I’m trying to be helpful by finding and listing the best books to build a big, worldwide perspective and providing links to them.
Recommendations are from Patrick OShaughnessy's tweet: 5 books to build big, worldwide perspective
Lessons of History (Durant)
Factfulness (Rosling)
Ten Global Trends (Bailey & Tupy)
How the World Really Works (Smil)
Against the Gods (Bernstein)
Bonus. The Prize (Yergin)
What else?
Note: I was unsure how to best present these recommendations, so if someone in the comments gave 5 suggestions, I compiled and linked to the books like that. But also sorted all book recommendations into categories individually in the latter half of this post.
Individual Recommendations
Patrick OShaughnessy (@patrick_oshag)
How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going by Vaclav Smil
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein
Bonus: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin
Kevin Martelli (@KevMartelli)
The Key Man: How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by Simon Clark, Will Louch
For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams
Thomas Aviles (@thomasjaviles)
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber, David Wengrow
A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
RM (@Ry_Mackay)
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu
World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History by Henry Kissinger
Categories
Investing, Markets, Economics
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein
How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin
The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created by William J. Bernstein
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Key Man: How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by Simon Clark, Will Louch
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
Science, Tech, and History
A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin
Government, Politics & Nations
For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams
Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio
The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu
World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History by Henry Kissinger
Self-Improvement / Philosophy / Psychology
Misc
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