- Uncommon Sense Teaching by Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky and Terrence J. Sejnowski
- The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
- The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi
- Transfer of Cognitive Skill by John Anderson and Mark Singley
- Transfer on Trial Edited by Douglas Detterman
- Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
- Mind over Machine by Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus
- The Unschooled Mind by Howard Gardner
- Laboratory Life by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar
- How Innovation Works by Matthew Ridley
- The Lean Start-Up by Eric Ries
- Apprenticeship in Early Modern Europe Edited by Maarten Prak and Patrick Wallis
- Cognition in Practice by Jean Lave
- Antifragile by Nassim Nicolas Taleb
- Democracy and Education by John Dewey
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- æ´»ç€ (To Live) by Yu Hua
- Le Compte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- God: A Biography by Jack Miles
- The Case Against Education by Bryan Douglas CaplanÂ
- The Son Also Rises by Gregory ClarkÂ
- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
- Flow by Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiÂ
- Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
- The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself by Sean Carroll
- The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich
- Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World by Mark Miodownik
- Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
- Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine
- The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr
- Meaningness by David Chapman
- So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Getting Things Done by David Allen
- A World Without Email by Cal Newport
- Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
- Anxious by Joseph E. LeDoux
- Indistractable by Nir Eyal
- The Hungry Brain by Stephan Guyenet
- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
- Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
- Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
- Madame Curie by Eve Curie
- Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark
- Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville: The Autobiography of One of Scotland’s First Female Scientists, Prolific Author and Activist for Women’s Right to Vote by Mary Somerville
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
- The Elephant In The Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
- Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott
- Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
- Average Is Over by Tyler Cowen
- Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett
- Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
- Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman
- Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig
- The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan WattsÂ
- The Three-Body Problem by Cixin LiuÂ
- The Martian by Andy WeirÂ
- The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Buddhisms: An Introduction by John S. Strong
- The Geography of Thought by Richard E. Nisbett
- The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
- Flash Boys by Michael Lewis
- Metaphors We Live by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
- The Principles of Psychology by William James
- The Nature of Expertise edited by Micheline Chi, Robert Glaser and Marshall Farr
- Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal
- The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand
- Fear and Courage by S. J. Rachman
- The Computational Brain by Terrence Sejnowski and Patricia Churchland
- Cognitive Training edited by Tilo Strobach and Julia Karbach
- Dewey’s Laboratory School by Laurel Tanner
- Mind and Society by Lev Vygotsky
Learn faster, achieve more
About Scott
I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, podcast host, computer programmer and an avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly essays on this website to help people like you learn and think better. My work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't promise I have all the answers, just a place to start.