Reading

Books I'm currently engaging with. The list reflects what I'm thinking about now, not a lifetime inventory.

Risk, capital, markets

Nassim Taleb — The Incerto (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game) — Great first principles behind these, can be sort of uber-intellectual at times though when it could be written much simpler.
Peter Bernstein — Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk — Historical perspective on risk and how society's perspective on it has changed throughout history, really good read.
Benoit Mandelbrot — The Misbehavior of Markets — More relevant now than ever; the age of volatility and leverage is coming to an end and the Gaussian framework is going to break in public.
Gregory Zuckerman — The Man Who Solved the Market — Decent book. Key takeaway: Jim Simons figured out how to process information better than anyone else, so he won.
Annie Duke — Thinking in Bets — Poker applied to real life, actually entertaining to read. Premortems and backcasting are great concepts; relates to Munger's inversion.
Ray Dalio — Principles; Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order — The Changing World Order is fantastic, great macroeconomic analysis of what's coming next. Principles itself is a bit overrated imo — still good but crazy overhyped.

Islamic thought

Ibn Khaldun — The Muqaddimah — Sociology before sociology existed. Insanely dense tbh, takes a while to get to the point so definitely skim, but asabiyyah is probably one of the most important concepts ever created; explains why empires (also countries, companies) rise and fall better than most modern political science.
Al-Ghazali — The Revival of the Religious Sciences (especially on the diseases of the heart); Deliverance from Error — Deliverance is the best account of real spirituality I've read. The diseases-of-the-heart sections in the Ihya are something every Muslim should aim to read; TLDR all of them stem from the desire for social validation.
Al-Farabi — The Virtuous City — Densest book ever yet best book ever. Talks about the First Ruler, the Active Intellect, and the philosopher-king. Reads very modern if you swap "city" for "company".
Muhammad Iqbal — The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam; the poetry — Asrar-i-Khudi, Javid Nama, Jawab-e-Shikwa all brilliant. Gabriel and Iblis also fantastic but dense, took me a few passes; wouldn't recommend a lot of his poetry without a strong spiritual base.
Muhammad Asad — The Road to Mecca; Islam at the Crossroads; The Message of the Qur'an — Road to Mecca is the best autobiography I've ever read. Islam at the Crossroads is another I'd recommend to any young Muslim balancing the East and the West.
Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas — Islam and Secularism; Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam — Still understanding these, not fully confident yet.
Al-Majalla (Hanafi fiqh) — Reference more than a read-through, but the first principles (reliance on isnad) are very useful.

Founders and builders

Ron Chernow — Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. — Haven't read fully; most ruthless person I've read a biography of though.
Peter Thiel — Zero to One — Best startup book ever written, most of the rest of the genre is footnotes. Find a secret, build an order-of-magnitude better product, find a wedge that has monopoly properties, profit.
Clayton Christensen — The Innovator's Dilemma; The Prosperity Paradox — Innovator's Dilemma is the one everyone quotes, I think a bit overrated. Prosperity Paradox is the underrated one — basically a theory of how poor countries actually develop, very useful.
Walter Isaacson — biographies of Jobs, Musk, Da Vinci — Da Vinci is the best of the three by a wide margin. Jobs is the most quoted but Da Vinci is the one that shows you what a mind actually looks like. Musk is good but the amount of glaze is insane.
Niall Ferguson — The Square and the Tower — Networks vs hierarchies as the engine of history. 100% recommend, very interesting read.

Strategy, war, statecraft

Julius Caesar — Commentaries on the Gallic War — Literally wrote it in the third person about himself; chad does what chad wants, the propaganda is the point. Still the best book on strategy I've read.
Arrian — The Campaigns of Alexander — The closest thing we have to a real account from him. Good book; I recommend The Campaigns of Napoleon as a better read though.
David Chandler — The Campaigns of Napoleon — Eleven hundred pages, worth every one. The corps system chapter alone explains why Napoleon won for fifteen years. His mental organization (close and open cupboards) — I use something very similar. Brilliant book.
Las Cases — The Memorial of Saint Helena — Napoleon narrating his own life in exile. Self-mythologizing but also a primary source from the man himself; really interesting to see his mood shift at the end of his life.
Plutarch — Parallel Lives — The original great-man biography form, still the best version of it. Still reading through this.
Homer — The Iliad — Achilles' choice between a long obscure life and a short glorious one is the most important question humans can ask. Wrote an essay on it in Why founding. Interesting note on all of these btw: Achilles inspired Alexander, Alexander inspired Caesar, Caesar inspired Mehmet II and Charlemagne, Charlemagne inspired Napoleon. All started from Achilles — we don't even know if he was real, so that's crazy to think about.

Philosophy and the self

Søren Kierkegaard — Fear and Trembling — Abraham and the knight of faith. True faith transcends rational ethics; you must make an absurd leap into the unknown. Aligns with Islamic thought very well.
Albert Camus — The Myth of Sisyphus — The most honest atheist argument for meaning. Entirely wrong, I think, but interesting to engage with.
Kishimi and Koga — The Courage to be Disliked — Adlerian psychology in dialogue form. Let go of social validation to be truly happy; aligns with Ghazali.
Maxwell Maltz — Psycho-Cybernetics — Self-image as the governor of performance. Written in the '60s by a plastic surgeon; still holds up and 100% influenced me.