Balaji Srinivasan - Wisdom Shelf

Balaji Srinivasan Book Recommendations (64 Books)

Balaji Srinivasan is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and essayist.

64 Recommended 1 Written

Books Recommended by Balaji Srinivasan

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Seeing Like a State

How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

James C. Scott

Source: "There’s a sense in which the term 'real name' is a misnomer. A better term is a state name — a name which makes you legible to the state." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Catching Fire

How Cooking Made Us Human

Richard Wrangham

Source: "Talks about how the invention of fire allowed humans as species to outsource our metabolism to the fire and allocate more of our scarce calories to the brain." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Schaum's Outline of Principles of Accounting I

Joel J. Lerner

Source: "It’s amazing how many people have studied accounting or something, but you just give them Schaums and ask them to do the first 10 problems in accounting, they struggle." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Rules for Radicals

A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals

Saul D. Alinsky

Source: "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Craft

How the Freemasons Made the Modern World

John Dickie

Source: "Anyone working on NFT collections should understand the history of the Freemasons. Many of their rituals could be usefully updated for the digital era." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital

The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages

Carlota Perez

Source: "People get really amped about a technology, then you try to actually do it, you find it’s actually hard, most people get demoralized and they quit." - Balaji Srinivasan

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History Has Begun

The Birth of a New America

Bruno Macaes

Source: "[The author's] thesis is that America is increasingly becoming a virtual society, focused on make-believe above all. I have to agree." - Balaji Srinivasan

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How the Internet Happened

From Netscape to the iPhone

Brian McCullough

Source: "Reminds us that the tech era is very new, only really about 10 years old, and only began in earnest with iPhone adoption." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Unelected Power

The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State

Paul Tucker

Source: "Decent book — by a central banker! — on the lack of legitimacy of central banking and the regulatory state writ large." - Balaji Srinivasan

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China Coup

The Great Leap to Freedom

Roger Garside

Source: "Makes the case that Xi could be felled by his internal enemies (possible!) and that this will lead to democratization (IMO implausible)." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Truth Machine

The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

Paul Vigna

Source: "An accessible explanation of how blockchains allow us to establish certain kinds of truths even in adversarial environments." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Visual Complex Functions

An Introduction with Phase Portraits

Elias Wegert

Source: "Fun book proposes plotting all complex functions as colored contour plots. Kind of an obvious idea, but it's carried through systematically here." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Changing World Order

Why Nations Succeed and Fail

Ray Dalio

Source: "How today’s America resembles the Dutch and British empires of the past in terms of its monetary overextension." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Netflixed

The Epic Battle for America's Eyeballs

Gina Keating

Source: "Blockbuster tried to buy Hollywood Video, but the FTC called this off on antitrust (!) grounds. By 2010 Blockbuster was bankrupt and Netflix was soaring." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Indistractable

How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

Nir Eyal

Source: "Tackles the problem of modern distraction by empowering us to break the bad habits at the root of the issue." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Cold Start Problem

How to Start and Scale Network Effects

Andrew Chen

Source: "Useful for anyone trying to bootstrap a new community or network, which is virtually every founder these days." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Kill Chain

Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

Christian Brose

Source: "The US military has a perfect record in its war games with China. China has won every round." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Fourth Turning

What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

William Strauss

Source: "How a cyclic theory of history forecasts a serious American conflict in the 2020s (written in the mid-1990s)." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Little Bitcoin Book

Why Bitcoin Matters for Your Freedom, Finances, and Future

Bitcoin Collective

Source: "Was written in a few days by N people, one chapter each, and then published on Amazon." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Working in Public

The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

Nadia Eghbal

Source: "[The author] is very smart and it’s worth reading anything she writes on open source." - Balaji Srinivasan

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A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations

Mencius Moldbug

Source: "A broad survey of Western historical anomalies, with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Journalist And The Murderer

Janet Malcolm

Source: "Short and well worth reading. Presages much of today's train crash on social media." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Nature of Mathematical Modeling

Neil Gershenfeld

Source: "In terms of just packing a punch per page I really enjoyed this back in the day." - Balaji Srinivasan

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How Innovation Works

Serendipity, Energy and the Saving of Time

Matt Ridley

Source: "How tech founders always had to fight against the establishment, just like the present day." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Future Is Asian

Commerce, Conflict, and Culture in the 21st Century

Parag Khanna

Source: "The American century is ending. The Asian century is beginning." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Physics from Finance

A gentle introduction to gauge theories, fundamental interactions and fiber bundles

Jakob Schwichtenberg

Source: "A lot of fun. Not exactly art, but novel approach with a lot of visual inspiration." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Reputation and Power

Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA

Daniel Carpenter

Source: "Most people don't really hear bad things about the FDA. This book taught me why." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Who We Are and How We Got Here

Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

David Reich

Source: "The brief argument is: our true history is written in our genes." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Test-Driven Development with Python

Obey the Testing Goat Using Django, Selenium, and JavaScript

Harry Percival

Source: "Teaches you how to test things that are bigger than just a simple function." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Great Wave

Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History

David Hackett Fischer

Source: "Gold from the Americas did flood Europe in the 1500s, which helped cause inflation." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Innumeracy

Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

John Allen Paulos

Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book in "The Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan."

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Physics for Scientists and Engineers

Volume 1

Paul A. Tipler

Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book in "The Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan."

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One Thousand Exercises in Probability

Geoffrey Grimmett

Source: "Requires more energy to read, but it keeps you sharp." - Balaji Srinivasan

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High Output Management

Andrew S. Grove

Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book in "The Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan."

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The Man Who Knew Infinity

A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

Robert Kanigel

Source: Balaji Srinivasan recommended this book in "The Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan."

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End the Fed

Ron Paul

Source: "[The author] was to Bitcoin what Andrew Yang is to startup societies." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Forgotten Man

A New History of the Great Depression

Amity Shlaes

Source: "Useful as an alternate perspective on the era." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Great CEO Within

The Tactical Guide to Company Building

Matt Mochary

Source: "[Brian Armstrong] and I used parts of this at Coinbase." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution

The Remarkable True Story of the American Capitalists Who Financed the Russian Communists

Antony Cyril Sutton

Source: "How different groups of capitalists funded the communist revolution." - Balaji Srinivasan

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War and Peace and War

The Rise and Fall of Empires

Peter Turchin

Source: "How quantitative methods can identify recurrent cycles." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler

The Astonishing True Story of the American Financiers Who Bankrolled the Nazis

Antony Cyril Sutton

Source: "How different groups of capitalists funded the fascist revolution." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Has China Won?

The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy

Kishore Mahbubani

Source: "One may have to set aside ego to read it." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Gray Lady Winked

How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History

Ashley Rindsberg

Source: "I put it up there with the top five books I recommend." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The Sovereign Individual

Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

James Dale Davidson

Source: "If you want to find startup ideas here’s the book." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Where Is My Flying Car?

A Memoir of Future Past

J Storrs Hall

Source: "Don't judge this self-published book by its cover, just read it." - Balaji Srinivasan

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AI Superpowers

China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

Kai-Fu Lee

Source: "A history of the Chinese tech ecosystem." - Balaji Srinivasan

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Three Felonies A Day

How the Feds Target the Innocent

Harvey A. Silverglate

Source: "All about enforcement discretion." - Balaji Srinivasan

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The House of Government

A Saga of the Russian Revolution

Yuri Slezkine

Source: "How the Soviet Union actually worked." - Balaji Srinivasan

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