Reading – design/evolution

In my thirst for knowledge about design, engineering, living well, leadership, and self improvement I have had the privilege of reading a lot of good books. I attempted to gather the names of the related books I’ve read here.

Heres my star scale:
☆ – Did not enjoy enough to finish
☆☆ – Struggled to finish, but there was enough to keep me going
☆☆☆ – Good insights, but did not particularly enjoy or wouldn’t recommend
☆☆☆☆ – Enjoyed but not enough to be a top pick
☆☆☆☆☆ – Recommend to practically everyone

Completed:

#	Book Title	Author	Stars/5
1	Conquering Complexity	Don Norman	☆☆☆
2	Simple	Alan Seigel	☆☆☆☆
3	How to Fly a Horse	Kevin Ashton	☆☆☆☆☆
4	Range	David Epstein	☆☆☆☆☆
5	Skunkworks	Ben Rich	☆☆☆☆☆
6	One Little Spark	Marty Sclar	☆☆☆☆☆
7	Lead and Disrupt	Charles O’Reilly	☆☆☆
8	Sapiens	Noah Yuval Harari	☆☆☆☆☆
9	21 lessons	Noah Yuval Harari	☆☆☆
10	Creative Selection	Ken Kocienda	☆☆
11	Laws of Human Nature	Robert Greene	☆☆☆☆
12	Leaders Eat Last	Simon Sinek	☆☆☆☆☆
13	Culture Code	Dan Coyle	☆☆☆☆☆
14	Good Authority	Johnathan Raymond	☆☆☆
15	User Friendly	Cliff Kuang	☆☆☆☆☆
16	Jony Ive	Leander Kahney	☆☆☆☆☆
17	Laws of Simplicity	John Maeda	☆☆☆
18	Steve Jobs	Walter Isaacson	☆☆☆☆☆
19	The Innovators	Walter Isaacson	☆☆☆☆
20	The Coddling of the American Mind	Johnathan Haidt	☆☆☆
21	Promise Me Dad	Joe Biden	☆☆☆☆
22	Atomic Habits	James Clear	☆☆☆☆
23	Infinite Game	Simon Sinek	☆☆☆☆☆
24	Start With Why	Simon Sinek	☆☆☆☆☆
25	Think Again	Adam Grant	☆☆☆☆
26	Originals	Adam Grant	☆☆☆☆
27	Outliers	Malcolm Gladwell	☆☆☆☆☆
28	Leaders	Stanley McCrystal	☆☆☆☆
29	Failure is Not an Option	Gene Krantz	☆☆☆☆☆
30	Leader Shift	John Maxwell	☆☆☆☆
31	Team of Teams	Stanley McCrystal	☆☆☆☆☆
32	Leadership by Example	Sanjiv Chopra	☆☆☆☆
33	Man’s Search for Meaning	Viktor Frankel	☆☆☆☆
34	Thinking Fast and Slow	Daniel Kahneman	☆☆☆
35	Amusing Ourselves to Death	Neil Postman	☆☆☆
36	Endurance	Alfred Lansing	☆☆☆☆☆
37	Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie	Andrew Carnegie	☆☆☆
38	Who We Are and How We Got Here	David Reich	☆☆☆
39	Mars Rover Curiosity	Rob Manning	☆☆☆☆☆
40	No Dream is too High	Buzz Aldrin	☆☆☆☆
41	Dare to Lead	Brene Brown	☆
42	Creating Things that Matter	David Edwards	☆☆
43	Quiet	Susan Cain	☆☆
44	The Gift of Failure	Jessica Lahey	☆☆☆☆
45	Gods Debris	Scott Adams	☆☆☆☆
46	How Design Makes the World	Scott Berkun	☆☆☆☆☆
47	Ego is the Enemy	Ryan Holiday	☆☆☆☆☆
48	The Obstacle is the Way	Ryan Holiday	☆☆☆☆
49	Stillness is the Key	Ryan Holiday	☆☆☆
50	Designing for People	Henry Dreyfus	☆☆
51	The Design of Everyday Things	Don Norman	☆☆☆☆
52	Emotional Design – Don Norman	Don Norman	☆☆
53	Happiness Hypothesis	Johnathan Haidt	☆☆☆
54	The Magnolia Story	Chip and Johanna Gaines	☆☆☆☆☆
