Reading list · 12 books
Shane Parrish's reading list
Founder of Farnam Street (fs.blog) and host of "The Knowledge Project," Parrish is one of the most influential reading-and-mental-models voices in tech and investing. He publishes an annual "best books I read" list and reads ~80–100 books a year.
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01
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
Named a best book of 2016; Parrish calls it one of the best "big history" syntheses he'd read in a long time.
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02
James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg
A 2016 best-book pick; he highlights its argument that technology will erode the nation-state's power over individuals.
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03
Paul Kalanithi
A 2016 favorite; he recommends the neurosurgeon's memoir for its meditation on what makes life meaningful.
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04
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
Daniel Dennett
A 2016 pick; squarely in Parrish's wheelhouse of thinking tools and thought experiments.
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05
Daniel Schacter
2016 best book on the systematic ways human memory fails — core mental-models material.
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06
Why Don't We Learn from History?
B.H. Liddell Hart
A 2016 pick he recommends as a short, sharp synthesis on extracting lessons from the past.
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07
Pedro Domingos
A 2016 favorite he recommends as the best overview of the competing schools of machine learning.
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08
Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
Krista Tippett
A 2016 best book; he describes pages densely underlined, on wisdom and the art of living.
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09
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
Annie Duke
Parrish recommends Duke's work on decision-making under uncertainty; he later hosted her and features the book repeatedly.
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10
Russ Harris
A 2016 pick on the paradox that chasing happiness directly tends to backfire.
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11
Harper Lee
He revisited it as a 2016 best book to study Atticus Finch's blend of toughness, humility, and judgment.
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12
Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights
Graham Allison et al.
A 2016 pick collecting the Singapore founder's hard-nosed views on geopolitics and economics.
More on Shane Parrish's picks
Parrish publishes a yearly "best books I read" roundup on Farnam Street and tracks his full reading on Goodreads, plus recommends widely on The Knowledge Project. The selections below come primarily from his published "16 Best Books I Read in 2016" list and other Farnam Street recommendations; his taste runs to mental models, history, philosophy, decision-making, and biography.
