Skip to main content
search

Readings

The fol­low­ing is an incom­plete list, in no par­tic­u­lar order, of books that have shaped my mind over the years:

Admin­is­tra­tive Behav­ior by Her­bert A. Simon

Mod­els of My Life by Her­bert A. Simon

If I read a book and it makes my whole body feel so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry.
If I feel phys­i­cal­ly as if the top of my head were tak­en off, I know that is poetry.
— Emi­ly Dickinson

View with a Grain of Sand by Wis­lawa Szymborska

Under the Glac­i­er by Halldór Laxness

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing

A Menck­en Chrestomathy by H. L. Mencken

Devel­op­ment Projects Observed by Albert O. Hirschman

Exit, Voice, and Loy­al­ty by Albert O. Hirschman

The Anx­i­ety of Influ­ence by Harold Bloom

Sto­ries of Your Life and Oth­ers by Ted Chiang

Eichmann in Jerusalem

Eich­mann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banal­i­ty of Evil by Han­nah Arendt

Pas­sion and Craft by Michael Szen­berg (Ed.)

The Select­ed Let­ters of Ten­nessee Williams (1945–1957)

On Chi­nese Gar­dens by Chen Congzhou

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu

The Con­quest of Hap­pi­ness by Bertrand Russell

Echoes of cries of pain rever­ber­ate in my heart. Chil­dren in famine, vic­tims tor­tured by oppres­sors, help­less old peo­ple a bur­den to their sons, and the whole world of lone­li­ness, pover­ty, and pain make a mock­ery of what human life should be. I long to alle­vi­ate this evil, but I can­not, and I too suffer.
— Bertrand Russell

Riv­er Town by Peter Hessler

Prop­er Doc­tor­ing by David Mendel

Escape from Free­dom by Erich Fromm

The Glass Cas­tle by Jean­nette Walls

The Impor­tance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca by Alex­is de Tocqueville

The Catch­er in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Nine­teen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Son­nets from the Por­tuguese and Oth­er Poems by Eliz­a­beth Bar­rett Browning

We assume some of the most pecu­liar and tem­po­rary of our late advan­tages as nat­ur­al, per­ma­nent, and
to be depend­ed on, and we lay our plans accord­ing­ly… On this sandy and false foun­da­tion we scheme
for social improve­ment and dress our polit­i­cal platforms…
— John May­nard Keynes

The Eco­nom­ic Con­se­quences of the Peace by John May­nard Keynes

Cap­i­tal­ism, Social­ism, and Democ­ra­cy by Joseph A. Schumpeter

Mem­oirs of Extra­or­di­nary Pop­u­lar Delu­sions and the Mad­ness of Crowds by Charles MacKay

The Death and Life of Great Amer­i­can Cities by Jane Jacobs

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Nor­rell by Susan­na Clarke

I would rather be ash­es than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out
in a bril­liant blaze than it should be sti­fled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb mete­or, every atom
of me in mag­nif­i­cent glow, than a sleepy and per­ma­nent planet.
— Jack London

The Reck­on­ing by David Halberstam

The Plague by Albert Camus

Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man by Richard Feynman

Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University

Pio­neer by Hugh Hawkins

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Med­i­cine by Michael Bliss

William Osler: A Life in Med­i­cine by Michael Bliss

Love Poems by Pablo Neruda

The Sirens’ Song by Mau­rice Blanchot

Close Menu