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 Popper Bryan Magee A short guide to the philosopher Karl Popper by Bryan Magee, written for the Fontana Modern Masters series. 1 recommender 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 Portraits of the Mind Carl Schoonover The brain as scientists have seen it over the centuries, told through striking pictures. 1 recommender Possession A.S. Byatt Two academics chase a Victorian love affair through the archives and fall into the same trap. 1 recommender Postmodern Ethics Zygmunt Bauman After the rulebooks fail, where does morality come from? A sociologist's answer in care for the other. 1 recommender Postmortem Patricia Cornwell Patricia Cornwell's debut introduces medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, hunting a serial killer in Richmond through the evidence he leaves behind. 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 Winter Madeleine Albright Albright's account of her Czech childhood, exile and the family history she learned only much later. 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 Against Prejudice Jenny Morris A disabled feminist writer on prejudice, pride and the personal politics of living with impairment. 1 recommender Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen A comedy of manners with an economic argument underneath: marriage as the only career on offer. 2 recommenders 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 Professor at Large John Cleese Talks, essays and lectures from John Cleese's years as a visiting professor at Cornell University. Progressive Myths Michael Huemer A philosopher takes progressive claims one at a time and asks whether the evidence supports them. Proust and the Squid Maryanne Wolf How a brain never designed for reading learned to do it, from ancient scripts to a child's first words. 1 recommender Providence Geoffrey Wolff A crime novel about Rhode Island's capital, precise enough that the city is the real subject. 1 recommender Provisioning Paris Steven L. Kaplan How Paris was kept in bread before the Revolution, and why the king's authority depended on it. 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. Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky Maurice Nicoll The collected talks of Maurice Nicoll, a Scottish psychiatrist who taught the Fourth Way of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky in London. 1 recommender 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. Pulphead John Jeremiah Sullivan Essays on Christian rock festivals, Axl Rose, Bunny Wailer and the forgotten recordings of early America. 1 recommender Pumping Iron Charles Gaines, George Butler The book behind the documentary that made bodybuilding, and Schwarzenegger, famous. 1 recommender Purity and Danger Mary Douglas Why cultures revile what will not fit their categories, from dietary law to dirt, in the anthropologist's most argued-over book. 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