècle de 1914: utopies, guerres et révolutions en Europe au XXe siècle, Dominique Venner
• Grandeur et décadences de l’Europe, Dominique Venner
• La guerre civile européenne: 1917-1945, Ernst Nolte
• L’Europe des Lumières, cosmopolitisme et unité européenne au XVIII^e siècle, René Pomeau
• Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, Émile Benveniste
• La ritualité des choses. Objets, gestes et paroles des initiations masculines Baruya, Pierre Lemonnier
• L’Homme rituel: Anthropologie du rituel catholique et français, Maurice Gruau
• Du corps au lien. L’implication des mères dans les initiations masculines Ankave, Pascale Bonnemère
• Le rouge est le noir: Essais sur le rituel, Michael Houseman

Dutch language books

• De Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie de V.O.C., Gerard Strijards

---

Research and Methodology

• Research Design in the Social Sciences, Blair Graeme, Coppock Alexander, Humphreys Macartan

Theater Plays

• The Complete Greek Tragedies
• Pour un oui, pour un non, Nathalie Sarraute
• Le dialogue des carmélites, George Bernanos

For more resources, head to auresnotes.com.

Photo by Jonathan Singer on Unsplash