SOURCE · [090] · READING LIST
patrickcollison.com/bookshelf ↗
The Stripe co-founder's public bookshelf — one of the largest curated reading lists on the web.
Recommended by Patrick Collison
On this list
741 BOOKs-
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
On the shelf alongside Gordon and Deaton as part of a cluster of economic history books Collison reads to understand why growth is hard and rare.
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The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley
Biography of the builder most directly responsible for the industry Collison operates in; covers both the technical invention and the organizational innovations that spread it.
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7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy
“Correctly places enormous value on execution and on culture”
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The Rise and Fall of American Growth
On the shelf as a key interlocutor for Progress Studies; Gordon's secular-stagnation thesis is the empirical backdrop against which Collison argues for reviving the engines of growth.
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The Dream Machine
Flagged green (particularly great) on Collison's shelf; fits his recurring interest in the institutional origins of computing and the role of well-placed patrons in funding transformative research.
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The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn
Flagged green (particularly great); Collison has publicly referenced Hamming's ideas on doing important work as formative.
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If The Universe Is Teeming With Aliens...Where Is Everybody?
Cited from Patrick Collison's personal bookshelf page; no quote shown.
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Dancing in the Glory of Monsters
Flagged green (particularly great); the Congo Wars as a case study in state failure, ethnic mobilization, and the limits of international intervention.
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Metamagical Themas
Cited from Patrick Collison's personal bookshelf page; no quote shown.
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Democracy In America
Cited from Patrick Collison's personal bookshelf page; no quote shown.
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Nixon Agonistes
Flagged green (particularly great); Wills's analysis of American liberal ideology and its contradictions resonates with Collison's interest in political economy and institutional stagnation.
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Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens
Flagged green (particularly great); biography of an institution-builder whose career was derailed by politics and who then built something new anyway.
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Age of Ambition
Flagged green (particularly great); ground-level account of rapid economic development and its social consequences, a lens Collison applies to thinking about progress.
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Hard Landing
Flagged green (particularly great); detailed case study of deregulation in practice, relevant to Collison's interest in how markets and regulation interact.
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Out of Mao's Shadow
Flagged green (particularly great); complements Age of Ambition with a harder look at the political constraints on Chinese civil society.
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The Beginning of Infinity
Flagged green (particularly great); Deutsch's epistemology of progress is a direct intellectual ancestor of Progress Studies, which Collison co-founded with Tyler Cowen.
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Orality and Literacy: 30th Anniversary Edition (New Accents)
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The Journalist and the Murderer
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Radical Software Number Five
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Whole Earth Discipline
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The feminine mystique
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Spacetime and Geometry
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics
Nicholas J. Higham, Paul Glendinning, Paul A. Martinez
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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A Decade of Research
Various Xerox PARC Researchers
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Global Catastrophic Risks
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Toward a Theory of Instruction
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Myth of the Machine
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Season of the Witch
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Stories of Your Life and Others
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Foucault's Pendulum By Umberto Eco
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Applied Cryptography 2nd (second) edition Text Only
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The Paris Review Interviews, I
Flagged green on Collison's bookshelf — particularly recommended.
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Kenneth Clark's Civilisation
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The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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A Minor Momentousness in the History of Love (in) One Story
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Plato at the Googleplex
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Weather of the San Francisco Bay Region
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Bill Bolton
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Medieval Technology and Social Change
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Winged World. the Coming of the Air Age
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In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Postcards from Tomorrow Square
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The Diary of John Evelyn Volumes 1 + 2
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I Didn't Do It for You
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Expert Political Judgment
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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A course in mathematical analysis
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The City In History
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Amusing Ourselves to Death
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The Nature of Mathematical Modeling
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Feynman Lectures on Computation
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics
Gerald Jay Sussman, Jack Widsom
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Plagues and Peoples
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The Scramble for Africa
Thomas Pakenham, Pakenham, Thomas
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming
Cited from Patrick Collison's personal bookshelf page; no quote shown.
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The Ocean of Life
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Incompleteness
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Midnight's Children
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Quantum Computing since Democritus
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Wind, Sand and Stars
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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A Great Leap Forward
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Out of the Blue Too
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Computer Lib/Dream Machines
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The Count of Monte Cristo
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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Asimov's New Guide to Science
Flagged blue on Collison's bookshelf — substantially above average.
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The Mind-Body Problem
Cited from Patrick Collison's personal bookshelf page; no quote shown.
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