SOURCE · [1024] · READING LIST
balajis.com/p/network-school-curriculum ↗
Recommended by Network School Reading List
On this list
30 BOOKs-
Foundation
Macrohistory reading: Asimov's psychohistory dramatizes the curriculum's core question — predicting and steering the rise and fall of civilizations.
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The Lessons of History
Macrohistory reading distilling patterns of growth, decay, and renewal across civilizations into a short synthesis.
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The Selfish Gene
Macrohistory selection grounding social and cultural evolution in selection at the level of genes and memes.
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War and Peace and War
Macrohistory text applying Turchin's cliodynamics to the cycles of imperial cohesion and collapse.
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Stalin's War
Macrohistory case study reframing the Second World War around Stalin's aims and the remaking of the twentieth-century order.
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Who We Are and How We Got Here
Macrohistory reading using ancient DNA to rewrite the deep story of human migration and population mixing.
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The Fourth Turning
Macrohistory reading on the generational cycles that drive societies through crisis and renewal.
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The Gray Lady Winked
Macrohistory selection on how the dominant media narrative has shaped — and distorted — the historical record.
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Seeing Like a State
Political case study on why grand schemes to engineer society from above so often fail.
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From Third World to First
Political case study: the firsthand account of building Singapore, the curriculum's model for a startup society that worked.
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Deng Xiaoping and The Transformation of China
Political case study of the reforms that turned a poor, closed China into an economic power.
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Where Is My Flying Car?
Regulation reading on how stalled technological progress traces back to risk aversion and regulatory drag.
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Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
Regulation reading on how an overgrown legal code makes ordinary citizens unwitting criminals.
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Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA
Regulation case study of how a single agency accumulated and wielded power over an entire industry.
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The Power Broker
Regulation reading: Caro's study of Robert Moses, the definitive account of how unelected power reshapes a city.
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The Knowledge
Rebuilding reading: a practical guide to reconstructing civilization's technology from scratch.
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How Innovation Works
Rebuilding reading on why innovation flourishes under freedom and incremental trial, not central direction.
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Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order
Rebuilding reading mapping the long cycles by which reserve currencies and great powers rise and fall.
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The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Self-improvement reading on building wealth and judgment through leverage and clear thinking.
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Zero to One
Tech reading on building genuinely new things rather than copying what already exists.
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Tech reading on the brutal realities of leading a company through crisis.
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High Growth Handbook
Tech reading: a practical manual for scaling a startup from product-market fit to large company.
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AI Superpowers
Tech reading on the US–China contest to lead the AI era and its geopolitical stakes.
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The Bitcoin Standard
Crypto reading making the economic case for Bitcoin as sound, hard money.
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The Sovereign Individual
James Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg
Crypto reading: the 1997 forecast of how digital money would let individuals escape the nation-state.
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The Truth Machine
Crypto reading on how blockchains create trust and could rewire economic institutions.
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Daemon
Crypto reading: a techno-thriller imagining autonomous software building a parallel society.
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The Network State
Startup Societies reading: Balaji's own blueprint for founding new countries online first, the capstone of the curriculum.
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The Origins of Political Order
New Countries reading tracing how states, rule of law, and accountable government first emerged.
