Books I Read in High School and College
During high school and the early years of college, I read these books. I wanted to understand how people in different industries and countries thought about building things, making decisions, and solving problems.
I avoided book summaries. They strip out the stories and explanations that make ideas stick. When you read how Ray Dalio navigated the 2008 crisis or how Phil Knight nearly went bankrupt building Nike, you understand the principles differently than if someone hands you five bullet points. The context matters. The messy details matter.
I also tried to read books by people who don't write for a living. People who built something first, then wrote about it later. Their insights come from necessity, not from constructing a narrative for an audience. I believe there's more honesty about what actually worked and what didn't. Did every book change how I think? No. But some of them did. They gave me frameworks for situations I hadn't encountered yet.
This isn't a curated list of the best books ever written. It's just a list of the books I liked the most and might be interesting for someone else.
| Book Name | Author |
|---|---|
| 12 Rules for Life | Jordan B. Peterson |
| Archetypen | C.G. Jung |
| Atomic Habits | James Clear |
| Beyond Order | Jordan B. Peterson |
| Big Debt Crises | Ray Dalio |
| Build | Tony Fadell |
| Can't Hurt Me | David Goggins |
| David and Goliath | Malcolm Gladwell |
| Deep Work | Cal Newport |
| Drive | Daniel H. Pink |
| Emotional Intelligence | Daniel Goleman |
| Extreme Ownership | Jocko Willink & Leif Babin |
| Factfulness | Hans Rosling |
| Finite and Infinite Games | James P. Carse |
| Getting to Yes | Roger Fisher & William Ury |
| Greenlights | Matthew McConaughey |
| HBR Guide to Being More Productive | Harvard Business Review |
| HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically | Harvard Business Review |
| High Output Management | Andrew S. Grove |
| In Business as in Life You Don't Get What You Deserve You Get What You Negotiate | Chester L. Karrass |
| Invention: A Life | James Dyson |
| Leaders Eat Last | Simon Sinek |
| Leonardo da Vinci | Walter Isaacson |
| Life & Work Principles | Ray Dalio |
| Limitless | Jim Kwik |
| Linchpin | Seth Godin |
| Losing My Virginity | Richard Branson |
| Man's Search for Meaning | Viktor E. Frankl |
| Mastery | Robert Greene |
| Meditations | Marcus Aurelius |
| Never Split the Difference | Chris Voss |
| Nonviolent Communication | Marshall B. Rosenberg |
| Outliers | Malcolm Gladwell |
| Poor Charlie's Almanack | Charles T. Munger |
| Predictably Irrational | Dan Ariely |
| Radical Candor | Kim Scott |
| Relentless | Tim S. Grover |
| Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari |
| Shoe Dog | Phil Knight |
| Start with Why | Simon Sinek |
| Steve Jobs | Walter Isaacson |
| Super Founders | Ali Tamaseb |
| That Will Never Work | Marc Randolph |
| The 4-Hour Workweek | Timothy Ferriss |
| The Anthology of Balaji | Balaji Srinivasan |
| The Black Swan | Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
| The Changing World Order | Ray Dalio |
| The Effective Executive | Peter F. Drucker |
| The Hard Thing About Hard Things | Ben Horowitz |
| The Lean Startup | Eric Ries |
| The Obstacle Is the Way | Ryan Holiday |
| The Organized Mind | Daniel Levitin |
| The Power of Habit | Charles Duhigg |
| The Snowball | Alice Schroeder |
| The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck | Mark Manson |
| Think Again | Adam Grant |
| Thinking Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman |
| To Sell Is Human | Daniel H. Pink |
| Tools of Titans | Tim Ferriss |
| Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do | Robert H. Schuller |
| What Every Body Is Saying | Joe Navarro |
| Why We Sleep | Matthew Walker |
| Zero to One | Peter Thiel |
If you have other recommendations, feel free to reach out at luis.gasparschroeder[at-symbol]gmail.com