Books

Poor Charlie’s Almanack Charlie Munger A collection of Charlie Munger's talks and wit, built around his idea of using mental models from many disciplines to think better. 2 recommenders Portfolios of the Poor Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, Orlanda Ruthven Year-long financial diaries of poor households show that living on two dollars a day demands constant, sophisticated money management. 1 recommender Possession A.S. Byatt Two academics chase a Victorian love affair through the archives and fall into the same trap. 1 recommender Poverty, by America Matthew Desmond The argument that American poverty persists because it is profitable to the people voting on it. 1 recommender Powershift Daymond John John's three-part system, drawn from his own deals, for building influence, negotiating hard, and getting the outcome you want Pox Romana: The Plague that Shook the Roman World Colin Elliott The Antonine plague hit Rome at its height, and the empire never quite recovered its confidence. 1 recommender Practical Mysticism Evelyn Underhill A 1914 handbook arguing that contemplative experience needs no doctrine, monastery or belief, written for readers who assumed mysticism was for other people. 1 recommender Prague: The Heart of Europe Cynthia Paces A city that has been Habsburg, Nazi, Soviet and European, read through the buildings still standing. 1 recommender Prayers of the Pious Omar Suleiman Short daily reflections and supplications drawn from the lives of the pious. Pre-Suasion Robert B. Cialdini Cialdini's follow-up to Influence, on how the moment before a message is delivered decides whether it lands. 1 recommender Predictable Revenue Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler The outbound prospecting system built at Salesforce, and how to make new sales arrive predictably. 1 recommender Predilections Marianne Moore Marianne Moore on Pound, Stevens, Eliot and Anna Pavlova, written in the compressed magpie style of her poems. Criticism by an enthusiast rather than a judge. 1 recommender Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions Boyd van Dijk The 1949 negotiations reconstructed from the archives, showing colonial powers drafting the rules of war to preserve their own freedom to put down uprisings. 1 recommender Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen A comedy of manners with an economic argument underneath: marriage as the only career on offer. 1 recommender Principles Ray Dalio The transparent, rules-based system Dalio used to run Bridgewater, written as a set of principles anyone can adopt Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order Ray Dalio Five hundred years of empires rising and falling, read as a repeating cycle, with a hard look at where the US and China sit Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises Ray Dalio Dalio's template for how debt crises actually unfold, drawn from studying 48 of them, including the ones he traded through Principles for Success Ray Dalio The ideas of Principles compressed into an illustrated thirty-minute read, aimed squarely at younger readers Progressive Myths Michael Huemer A philosopher takes progressive claims one at a time and asks whether the evidence supports them. Providence Geoffrey Wolff A crime novel about Rhode Island's capital, precise enough that the city is the real subject. 1 recommender Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine Scott Horton A revisionist account arguing NATO expansion, not Russian aggression, started the new Cold War. Pudd’nhead Wilson Mark Twain Two babies, one white and one enslaved, are switched at birth, and Twain uses the swap to detonate the era's assumptions about race and identity. Pumping Iron Charles Gaines, George Butler The book behind the documentary that made bodybuilding, and Schwarzenegger, famous. 1 recommender Purple Cow Seth Godin In a field of brown cows, only a purple one gets noticed: Godin's case that safe and average is now the riskiest bet The Painter of Signs R.K. Narayan A sign painter in Malgudi falls for a woman touring the district promoting birth control. 1 recommender The Paper Palace Miranda Cowley Heller One day at a Cape Cod summer house, one impossible choice, and fifty years of what the family never said. 1 recommender The Parables of the Qur’an Yasir Qadhi The Qur'an argues in images as much as in instruction, and this gathers those comparisons and explains what each one is for. The Paradox of Choice Barry Schwartz Past a certain point, more options stop being freedom and start manufacturing regret. 1 recommender The Path Made Clear Oprah Winfrey Oprah gathers guidance and stories to help readers find their direction and sense of purpose. The Pathless Path Paul Millerd Leaving an elite consulting career to build a life outside conventional definitions of success, part memoir and part manifesto. 1 recommender The People of Hemso August Strindberg A farmhand marries the widow who owns the farm and sets about remaking a small Stockholm island. Strindberg 1887 comedy of ambition, barely read outside Sweden. 1 recommender The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It Neal Bascomb Three runners on three continents chased the four-minute mile in 1954, and the Australian broke the record within weeks of Bannister setting it. 1 recommender The Permanent Problem: The Uncertain Transition from Mass Plenty to Mass Flourishing Brink Lindsey Keynes thought abundance would set us free. Lindsey asks why it has left so many people miserable. 1 recommender The Person and the Situation Lee Ross Character explains less of human behaviour than we assume; the room people stand in explains far more. 1 recommender The Phoenix Pencil Company Allison King A granddaughter inherits her family's Shanghai pencil company, and pencils that can be made to give back what they wrote. 1 recommender The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett Ken Follett's epic of the building of a cathedral in twelfth-century England, following the masons, monks, and nobles whose fates it shapes. 1 recommender