- Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma. I resisted reading this for a long time because it’s so much a part of the fabric of working in tech. I’m glad I did. Cost structures matter. Recommended.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me. I listened to this as an audiobook, read by Coates himself. Short but powerful.
- Eric Berger, Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX. If you want to know why SpaceX can do so much in so little time, this is where to start. Great story.
- John le Carré, The Night Manager. A lot of people love le Carré; I am not one of them.
- Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. You can find a lot online about “how Amazon works.” This is the clearest distillation I’ve found.
- Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Broad, not deep. That said, I’m looking forward to the next installment. A summary.
- Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace. Solid sequel to A Memory Called Empire.
- Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. I hadn’t realized just how chaotic the late 60s early 70s were. This book filled in many gaps for me on where many of the political divides leading up to the Trump era originated. The book is overlong, and the author maintains an ironic detachment that grows tiring.
- Kim MacQuarrie, The Last Days of the Incas. Recommended. In the end it reads likes a morality tale as the original conquistadors of the Incas, almost to a man, fall to violence and betrayal.
- Ted Widmer, Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington. A strange little history book that makes a lot of connections.
- Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile. Engaging, but ultimately not for me.
- Barack Obama, A Promised Land. What you think this book is exactly what it is.
- David McCullough, The Wright Brothers. Really enjoyed this. I would have appreciated more about the business and patent fights of later days. You can see the Wrights slipping behind in the industry but, this is scarecely commented on.