Reading List of the Human Brain + Behavior

Here’s a constantly updated list of books which are about the brain and behavior of humans (directly or indirectly, significantly or marginally). I’ve either read these books, or they’re currently on my “to-read” stack at home.

Many of these books could be listed in a few of the categories; I just picked the category which I felt best described the book overall.


Behavioral Economics + Behavioral Science

Thinking Fast And Slow

  • Daniel Kahneman

Noise

  • Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sabony, Cass Sunstein

Predictably Irrational

  • Dan Ariely

The Upside of Irrationality

  • Dan Ariely

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

  • Dan Ariely

The Logic of Life

  • Tim Harford

The Undoing Project

  • Michael Lewis

The Hidden Brain

  • Shankar Vedantam

Freakonomics

  • Steven D. Levitt + Stephen J. Dubner

Superfreakonomics

  • Steven D. Levitt + Stephen J. Dubner

Think Like a Freak

  • Steven D. Levitt + Stephen J. Dubner

Nudge

  • Richard Thaler + Cass Sunstein

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

  • Richard Thaler

The Art of Thinking Clearly

  • Rolf Dobelli

Psychology

The Wisdom of Crowds

  • James Surowiecki

Why Success Always Starts With Failure: Adapt

  • Tim Harford

Emotional Intelligence

  • Daniel Goleman

Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard

  • Chip + Dan Heath

Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (And World Peace)

  • Chade-Meng Tan

The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us

  • Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons

Mindfulness

  • Mark Williams & Danny Penman

Why We Sleep: Unlocking The Power of Sleep and Dreams

  • Matthew Walker

Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes

  • Maria Konnikova

The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For It Every Time

  • Maria Konnikova

Pre-Suasion

  • Robert Cialdini

Influence

  • Robert Cialdini

EQ Applied: The Real-World Guide To Emotional Intelligence

  • Justin Bariso

MIndwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

  • Nicholas Epley

Useful Delusions: The Power And Paradox Of The Self-Deceiving Brain

  • Shankar Vedantam & Bill Mesler

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best And Worst

  • Robert M. Sapolsky

Strategy

The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy and American Interests In The Twenty-first Century

  • Robert D. Kaplan

Maneuver Warfare Handbook

  • William S. Lind

A History of Strategy: From Sun-Tzu to William S. Lind

  • Martin Van Creveld

On Grand Strategy

  • John Lewis Gaddis

Ender's Game

  • Orson Scott Card

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The DIfference and Why It Matters

  • Richard P. Rumelt

Strategy Strikes Back

  • Max Brooks, John Amble, ML Cavanaugh, Jaym Gates

Grand Strategies

  • Charles Hill

Strategy: A History

  • Laurence Freedman

Sociology, Humanity + History

Sapiens

  • Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus

  • Yuval Noah Harari

21 Lessons for The 21st Century

  • Yuval Noah Harari

Origin Story: A BIg History of Everything

  • David Christian

The Most Human Human

  • Brian Christian

Making Sense: Conversations on Consciousness, Morality and The Future of Humanity

  • Sam Harris

A Short History of Nearly Everything

  • Bill Bryson

The Moral Animal

  • Robert Wright

Management, Leadership and Company Creation

Creativity, Inc

  • Ed Catmull

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

  • Daniel H. Pink

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

  • Will Larson

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move The World

  • Adam Grant

Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

  • Chip & Dan Heath

The Five Dysfunctions of A Team

  • Patrick Lencioni

Principles

  • Ray Dalio

Collective Genius: The Art + Practice of Leading Innovation

  • Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove & Kent Lineback

On Managing Yourself

  • Harvard Business Review

Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How To Build The Future

  • Peter Thiel

Invent & Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

  • Jeff Bezos

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell

  • Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle

Radical Candor

  • Kim Scott

Good To Great

  • Jim Collins

Business Adventures

  • John Brooks

The Ride of A Lifetime

  • Robert Iger

Organizational Culture + Design

The Culture Code

  • Daniel Coyle

Organizational Culture + Leadership

  • Edgar H. Schein w/ Peter Schein

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

  • Patrick Lencioni

Work Rules: Insights From Google That Will Transform How You Live + Lead

  • Laszlo Bock

Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies

  • Paul J. Zak

Mathematics + Game Theory

How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

  • Jordan Ellenberg

How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

  • G. Polya

The Math of Life & Death: 7 Mathematical Principles That Shape Our Lives

  • Kit Yates

Thinking Strategically

  • Avinash K. Dixit + Barry J. Nalebuff

The Art of Strategy

  • Avinash K. Dixit + Barry J. Nalebuff

The Art of Statistics: How To Learn From Data

  • David Spiegelhalter

The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

  • Michael Brooks

Economics + Finance

The Undercover Economist

  • Tim Harford

The Undercover Economist Strikes Back

  • Tim Harford

Narconomics

  • Tom Wainwright

The End of Wall Street

  • Roger Lowenstein

When Genius Failed

  • Roger Lowenstein

The Big Short

  • Michael Lewis

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

  • Burton G. Malkiel

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives The Economy and Why It Matters For Global Capitalism

  • George A. Akerlof & Robert J. Shiller

Phishing For Phools: The Economics of Manipulation & Deception

  • George A. Akerlof & Robert J. Shiller

Irrational Exuberance

  • Robert J. Shiller

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics

  • Grady Klein + Yoram Bauman

The Future of Capitalism

  • Paul Collier

Meta-Cognition/The Nature of Thinking/Decision-Making

More Than You Know

  • Michael J. Maubossin

Think Twice

  • Michael J Maubossin

The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts

  • Shane Parrish (Farnam Street)

The Great Mental Models: Physics, Chemistry and Biology

  • Shane Parrish (Farnam Street)

The Great Mental Models: Systems and Mathematics

  • Shane Parrish (Farnam Street)

Decisive: How To Make Better Choices In Life and Work

  • Chip + Dan Heath

Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World

  • David Epstein

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future

  • Daniel H. Pink

Algorithms To Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

  • Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

The Art of Thinking Clearly

  • Rolf Dobelli