Tim O’Reilly Book Recommendations

The Meaning of Culture

by John Cowper Powys

"Talks about the interplay of culture and life, the way that what we read can enrich what we experience, and what we experience can enrich what we read." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Night Train to Lisbon

A Novel

by Pascal Mercier

"Sometimes there was just a line in [this book] that changed my life in some way." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Makers and Takers

How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street

by Rana Foroohar

"All about the financialization of the economy." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Dune (6 books)

"Definitely one of [the series that have shaped my life]." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Discovery of the Mind

by Bruno Snell

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast. (Source)

Information Rules

A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy

by Carl Shapiro

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast. (Source)

Liar's Poker

by Michael Lewis

"A time machine into this place when our financial economy went crazily wrong." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Odyssey

by Homer

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast. (Source)

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life

An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness

by Russ Roberts

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast. (Source)

The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog

by Ed Krol

"It had a catalogue in the back of interests to internet sites. If you tell that to this site, you’ll get earthquake information. [...] There were only 200 web sites." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Essential Rumi

by Jalal Al-Din Rumi

"The introduction alone [...] will make the hair stand up on your arms." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Intermediate Microeconomics

A Modern Approach

by Hal R. Varian

"Almost every economist learned from [this book]." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Way of Life, According to Laotzu

by Witter Bynner

"Most people who know me have heard me quote from this book." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Innovator's Dilemma

When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

by Clayton M. Christensen

"[A] business classic." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Kabir Book

Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir

by Robert Bly

"I love [this book]." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Unrig

How to Fix Our Broken Democracy

by Daniel G. Newman

"I love [this book]. A graphic 'novel' explaining how to unrig the US's broken democracy." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Second Machine Age

Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast. (Source)

Can You Forgive Her?

Palliser, Book 1

by Anthony Trollope

"It’s this sort of proto-feminist novel about these women who made choices that were unconventional in who they would marry." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Trilby

by George Du Maurier

"Everybody knows Charles Dickens, but only a certain number of people will have read [this book]." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Way We Live Now

by Anthony Trollope

"About the great railroad bubbles of the 1860s." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Warden

Chronicles of Barsetshire, Book 1

by Anthony Trollope

"You read [this book] and you go, 'Oh, my God, I’m reading a novel about the moral quandaries of an 1850s British cleric, and it’s fricking fascinating.'" - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Collected Poems

The Corrected Edition

by Wallace Stevens

"Maybe it’s too intellectual for some people, but [...] go find a couple of poems of [this author]." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Riders of the Purple Sage

Riders of the Purple Sage, Book 1

by Zane Grey

"A time machine into how people felt about the world in [1915]." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

"In terms of classics, you can’t do better than [this author] for understanding the human soul." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Loving Every Child

Wisdom for Parents

by Janusz Korczak

"A wonderful book." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Babel-17 / Empire Star

by Samuel R. Delany

"I’d loved [this] little book." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

by Tom Wolfe

"[Gets you] into the world of psychedelia and that era of the ‘70s." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats

by W. B. Yeats

"I learned [that 20 of these poems] do nothing for me, and there’s this one that just goes 'Bang!'" - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Rissa Kerguelen

Book One in the Saga of Rissa

by F. M Busby

"Influenced me deeply." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

When Nietzsche Wept

A Novel Of Obsession

by Irvin D. Yalom

"An imagined story of early psychoanalysis about a guy who was a predecessor to Freud." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Civil War

by Bruce Catton

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast. (Source)

Islandia

by Austin Tappan Wright

"A personal passion project of a Boston lawyer." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Charlie Chan

Five Complete Novels: The House Without a Key; The Chinese Parrot; Behind That Curtain; The Black Camel; Keeper of the Keys

by Earl Derr Biggers

"Like a time machine with the casual racism." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

Working Backwards

Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

by Colin Bryar

"[The authors] dive deep into how Amazon has become the company to study if you want to succeed in 21st-century business." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

The Lean Startup

How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

by Eric Ries

"[This book] isn't just about how to create a more successful entrepreneurial business, it's about what we can learn from those businesses to improve virtually everything we do." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)

AI Superpowers

China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee

"If you care about the future being brought to us by AI, this is the one indispensable book of 2018." - Tim O’Reilly (Source)