Books, Music, and Film

March 05, 2026

This is a living document: a running list of books, music, and films I have enjoyed and would recommend. It is not a canon of the best, merely a personal inventory, updated as I come across new work. Entries are grouped by subject and listed alphabetically by author, composer, or director; order implies nothing. If you think there is something I would like, tell me.

Books

Non-Fiction

Economics & Society

Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea — Human-scale reporting on a closed society; unforgettable portraits.
Jacob Lund Fisker, Early Retirement Extreme — Systems thinking applied to money; engineer your life for freedom sooner.
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom — Markets as a guardrail for liberty; crisp, unapologetic arguments.
Neil M. Gorsuch, A Republic, If You Can Keep It — Civic duty, federalism, and judicial restraint, written plainly.
W. J. Rorabaugh, Prohibition: A Concise History — How a moral crusade turned into a black market and then collapsed.
Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America — How immigrant groups climbed, stalled, and integrated; clear-eyed on incentives and culture.

Business & Building Things

Bill Browder, Red Notice — High finance collides with Russian power; a real-life thriller.
Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, How Big Things Get Done — Pattern library for megaprojects; how to avoid the usual failure modes.
Bryce G. Hoffman, American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company — Culture change and operational rigor saving an old-line giant.
Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Leadership without gloss; practical guidance from the trench years.
Vance H. Trimble, Overnight Success (Fred Smith / FedEx) — How overnight delivery was invented; Smith’s obsession with reliability and time.
Sam Walton with John Huey, Sam Walton: Made in America — Wal-Mart’s founder on thrift, people, and relentless execution.
Mike Wilson, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison — Oracle’s rise and Ellison’s force-of-will leadership, warts and all.

Technology, Science & Innovation

Luis W. Alvarez, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist — First-person account of radar, the Manhattan Project, and particle physics innovation.
Leslie Berlin, The Man Behind the Microchip — Bob Noyce as the connective tissue of Silicon Valley; generous, flawed, catalytic.
Kerry Brougher and Philippe Vergne, Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers — Monochromes, performance, and why Klein mattered to modern art.
Michael Cannell, I.M. Pei: A Mandarin of Modernism — How Pei blended rigor and lyricism; a study in disciplined modernism.
Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! — Curiosity as operating system; pranks, physics, and relentless tinkering.
Istvan Hargittai, Martians of Science — Five Hungarian physicists who bent the 20th century; talent, exile, and impact.
Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park — Edison as entrepreneur-inventor; myth-making and manufacturing as one craft.
John von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain — Early, sharp thinking on computation versus cognition; still provocative.
Marina von Neumann Whitman, The Martian’s Daughter: A Memoir — Growing up with von Neumann and then forging her own path in economics and industry.

Leadership, Politics & Law

Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President — Strategic calm from D-Day to the White House; leadership by steadiness.
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — Primary-source moral clarity on slavery and self-emancipation.
Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life — Inventor, diplomat, political operator; a model of applied curiosity.
Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power — Jefferson as political craftsman; ideals balanced with realpolitik.
Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt — Roosevelt’s improbable ascent; energy and curiosity weaponized.
Antonin Scalia (ed. Christopher J. Scalia & Edward Whelan), Scalia Speaks — Speeches on law, faith, and civic duty; voice of a justice in full.

Military, Security & Survival

Christian Brose, The Kill Chain — How future conflict will hinge on software and networks; indictment of the current acquisition system.
Michael Brown and Pavneet Singh, Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War — Inside the effort to connect the military with commercial tech; building a new acquisition lane.
James G. Burton, The Pentagon Wars — The Bradley saga as a lesson in bureaucracy versus battlefield reality.
Edward T. Horvath Jr., Good Medicine, Hard Times — A combat physician’s Iraq tour; medicine under fire.
Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson, Lone Survivor — SEAL perspective on Operation Redwing; brutal and candid.
Jimmy Settle with Don Rearden, Never Quit — Pararescue training in Alaska to combat rescues; humility and grit.

Adventure & Wilderness

Jim Corbett, Man-Eaters of Kumaon — Tracking and taking responsibility for man-eating tigers; fieldcraft and nerve.
David Goodman, Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast — The routes and beta that make you want to go; pragmatic stoke.
Tom Neale, An Island to Oneself — Solitude and self-sufficiency on a Pacific atoll; quiet competence.

Fiction & Speculative

Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, The Unincorporated Man — Libertarian thought experiment on personal equity and freedom.
George Orwell, 1984 — The definitive surveillance-state cautionary tale.

Music

Piano & Keyboard

J. S. Bach, Complete Organ Works (Masaaki Suzuki) — Clean lines and sturdy pulse; sacred architecture rendered in sound.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonatas (Richard Goode) — Warm, human Beethoven; structure without stiffness.
Claude Debussy, Études (Mitsuko Uchida) — Precision and color; Uchida makes the technical traps feel lyrical.
John Field, Complete Nocturnes (Alice Sara Ott) — The original nocturnes played with clarity and warmth.
Philip Glass, Mad Rush — Repetition as meditation; trance that still moves forward.
Glenn Gould, Liszt Transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies — Beethoven refracted through Liszt and Gould; audacious and oddly faithful.
Edvard Grieg, Lyric Pieces (Peter Katin) — Miniatures with backbone; folk-inflected and unsentimental.
Franz Liszt, Complete Grandes Études (Wenbin Jin) — Athletic but musical; fireworks anchored by line.
Nikolai Medtner, Piano Concertos (Neeme Järvi / Geoffrey Tozer) — Romantic architecture with granite rhythms; criminally underplayed.
Nikolai Medtner, Complete Piano Sonatas (Marc-André Hamelin) — Monumental but intimate; Hamelin makes the counterpoint sing.
Maurice Ravel, Miroirs (Anna Vinnitskaya) — Glittering and transparent; Vinnitskaya balances shimmer with weight.
Camille Saint-Saëns, Études — Virtuosity with wit; little machines that sing.

Strings & Early Music

J. S. Bach, Cello Suites (Anastasia Kobekina) — Playful and conversational Bach; light on the bow, clear in voice.
Guillaume de Machaut, Messe de Nostre Dame (Collegium Aureum) — Medieval polyphony that still feels otherworldly.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (London Symphony Orchestra) — String sound as a cathedral; timeless and grounded.

Folk & Song

Sam Hinton, Whoever Shall Have Some Good Peanuts — Joyful, clever kids’ songs; perfect for car rides.
Pete Seeger, American Favorite Ballads — Canonical folk sung plainly; a reminder of where so much began.

Electronic & Ambient

Deadmau5, “Half Baked” / “Quetzocotl” / “Polaris” — Geometric builds and clean drops; headphone engineering at its best.
Nils Frahm, Spaces — Live, improvised energy; piano, electronics, and room sound breathing together.

Rock & Everything Else

Led Zeppelin (esp. “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”) — Acoustic edge and electric power; the band at its most dynamic.

Film

Drama

Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood — Greed, ambition, America.
Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather (I & II) — Power and family.
Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey — Still mysterious.
Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai — The template.
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life — Memory, grace, cosmos.