Amazon
Joshua Waitzkin
The Art of Learning
How a chess prodigy learned to learn. Performance without the guru fog.
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The shelf
Books
Not a reading list I copied. These are the ones that stuck — learning, money, persuasion, fiction, the body, chess, limit hold 'em, pool, Monopoly, stress, the long game.
Amazon
Robert Cialdini
Influence
The levers people use on you. Once you see them, you stop getting played.
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Amazon
Harry Browne
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World
Stop waiting for the world to free you. Cut the traps. Personal liberty without the manifesto fog.
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Amazon
Robert J. Ringer
Winning Through Intimidation
The deal is not fair. This is the map of how intimidation actually works — not a license to be a jerk.
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Amazon
Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now
Presence as a skill, not a vibe. The one that actually slows you down.
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Amazon
Andrew Bernstein
The Myth of Stress
Stress is the thought, not the circumstance. ActivInsight. The one I tell men to read when they think the job is the problem.
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Amazon
Zig Ziglar
Secrets of Closing the Sale
Old-school close. Still the mechanics underneath every yes.
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Amazon
Barry Farber
Making People Talk
A talk-show host on getting people to open up. Useful anywhere a conversation matters.
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Amazon
Michael Masterson
Ready, Fire, Aim
Start. Then aim. For people who stall by planning.
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Amazon
Edward de Bono
De Bono's Thinking Course
Tools for thinking on purpose instead of arguing in circles.
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Amazon
Tim Ferriss
The 4-Hour Workweek
Escape velocity. Take the useful parts, ignore the lifestyle brand.
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Amazon
Tim Ferriss
The 4-Hour Body
A lab notebook for the body. Steal the experiments that fit.
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Amazon
Percy Cerutty
How to Become a Champion
A hard coach from another era. Training the body and the will together.
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Amazon
Michael Jordan
I Can't Accept Not Trying
Short. No philosophy fog. You either go for it or you don't — and he couldn't live with don't.
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Amazon
Robert Kiyosaki
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Assets vs. liabilities, taught like a parable. The on-ramp.
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Amazon
Mike Michalowicz
Profit First
Take profit first. What's left is what you get to spend. A cash system, not a pep talk.
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Amazon
Robert Hagstrom
The Warren Buffett Way
How Buffett actually thinks about a business, not the folklore.
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Amazon
Mary Buffett & David Clark
Buffettology
The method, written down so you can run the numbers.
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Amazon
Peter Lynch
One Up on Wall Street
Buy what you understand. Still the amateur's edge.
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Amazon
Alexander Green
The Gone Fishin' Portfolio
A lazy, serious way to invest and then leave it alone.
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Amazon
Michael Lewis
Moneyball
Stop paying for the story. Measure the thing that wins.
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Amazon
Michael Lewis
The Undoing Project
Kahneman and Tversky. Why your gut is systematically wrong — and why that friendship changed how we think.
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Amazon
Niall Ferguson
The Ascent of Money
How finance got here. Context before you take advice from anyone.
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Amazon
Robert Wright
The Moral Animal
Evolutionary psychology without the Twitter version. Why we do what we do.
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Amazon
Robert Wright
Nonzero
Why cooperation scales. The long arc is not zero-sum.
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Amazon
Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
The case that superintelligent AI is not a cool product cycle. Read it before you shrug.
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Amazon
Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead
A man who will not be redesigned by the room he is in.
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Amazon
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
The long one. What happens when the people who make things stop.
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Amazon
Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land
A human raised by Martians comes to Earth. Belonging, sex, churches, and grokking. The one people still fight over.
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Amazon
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
Control by pleasure, not the boot. Soma, caste, and a world that never has to say no because nobody wants to.
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Amazon
George Orwell
1984
The boot. Thoughtcrime, Newspeak, and a Party that does not need you happy — only obedient. Everyone quotes it. Read it.
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Amazon
Frank W. Abagnale
Catch Me If You Can
The real con, not just the movie. Fake checks, fake uniforms, and getting away with it until he didn't.
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Amazon
Walter Tevis
The Hustler
Pool, pride, and getting cracked open. Fiction that teaches more than most manuals.
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Amazon
Irving Chernev
Logical Chess: Move by Move
Every move explained. The book that teaches you why a piece went there — not just that it did.
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Amazon
Irving Chernev & Fred Reinfeld
Winning Chess
Attacking play after you know the moves. The companion to Logical Chess — not Seirawan’s series unless that is the one on the shelf.
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Amazon
Jeremy Silman
Silman's Complete Endgame Course
Endgames by rating. Only what you need at the level you are at. Then the next chapter.
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Amazon
David Sklansky
The Theory of Poker
Expected value, in English. The math behind every bet with incomplete information.
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NOT FOR NO-LIMIT!
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Ed Miller, David Sklansky & Mason Malmuth
Small Stakes Hold 'em
Limit hold 'em. This is what got me good. Less useful for no-limit — still the book.
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NOT FOR NO-LIMIT!
Amazon
David Sklansky & Mason Malmuth
Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players
Limit hold 'em at a higher level. Same caveat: it is not a no-limit manual. It is how I learned to think.
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NOT FOR NO-LIMIT!
Amazon
Nick Grudzien & Geoff Herzog
Winning in Tough Hold 'em Games
Short-handed, high-stakes limit. The third book in that sequence. Limited for NL. It still made me better.
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Amazon
Ray Martin & Rosser Reeves
The 99 Critical Shots in Pool
The shots that actually come up. Diagrams, not folklore. Pool as a thinking game.
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Amazon
Jay Walker & Jeff Lehman
1000 Ways to Win Monopoly Games
Monopoly as a thinking game. Trading, timing, and why most people play it wrong.
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