Favorite Reads of 2019

In 2019 I read a lot of great books. I improved my understanding of business, management, technology, history, and myself. Below are my favorites.

• Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. A wonderful mixture of history, psychology, and technology. I was engaged throughout.

• The Power by Naomi Alderman. What if women were more dangerous than men? This book explores the idea, and I found it mind-expanding in a good way. Let’s be excellent to each other.

• The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. In 2019 I finished the Iron Druid Chronicles, a series that I thoroughly enjoyed.

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss. My big takeaway is sharing the problem-solving by asking, “how am I supposed to do that?” when negotiating.

• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig. This book taught me that ‘Money in politics isn’t the most important problem, but it is the first problem because we cannot tackle the most important problems until we remove money from the equation.’ I found this book to be very important. I genuinely hope that we can reform American politics and reduce the role that money plays.

• High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove. This is a management classic for a reason! There are a number of great concepts in this book. I would recommend it to managers and aspiring technology leaders.