I’m trying to be helpful and listing some of people’s most underrated books, sort them into categories and link to them.
Comments and book suggestions come from replies to Taylor Pearson’s tweet, What is the book that the fewest people have read to which you would give 5 stars? I.e. What is the most underrated book you’ve read?
Biographies and Autobiographies
God Runs My Business: The Story of R.G. LeTourneau by Albert W Lorimer
One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Business, Investing & Strategy
Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy by William Janeway
Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers by Bernadette Jiwa
The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World by Mark Spitznagel and Ron Paul
The Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction by Thomas McKraw
Classic Literature & Fiction
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
That Which Is Seen And That Which Is Not Seen by Frédéric Bastiat
History & Recollections
North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail by Scott Jurek
The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific by Alistair Urquhart
The Warrior Generals: Combat Leadership in the Civil War by Thomas Buell
Government, Politics & Nations
Pax Indica: India And The World Of The 21st Century by Shashi Tharoor
The Fourth Economy: Inventing Western Civilization by Ron Davison
Science & Tech
Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge by Jeremy Narby
Human as media. The emancipation of authorship by Andrey Miroshnichenko
Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich
The Complementary Nature by J. A. Scott Kelso and David A. Engstrom
Psychology, Behavioural, Philosophy
Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Reason why: Most people read it only once and barely scratched the surface. Instead, it’s like a system of pumps. You read it once, you build one pump. The second time you read it, you have a pump helping you extracting knowledge. And build a second, higher pump. And so on.)
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Similar reason as above)
Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions by Robert H. Frank
Piloting through Chaos – the Explorer’s Mind by Julian Gresser
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by Harold Bloom
The Mind’s I: Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul by Douglas R Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World by Rene Girard
Self Improvement
If Better is Possible by John Buchanan (My recommendation)
This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can’t by Augusten Burroughs
Misc
Clear and Simple as the Truth by Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner
Don’t Shoot the Dog: The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor
Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre 1st Edition by Keith Johnstone
Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik
The Power Law of Information: Life in A Connected World by Srinath Srinivasa
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You can find my previous posts here. I also interview legends at Compounding Curiosity, lurk on Twitter @scarrottkalani, and have a Discord server for everything Allocators Asia (I’d love for you to join our cool little community we got going).
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