Reading list · 15 books
Mark Zuckerberg's reading list
Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), which he built from a Harvard dorm room into one of the world's most widely used social platforms. In 2015 he launched a public challenge to read a new book every two weeks, announcing each pick on Facebook and sharing notes on why it mattered to him. His selections skew toward history of institutions, political economy, energy, China, civil society, and the science of how humans form beliefs — the intellectual scaffolding behind building a global network.
- The End of Power
01
The End of Power
Moisés Naím
Zuckerberg's opening pick for the year and the book that set the list's tone. Naím argues that power in every domain — political, corporate, military — is becoming easier to acquire, harder to use, and easier to lose. Zuckerberg cited it as foundational for thinking about how large institutions stay relevant.
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02
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Steven Pinker
Pinker's data-heavy argument that human violence has declined across centuries. Zuckerberg picked it to stress-test an optimistic view of human progress — the kind of long arc thinking he returns to repeatedly when discussing why connecting the world matters.
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03
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
Harari's sweep through 70,000 years of human history, focusing on how shared myths let large groups cooperate. Zuckerberg noted that understanding how social structures scale was directly relevant to what Facebook was trying to build.
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- The Rational Optimist
04
The Rational Optimist
Matt Ridley
Ridley's case that trade and exchange have been the primary engine of human improvement. Zuckerberg paired it with Pinker as a second pillar of his optimistic priors — not uncritical cheerleading but an empirical account of how specialization and exchange reduce poverty.
- Gang Leader for a Day
05
Gang Leader for a Day
Sudhir Venkatesh
A sociologist embeds with a Chicago housing-project gang for years and documents how informal economies work inside communities the formal economy has abandoned. Zuckerberg included it as a ground-level counterweight to the macro-level poverty books on the same list.
- Portfolios of the Poor
06
Portfolios of the Poor
Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven
Researchers tracked the daily financial lives of families living on under two dollars a day across Bangladesh, India, and South Africa. Zuckerberg called it one of the most important books on understanding poverty — the data shows poor households manage money with sophisticated strategies under severe constraints.
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07
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
Acemoglu and Robinson's argument that inclusive economic and political institutions — not geography, culture, or luck — determine whether countries prosper. One of several picks on the list about why good societal structures are hard to build and easy to undermine.
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08
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander's account of mass incarceration in the US as a system of racialized social control. Zuckerberg included it in a cluster of books about structural inequality — later that year he posted that it had changed how he thought about the US criminal justice system.
- Dealing with China
09
Dealing with China
Henry M. Paulson Jr.
The former Treasury Secretary's account of four decades of economic diplomacy with China, based on over a hundred trips and direct relationships with senior Chinese leaders. Zuckerberg was actively trying to enter the Chinese market at the time and cited the book as essential context.
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10
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
Ed Catmull's account of building and sustaining Pixar's creative culture. The only pick explicitly about running a company, chosen for what Catmull learned about candor, trust, and preserving creativity after early success — problems Zuckerberg was thinking through as Facebook scaled past a billion users.
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11
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn
Kuhn's argument that science advances through periodic paradigm shifts rather than smooth accumulation. Zuckerberg picked it for the meta-insight about how communities of experts resist new frameworks — relevant both to building new products and to understanding why incumbents struggle to adapt.
- Rational Ritual
12
Rational Ritual
Michael Chwe
A short, dense book arguing that public rituals and ceremonies create 'common knowledge' — everyone knows that everyone knows something — which is what enables coordination. Zuckerberg described it as important for understanding why social platforms work at a fundamental level.
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13
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James
William James's 1902 lectures on the psychology and phenomenology of religious experience, treating it empirically rather than theologically. Zuckerberg picked it as part of a thread on how people form deep beliefs and commitments — the same psychological substrate that makes social movements possible.
- On Immunity: An Inoculation
14
On Immunity: An Inoculation
Eula Biss
A lyric essay examining the cultural and historical roots of vaccine anxiety. Zuckerberg posted it during a period of measles outbreaks linked to declining vaccination rates, and framed it as a book about how scientific consensus struggles against narrative and fear.
- The Muqaddimah
15
The Muqaddimah
Ibn Khaldun
A 14th-century introduction to world history that Zuckerberg described as 'an early look at what caused the rise and fall of civilizations.' Ibn Khaldun's theory of group solidarity (asabiyyah) as the engine of historical change is remarkably contemporary in its sociological framing.
More on Mark Zuckerberg's picks
In January 2015, Zuckerberg announced a personal challenge: one new book every two weeks for the year, with each pick shared publicly on Facebook. He framed the project around a single question — how do people, institutions, and societies learn and change? — and stuck to it. The list moves from political science (how power erodes, how nations fail) to behavioral economics (how beliefs form and spread) to energy and China, subjects he said he wanted to understand better as Facebook expanded into new parts of the world.
What holds the list together is an interest in systems thinking: Kuhn on paradigm shifts, Ibn Khaldun on the rise and fall of civilizations, Pinker on why violence has declined over centuries. Several books look at poverty and inequality not as background facts but as structures to be understood — Portfolios of the Poor, The New Jim Crow, Gang Leader for a Day. Others take on knowledge and technology: Creativity, Inc. is the only pick about building a company, and Zuckerberg chose it specifically for what Catmull learned about sustaining a creative culture after early success.
The challenge drew enough attention that Facebook posts about each book generated hundreds of thousands of comments. Zuckerberg said the goal was to focus on in-depth learning from long-form material rather than the fragments that dominate social feeds — a somewhat pointed observation from the person who built the feed.
