Books I Read in High School and College
Which Books Are Worth Reading?
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. I think they strip out the stories and explanations that make ideas stick. 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