55	Capital Gains	Chip Gaines	☆☆☆☆
56	Socrates in 90 Minutes	Paul Strathern	☆☆☆☆
57	Plato in 90 Minutes	Paul Strathern	☆☆☆
58	Aesthetics of Design	Jane Forsey	☆
59	Simple Rules	Donald Sull	☆☆
60	White	Kenya Hara	☆
61	Living with Complexity	Don Norman	☆☆☆
62	The Meaning of it All	Richard P. Feynman	☆
63	Welcome to Management	Ryan Hawk	☆☆☆☆☆
64	Pleased to Meet Me	Bill Sullivan	☆☆☆☆☆
65	The Daily Stoic	Ryan Holiday	☆☆☆
66	The Art of Living	Epictetus and Sharon Labell	☆☆☆
67	Brain Bugs	Dean Buonomano	☆☆☆☆☆
68	Suggestable You	Erik Vance	☆☆☆☆☆
69	The Accidental Universe	Alan Lightman	☆☆☆☆
70	Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine	Alan Lightman	☆☆☆☆☆
71	The Creativity Code	Marcus du Sautoy	☆☆☆☆☆
72	Black Box Thinking	Matthew Syed	☆☆☆☆☆
73	The Forgetting Machine	Rodrigo Quiroga	☆☆☆☆☆
74	Unbound	Richard Currier	☆☆☆☆☆
75	Complexity and Chaos	Dr. Roger White	☆☆
76	Keep Moving	Dick Van Dyke	☆☆☆
77	Almost Human	Lee Berger	☆☆☆☆☆
78	Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What To Do About It	Chris Clearfield and Andras Tilcsik	☆☆☆☆☆
79	The Ultimate Engineer	Richard Jurek	☆☆☆
80	Origins, The search for our prehistoric past	Frank H. T. Rhodes	☆☆☆
81	Origins, Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution	Neil deGrasse Tyson	☆☆☆☆
82	A Brief History of Creation	Bill Mesler	☆☆☆☆☆
83	The Hour Between Dog and Wolf	John Coates	☆☆☆☆
84	101 Things I Learned In Product Design School	Martin Thale	☆☆☆☆
85	Ego Free Leadership	Brandon Black	☆☆☆☆
86	Build	Tony Fadell	☆☆
87	Lead and Disrupt	Charles O’Reilly	☆☆
88	Loonshots	Safi Bahcall	☆☆☆☆☆
89	The Wright Brothers	David McCullough	☆☆☆☆
90	Blink	Malcolm Gladwell	☆☆☆☆
91	Emotional	Leonord Mlodinow	☆☆☆☆
92	How Innovation Works	Matt Ridley	☆☆☆☆☆
93	Up From Slavery	Booker T. Washington	☆☆☆☆
94	Liminal Thinking	Dave Gray	☆☆☆☆
95	The Lucifer Principal	Howard Bloom	☆☆☆☆
96	Guns, Germs and Steel	Jared Diamond	☆☆
97	It’s Your Ship	Michael Abrashoff	☆☆☆☆☆
98	The Promises of Giants	John Amaechi	☆☆☆☆
99	Wired to Create	Carolyn Gregorie	☆☆☆
100	The Ride of a Lifetime	Robert Iger	☆☆☆☆
101	Carrying the Fire	Michael Collins	☆☆☆☆☆
102	Chatter	Ethan Cross	☆☆
103	The Perfectionists	Simon Winchester	☆☆☆☆☆
104	Upstream	Dan Heath	☆☆
105	The Art of Clear Thinking	Hasard Lee	☆☆☆
106	Creativity Inc, Expanded Edition	Ed Catmull	☆☆☆☆☆
107	Viper Pilot	Dan Hampton	☆☆☆☆☆
108	The Tipping Point	Malcolm Gladwell	☆☆☆☆
109	The Secret to our Success	Joseph Henrich	☆☆☆☆
110	Bounce	Matthew Syed	☆☆☆
111	The Intelligence Trap	David Robson	☆☆☆☆
112	Essentialism	Greg McKeown	In progress
113	Your Brain is a Time Machine	Dean Buonomano	☆☆☆
114	The Pursuit of Excellence	Ryan Hawk	☆
115	Why We Sleep	Matthew Walker	☆☆☆
116	Spaceman	Mike Massimino	☆☆☆☆☆
