The Best Books & Articles I Read in 2024
A year of reshaping my worldview & deepening my knowledge
I read a lot this year. More than usual.
Here’s the best of it.
Note: if you want more recommendations, check out my Ultimate Book & Resource List.
Fiction:
Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I strongly recommend this if you like fast-paced sci-fi.
Recursion by Blake Crouch. Mind-bending and gripping. Strongly recommend.
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Also great. Started watching the adaptation produced by Apple but never finished. The book is better.
My goal for 2025 is to read more fiction.
General Non-Fiction:
The Master & His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. One of the best books I’ve read. Ever. I think it’s fundamentally shifted aspects of my worldview and how I operate.
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Anne Jacobsen. This was gripping. Finished in two days. Found through Tyler Cowen’s Best Non-Fiction of 2024 list.
Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery & Meaning in a Secular Age by Rod Dreher. Good read. Fits in the meta trend of why rationalism is not enough. Lots of connections between this book and McGilchrist’s Master & His Emissary.
No Domain: The John McAfee Tapes by Mark Eglinton. Also finished this in two days. What a crazy ride.
Writing to Learn by William Zinsser. Some good takeaways in here. Worth reading if you’re a student, or use writing heavily in your work.
Working by Robert A. Caro. Loved getting insights into the mind of one of the greatest biographers alive. One of my clients recommended I watch Turn Every Page, about the relationship between Caro and his editor Richard Gottlieb. I really enjoyed that too.
The Forest Passage by Ernst Junger. Junger is a phenomenal writer and thinker.
The Sovereign Artist by Vizi Andrei. A collection of aphorisms around work, creativity, and solopreneurship. Really enjoyed it.
The Material World by Ed Conway. Few people have any idea where their goods come from, or how the chips in their phone are made. This book does an excellent job of revealing a fundamental reality that most of us don’t think about—the physical, the raw, the real.
Technopoly by Neil Postman. Read as part of research for The Rise in Dopamine Culture. A counterpoint to techno-optimism. I’m not a decel, but there are questions that should be asked.
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Everyone should read this.
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. This book didn’t surprise me or shock me—we all know phones/social media = bad. But the stats were worse than I thought. Made me think seriously about how to manage technology use with my future kids.
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of The Objective by Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman. Good, big-brained read. Going to re-read this year to have it sink in further.
How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens. Good read, especially if you procrastinate with note-taking instead of doing actual work.
The Anthology of Balaji by Eric Jorgensen. High signal. Read it.
The Improvement of The Mind by Isaac Watts. An undiscovered gem that sat on my bookshelf for way too long until I picked it up one day. I made a video with my takeaways.
A Treatise on Efficacy by François Jullien. Nice read. Helped me understand Chinese thought—particularly strategy—better.
Personal Development
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans. Pretty good read. Useful if you’re early on in your career or want to make a shift and don’t know where to go.
38 Letters from John D. Rockefeller to his son. Nothing super insightful but nice to read. Amped me up.
Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter. I really enjoyed his previous book The Comfort Crisis. This one didn’t hit the same way, but it was still worth reading.
Coming Alive, The Tools, and Lessons for Living by Phil Stutz. A trio of books I read as part of research for a video. I like how actionable they are (a lot of books written by therapists are not—and spend too much time on problem diagnosis without solution IMO).
Business
Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. One of the few business-related books that’s worth reading.
The Crux by Richard Rumelt. Also worth reading by the same author. More recent and more actionable. But read both, especially if strategy is important in your life/work.
The Art of Gig by Venkatesh Rao. If you do any kind of consulting/coaching/specialized advisory work, then this is a must-read. It will force you to think differently.
Ready, Fire, Aim: The Mainfreight Story. As a proud Kiwi, I had to read this book. Mainfreight is one of NZ’s best performing companies, and there’s a reason why. Great story, great examples of culture building and incentive design.
Focus: The ASML Way. Probably the best business biography I read this year. The sheer complexity of ASML, its products, and the industry will blow your mind.
The McKinsey Edge by Shu Hattori. Not bad. Don’t remember much from it.
The Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier. I didn’t learn much from this book but it did reinforce things that needed to be reinforced. I recommend it. He’s also got a great YouTube channel.
Lights Out: Pride, Delusion and The Fall of General Electric. Halfway through this. A good read. Lots of mistakes that could have been avoided.
Coaching for Performance by Sir John Whitmore. I took on more clients this year, and I’ve really been trying to improve at the craft of coaching. This book has been helpful.
History
The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred The Great. Inspiring and fun to read.
Technics & Civilization by Lewis Mumford. An overview of how technology has shaped culture, and vice versa. If you romanticize the past, you might not do so after reading this. (But you also might not romanticize the future either).
From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun. A history of the modern west, without the overly academic dryness that usually accompanies such books. Admittedly I skipped through some sections, but overall enjoyed reading it.
Health
Dark Calories by Catherine Shanahan. If you’ve heard people say “seed oils are bad for you” but you want to know why, then read this book. Her previous book Deep Nutrition is more foundational, and I’d recommend starting there.
How to Heal Your Metabolism by Kate Deering. If you’ve heard someone harp on about “Ray Peat” and have no idea who or what they’re talking about, this is a good introduction to that world. I’ve recommended it to a few close friends and family members, and personally found significant benefit from the guidelines in the book.
Books I re-read:
Articles & Essays
Faith Over Logic by Erik Torenberg. I randomly came across this essay at a pivotal time this year. It was exactly what I needed to read. If there’s one consistent theme for me this year, it’s: “Think less. Act on intuition. Trust your instinct. Rationality & theorizing is so limited in what it can do for you.”
Machines of Loving Grace by Dario Amodei. A long read, but a good one. If you want some opinions on where AI will take us (by someone who knows what they’re talking about), check it out.
I read through almost all Jason Cohen’s essays. As I think about what I want to focus on in my 30s, and the business or businesses I want to build, a lot of my attention is going toward game selection. Building in the right industry, market, with good customers where I have an edge. His essay on finding product market fit is fantastic.
Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on. Just read it.
How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably. A solid reminder of why you need to be ruthlessly consistent.
Lessons from Mainfreight. A summary of the Ready, Fire, Aim book I mentioned above. I bought the book after I read this post. You might too.
10 Lessons Selling $10m of Digital Products. Incredible breakdown with hard-earned lessons. If you’re in online business, it’s a must read. Helped us make a few changes at my company EDMProd.
Climbing The Wrong Hill. I read this every year
The Luxury Business: Part 1. A good overview of industry, particularly the psychological factors. I’d like to explore this space more.
Mapping Asia’s casino industry. Fascinating industry.
Sohra Peak Capital Partners research. High quality. Both Auto Partner and Duratec stood out to me.
Why Everything is Becoming a Game. Gurwinder is one of my favorite writers, and here’s one of his best pieces.
The State of the Culture, 2024. Ted Gioia writing about what we all know.
The Techno-Industrial Revolution. Less note-taking apps, more industry.
That’s a wrap!
What did you read this year? Any highlights? Comment below. I’m always down for recommendations.
Crazy insightful book and article suggestions. A mix of business, self-improvement, and modern culture/distraction/big tech stealing our attention. Thanks Sam!