Books Recommended by Peter Thiel
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Originals
How Non-Conformists Move the World
Adam Grant
Source: "It can sometimes seem as if one must learn everything old before one can try anything new. [The author] does a masterful job showing that is not the case; we are lucky to have him as a guide." - Peter Thiel
7 Powers
The Foundations of Business Strategy
Hamilton Helmer
Source: "[The author] understands that strategy starts with invention. He can't tell you what to invent, but he can and does show what it takes for a new invention to become a valuable business." - Peter Thiel
100 Plus
Sonia Arrison
Source: "Its message is evergreen: how scientists are directly attacking the problem of aging and death and why we should fight for life instead of accepting decay as inevitable." - Peter Thiel
1 recommender
The Lord of the Rings (4 books)
J. R. R. Tolkien
Source: "The classic [series] I always give." - Peter Thiel
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
Source: "The early PayPal team worked well together because we were all the same kind of nerd. We all loved science fiction: Cryptonomicon was required reading." - Peter Thiel
4 recommenders
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand
Source: "When I first read [Ayn Rand's books] in the late 80s, it felt pretty crazy. And in the last decades, it's in many ways felt much more correct." - Peter Thiel
Bloodlands
Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Timothy Snyder
Source: "Tells how the Nazis and the Soviets drove each other to ever more murderous atrocities as they fought to dominate Eastern Europe." - Peter Thiel
2 recommenders
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
Rene Girard
Source: "We [followers of Girard], had sort of a sense that we had figured out the truth about the world in a way that nobody else did." - Peter Thiel
2 recommenders
Psychopolitics
Conversations with Trevor Cribben Merrill
Jean-Michel Oughourlian
Source: "For a fresh application of Mr. Girard’s insights into power politics, that great international theater of irrationality." - Peter Thiel
1 recommender
The Reasonableness of Christianity
John Locke
Source: "Said that Christ obviously had to mislead people, since if he had not done so, the authorities might have tried to kill him." - Peter Thiel
1 recommender
Paradise Lost
John Milton
Source: "The mind is its own place and of itself can make a hell of heaven, and a heaven of hell." - Peter Thiel
1 recommender
The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World
From Marathon to Waterloo
Edward Shepherd Creasy
Source: "Peter [Thiel] would, at one point, pass me a copy of [this book], the book he had read as he’d mulled his options over." - Ryan Holiday
2 recommenders
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
Source: "The devil shows up in Stalinist Russia, [...] and gives everybody what they want, and everything goes haywire." - Peter Thiel
Discourses on Livy
Niccolò Machiavelli
Source: "Something in these pages planted itself deep into [Peter Thiel]’s mind when he first read it long ago." - Ryan Holiday
1 recommender
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Source: "All happy families are alike, and all unhappy families are unhappy in their own special way." - Peter Thiel
Dangerous
Milo Yiannopoulos
Source: "If you don't use your freedom of speech, one day you might find that it's gone. Buy this book while it's legal." - Peter Thiel
1 recommender
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Piketty
Source: "Accurately describes inequality in the past and present of countries like the United States." - Peter Thiel
4 recommenders
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Ben Horowitz
Source: "[The author] has written the first true guide for protecting a startup from self-sabotage." - Peter Thiel
The Decadent Society
How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
Ross Gregory Douthat
Source: "Sets the stakes for the most urgent public debate of the 2020s: How do we get back to the future?" - Peter Thiel
3 recommenders
Holy Bible
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Source: Peter Thiel says The New Testament has influenced him more than The Old Testament.
212 books
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