117	Across the Airless Wilds	Earl Swift	☆☆☆☆☆
118	Hidden Potential	Adam Grant	☆☆☆☆
119	Into the Black	Rowland White	☆☆☆☆☆
120	Vulcan 607	Rowland White	☆☆☆☆
121	A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century	Heather Heying & Bret Weinstein	☆☆☆
122	Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World	Nick Lane	☆☆☆
123	The Anthropocene Reviewed	John Green	☆☆☆☆
124	In Order to Live	Yeonmi Park	☆☆☆☆☆
125	Kelly	Clarence Kelly Johnson	☆
126	Daily Dad	Ryan Holiday	☆☆☆☆☆
127	Harrier 809	Rowland White	☆☆☆
128	The Innovator’s Dilemma	Clayton M. Christiansen	☆☆☆☆☆
129	Beyond the Wand	Tom Felton	☆☆☆☆
130	The Asteroid Hunter	Dante Lauretta	☆☆☆☆
131	You Are Not So Smart	David McRaney	☆☆☆☆☆
132	Danger’s Hour	Maxwell Taylor Kennedy	☆☆☆☆
133	Attached	Amir Levine	☆☆☆☆
134	Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure	Tim Harford	☆☆☆☆
135	I Invented the Modern Age: Henry Ford	Richard Snow	☆☆☆☆
136	Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human	Richard Wrangham	☆☆☆☆
137	Rebel Ideas	Matthew Syed	☆☆☆☆☆
138	Challenger	Adam Higginbotham	☆☆☆☆
139	Life Ascending	Nick Lane	☆☆☆
140	Rise and Reign of Mammals	Steve Brusatte	☆☆
141	Never Split the Difference	Chris Voss	☆☆☆☆
142	Careless People	Sarah Wynn-Williams	☆☆☆☆

Still In Progress…

100 things every designer needs to know about people – Susan Weinschenk
- This book is much more of a design-help-reference book, but there is enough content and written elements in this book that it does deserve to be read – at least mostly.
48 Laws of Power – Robert Greene
- This is an interesting book to come back to from time to time, but each chapter can essentially be taken as its own lesson.
How to Prevent a Climate Catastrophe – Bill Gates
- Enjoyed the first half, and was quite interesting, but I would have done better if this was an audiobook, just to help me power through it.
Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
- I wanted to like this more, but am having trouble getting back to this as a written work. Again, audiobook may have been a better medium for me.
The Disappearance of Childhood – Neil Postman
Leonardo da Vinci – Walter Isaacson
- I stalled on this book. There were interesting parts, but ultimately the depth seemed almost too great.
Where are We Heading? – Ian Hodder
Courage is Calling – Ryan Holiday
- I have enjoyed Ryan Holiday’s books in the past, but this felt like such a Tony Robins style book vs some of his previous. I may just be maturing beyond the lessons or writing style of Ryan.
Rules for a Knight – Ethan Hawke
- Each chapter again is a short lesson and story in and of itself. I would like to fully read this and one day soon ultimately read it to/with my son.