Books

The big ideas from popular books, without giving the whole thing away. Get the GIST, then decide if you want the REST.

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25 summaries, page 1 of 2

Dan Sullivan & Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Book Summary | 10x Is Easier Than 2x

A coach and a psychologist argue that a tenfold goal is simpler than doubling, because it forces you to drop the 80 percent of your work that cannot come along.

Money and Career
Mindset
7 min read
Cal Newport

Book Summary | A World Without Email

Cal Newport argues that the inbox has become a broken way of organising work, and lays out four principles for doing knowledge work without the constant chatter.

Focus and Productivity
Business Strategy
8 min read
Robert Mnookin

Book Summary | Bargaining with the Devil

Harvard negotiation professor Robert Mnookin uses Churchill, Mandela, IBM and bitter family fights to show when to make a deal with an enemy and when to refuse.

Business Strategy
Psychology
8 min read
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Book Summary | Blue Ocean Strategy

INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne argue that the smartest companies stop fighting rivals in crowded markets and create new, uncontested ones instead.

Money and Career
Creativity
5 min read
Pierce Brown

Book Summary | Dark Age

Ten years after the revolution, Darrow's army is besieged on Mercury, the Republic's Senate is torn apart and Mars is overrun in the saga's darkest book.

Science Fiction
Politics and History
8 min read
Bill Perkins

Book Summary | Die With Zero

Bill Perkins argues that money is only worth the experiences it buys, so the goal is to spend it, and give it, while you are alive and able to enjoy it.

Money and Career
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Book Summary | Golden Son

Darrow, a Red miner remade as a Gold, turns his enemies on each other and carries his secret rebellion from Mars into a war across the solar system.

Science Fiction
Politics and History
8 min read
Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend

Book Summary | Hamlet's Mill

Two historians of science argue that the world's myths are a coded record of ancient astronomy, built around a cosmic mill whose breaking marks the slow wobble of the heavens.

Ancient History
Cosmology
9 min read
Pierce Brown

Book Summary | Iron Gold

Ten years after the revolution, its hero, its victims and its exiles discover what freedom really costs.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
7 min read
Pierce Brown

Book Summary | Light Bringer

A beaten Darrow crosses the Solar System to find allies while his rival Lysander reaches for a crown.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Sam Harris

Book Summary | Lying

Sam Harris argues that even kind white lies cost more than they save, and that simply telling the truth makes life simpler and relationships deeper.

Philosophy
Relationships
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Book Summary | Morning Star

Broken by a year in the dark, a slave-born revolutionary rises again to lead a solar-system-wide war against the tyrants who rule it in the finale of the Red Rising trilogy.

Science Fiction
Space Exploration
8 min read
Tom Campbell

Book Summary | My Big TOE

A NASA physicist's theory of everything: consciousness is the foundation of reality, the physical world is a virtual training ground, and the point of it all is to grow from fear toward love.

Consciousness
Physics
8 min read
Chris Voss

Book Summary | Never Split the Difference

The FBI's former top kidnapping negotiator shows how listening, labeling emotions and asking the right questions win better deals than compromise.

Business Strategy
Psychology
8 min read
Pierce Brown

Book Summary | Red Rising

A teenage miner on Mars is remade as one of the ruling Golds to bring down the empire that hanged his wife.

Science Fiction
Dystopia
8 min read
Charles Eisenstein

Book Summary | Sacred Economics

Charles Eisenstein argues that our debt-and-interest money system manufactures scarcity and separation, and sketches a gift-based, ecological economy to replace it.

Money and Career
Philosophy
10 min read
Simon Sinek

Book Summary | Start With Why

Simon Sinek argues that the leaders and companies who earn real loyalty all communicate the same way: purpose first, product last.

Money and Career
8 min read
Mark Beckner

Book Summary | The Coder's Path to Wealth and Independence

A farmyard revolution promises equality for every animal, then slides, one small rewritten rule at a time, into the tyranny it set out to end.

Politics and History
Human Rights
8 min read
Ralph Kimball

Book Summary | The Data Warehouse Toolkit

The founding guide to dimensional modeling, teaching how to shape business data into fact and dimension tables people can actually query, one real-world case study at a time.

Software Engineering
Data Engineering
9 min read
Charles Darwin

Book Summary | The Descent of Man

Darwin finally turns his theory on ourselves, arguing that humans share ancestry, mind and even morality with other animals, and that mate choice helped shape us.

Evolutionary Psychology
Genetics
10 min read
Peter Wohlleben

Book Summary | The Hidden Life of Trees

German forester Peter Wohlleben argues that a forest is a cooperative community in which trees communicate, share food and raise their young, and that we should manage it that way.

Nature and Conservation
8 min read
Andrew Tobias

Book Summary | The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need

A funny, plain-spoken classic showing that financial security comes from spending less, clearing debt, using tax breaks and buying index funds steadily.

Money and Career
Habits
8 min read
Michael J. Sandel

Book Summary | The Tyranny of Merit

Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel argues that our faith in meritocracy has made winners arrogant, made everyone else feel humiliated, and fuelled the populist backlash, and that humility and respect for work are the way back.

Philosophy
Politics and History
10 min read
Erwin Schrödinger

Book Summary | What Is Life?

A quantum physicist asks how atoms can add up to a living thing, and his answers, an aperiodic crystal carrying a code-script and life feeding on negative entropy, help launch molecular biology.

7 min read

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