A History of Genius
“Geniuses … were believed to possess rare and special powers: the power to create, redeem, and destroy; the power to penetrate the fabric of the universe; the power to see into the future, …
Books
Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect
In Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman, sets out to “get clear about ‘who we are’ as social creatures and to reveal how a more accurate …
Books that Changed My Life
Here is a short list of books that literally changed the way I see the world. 1. Man’s Search For MeaningA gift from a friend. As hard as you think your life is, it pales in comparison to …
10 Things I Learned Reading Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
I really enjoyed Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Anyone who wants to better understand the dynamics of disruption or just gain a better understanding of the …
Jeff Bezos’s Reading List
The back of Brad Stone’s excellent new book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, contains a list of a dozen books “widely read by executives and employees that are …
Heraclitus’s Fragments: Ancient Wisdom for a Changing World
Many fail to grasp what they have seen,and cannot judge what they have learned,although they tell themselves they know. Heraclitus As with Baltasar Gracián and The Art of Worldly Wisdom, the …
Improve Your Life by Paying Attention
“Few things are as important to your quality of life as your choices about how to spend the precious resource of your free time,” writes Winifred Gallagher, author of the book Rapt: …
Free Radicals: Don’t Follow your Passion, Cultivate it
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” — Seneca *** We’ve entered a new phase of self-invention. Thanks in large part to technology and the pace of the modern …
Jeff Bezos Had His Top Execs Read These Three Books
In an interview that aired on CNBC1, Jeff Bezos shared some of the details about books that he’s shared with Amazon’s top executives. These books, it turns out, are frameworks for shaping …
Evolution is Blind but We’re Not
The first thing we do is try to figure out what went wrong. When people in organizations evaluate poor outcomes, determining what went wrong, and why is one of the first steps. Once we have a cause, …
Ancient Wisdom For Lifelong Health
I was excited to read John Durant’s book The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health. Whether or not you’re interested in paleo, it’s full of interesting nuggets. …
20 Aphorisms from Nassim Taleb
The Bed of Procrustes, the title of Nassim Taleb‘s book of aphorisms, takes its title from Greek Mythology. Procrustes (“the stretcher”) owned a small estate along the sacred way …
What happens when you ask over 15k people to name the best book they’ve read this year?
What happens when you ask 15,800+ smart people what the best book they’ve read this year is? That’s exactly what I recently did on Twitter. Here is what people said. Fiction Hunger — A …
The Remarkable Way We Gain Insights
In 1936 Graham Wallas, co-founder of the London School of Economics, published The Art of Thought, outlining the four stages of the creative process. This pre-dates, by at least a decade, James …
The Art of Thinking Clearly
Rolf Dobelli’s book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, is a compendium of systematic errors in decision making. While the list of fallacies is not complete, it’s a great launching pad into the …
Peter Bevelin: A Few Lessons From Sherlock Holmes
Peter Bevelin‘s first book, Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger, is one of the best books you’ve probably never heard of. He’s just released another book, A Few Lessons from …