Books to Build Worldwide Perspective

Compiling Patrick OShaughnessy's tweet replies

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

1. Lessons of History (Durant)

2. Factfulness (Rosling)

3. Ten Global Trends (Bailey & Tupy)

4. How the World Really Works (Smil)

5. Against the Gods (Bernstein)

Bonus. The Prize (Yergin)

What else?

Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag

5 books to build big, worldwide perspective 1. Lessons of History (Durant) 2. Factfulness (Rosling) 3. Ten Global Trends (Bailey & Tupy) 4. How the World Really Works (Smil) 5. 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.

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Individual Recommendations

Patrick OShaughnessy (@patrick_oshag)

• The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant

• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

• Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting by Ronald Bailey and Marian L. Tupy

• 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)

• Tyranny of Experts by William Easterly

• The Key Man: How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by Simon Clark, Will Louch

• Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

• Discourses on Livy by Niccolo Machiavelli

• For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams

Thomas Aviles (@thomasjaviles)

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

• The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

• 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

• The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama

• Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama

• Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

• Bonus: How Asia Works by Joe Studwell

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Categories

Investing, Markets, Economics

• Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein

• Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

• How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin

• Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

• 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

• The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker

• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

• The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy

• Tyranny of Experts by William Easterly

Science, Tech, and History

• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

• A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

• Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

• The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Disrupting Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter Diamandis

• The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant

• The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

• The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin

• WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich

Government, Politics & Nations

• Discourses on Livy by Niccolo Machiavelli

• For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams

• How Asia Works by Joe Studwell

• Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama

• Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio

• Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

• Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

• The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization by Peter Zeihan

• The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama

• 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

• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

• The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers Mass by Will Durant

Misc

• AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan

• Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting by Ronald Bailey and Marian L. Tupy

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

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