Want to know what books Bryan Callen recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Bryan Callen's favorite book recommendations of all time.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and... more
Richard BransonI certainly wouldn’t consider myself a big reader of paleontology or anthropology – not good words for us dyslexics! – but I enjoy learning about how society has unfolded and history has developed in an exciting, easy to read way. The sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, is a fascinating look into the future too. While these aren’t traditional business or leadership books, they are all... (Source)
Bill GatesHarari’s new book is as challenging and readable as Sapiens. Rather than looking back, as Sapiens does, it looks to the future. I don’t agree with everything the author has to say, but he has written a thoughtful look at what may be in store for humanity. (Source)
Vinod KhoslaNot that I agree with all of it, but it is still mind-bending speculation about our future as a follow-up to a previous favorite, Sapiens. It’s directionally right. (Source)
Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.
This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches:
How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month... more
Eric Weinstein[Eric Weinstein recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)
Tim DraperWith this kind of time management and focus on the important things in life, people should be able to get 15 times as much done in a normal work week. (Source)
Marvin LiaoSUCH a hard question to answer because there are so MANY favorite books of mine. For Business, i'd say either 80/20 Principle (Koch) or 4 Hour Work Week (Ferriss) for the principles it teaches on how to optimize work & life. (Source)
This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand's provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas... more
Travis KalanickIt’s one of my favorite books. (Source)
Noah KaganA few months ago, I was drinking a Noah’s Mill whiskey (cute) with my good buddy Brian Balfour and talking about life... During the conversation, we got on the topic of books that changed our lives. I want to share them with you. I judge a book's success if a year later I'm still using at least 1 thing from the book. (Source)
The first popular work to combine the spiritual and psychological insights of modern psychoanalysis with the archetypes of world mythology, the book creates a roadmap for navigating the frustrating path of contemporary life. Examining heroic myths in the light of modern psychology, it considers not only the patterns and stages of mythology but also its relevance to our lives today--and to the life of any person seeking a fully realized existence.
Myth, according to Campbell, is the projection of a culture's dreams onto a large screen; Campbell's book, like Star Wars, the...
Darren Aronofsky[I'm] totally part of his cult. Because I believe in that hero’s journey. (Source)
Kyle RussellBook 28 Lesson: Embedded in human psychology (and the resulting symbolism we find compelling) is a wish for our struggles to be meaningful, for our suffering to have value, for our effort to pay off for ourselves and those we love - and to then be recognized for it. https://t.co/lWgr4k7d8Y (Source)
Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's... more
Richard CohenIt’s more imbued with references to the sun and using the sun as symbol or metaphor – almost a kind of character in the novel – than any other work in literature. (Source)
Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)
Steven AmsterdamWhat’s spectacular for me is the triumph of the humour over his loathsomeness. (Source)
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the... more
Richard BransonOne example of a book that has helped me to #ReadToLead this year is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. While the book came out a few years ago now, I got around to it this year, and am very glad I did. I’ve always been fascinated in what makes humans human, and how people are constantly evolving, changing and growing. The genius of Sapiens is that it takes some daunting,... (Source)
Reid HoffmanA grand theory of humanity. (Source)
Barack Obamaeval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-leader-2','ezslot_7',164,'0','1'])); Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads. (Source)
Charles DuhiggIf you want to understand how successful groups work—the signals they transmit, the language they speak, the cues that foster creativity—you won’t find a more essential guide than The Culture Code.
Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor — and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story.
Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an... more
Steve Jobsis said by his Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, to have regarded Atlas Shrugged as one of his “guides in life”. (Source)
Travis Kalanick[Travis Kalanick mentioned this book in a Washington Post interview.] (Source)
Tendai Biti2)Marquez s “Love in the time of cholera” & “100 yrs of solitude “ are two of my top books but one still weeps reading or re- reading Tolstoy s “ War & Peace “a book bettered only by “ Anna Karenina. Not a fan of these motivational books but that “f#cked “ up book is quite funny (Source)
Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)
Kate FigesIt’s partly such a passionate book because of the beauty of the prose, describing love through time and how she found contentment – love, passion and sex all in one. (Source)
We are obsessed with our health. And yet — from the media's "world-expert microbiologist" with a mail-order Ph.D. in his garden shed laboratory, and via multiple health scares and miracle cures — we are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory, and sometimes even misleading information. Until now. Ben Goldacre masterfully dismantles the questionable science behind some of the great drug trials, court cases, and missed... more
Timothy FerrissI agree wholeheartedly with a lot of the co-opted science, which people can read a book called Bad Science, which is by a doctor named Ben Goldacre. It’s great. (Source)
Tim HarfordThis book changed the way I thought about my own writing and it changed the way I thought about the world. It really is one of the best books I have ever read. (Source)
Sarah-Jayne BlakemoreIt’s just a brilliant book, and he’s a fearless defender of science. (Source)
Don't have time to read Bryan Callen's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.
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Bryan CallenOf course, I read Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality, etc, where the truths and the truisms are really cut and dried in a lot of ways. It's the equivalent of, I guess, intellectual red meat. (Source)
Antonio EramThis book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. (Source)
Brian LeiterI don’t know I would single it out as the masterpiece, but it’s a fascinating book which follows on many of the themes of Beyond Good and Evil. It’s unusual because it’s less aphoristic, but rather three essays. The essays have more structure and extended argumentation than is typical in most of Nietzsche’s works. (Source)
Scott Turowit’s just a superb novel, full of really beautiful characterizations – the reporter who’s covering this trial, and his elderly lawyer who’s defending the case is quite a remarkable character. (Source)
Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)
Based on local history & family stories passed down by Frazier’s great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war & back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. His odyssey thru the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South... more
Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)
Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)
Jay McInerneyLethem was one of the first people to write about the new Brooklyn. This is a beautiful coming-of-age novel. (Source)
Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)
The Strange Order of Things is a pathbreaking investigation into homeostasis, the condition of that regulates human physiology within the range that makes possible not only the survival but also the flourishing of life. Antonio Damasio makes clear that we descend biologically, psychologically, and even socially from a long lineage that begins with single living cells; that our minds and... more
Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)
“Just trust your gut” is great advice when your instincts tell you to run from a lion in the jungle. But when it comes to thinking innovatively about your business, those same instincts can be your own worst enemy. Cognitive biases—the instinctual mental shortcuts we all have in our brains that shape how we see and respond to the world around us—can also be the archnemeses of innovation/innovative thinking. New ideas appear too risky. Data gets discounted if it doesn’t match the hypothesis of the researcher. And even like-minded innovation... more
Bryan CallenSo here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood... (Source)
As a professor at Yale, Bill Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.
Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the... more
Bryan CallenThere’s a guy who I just had on my podcast, Mark Deresiewicz, who wrote a book called Excellent Sheep. He was a Yale professor, and took a look at the essentially what was wrong with higher education, at these elite institutions, primarily places like Amherst and Yale and Harvard. And one of the things he said is that we’re breeding excellent sheep. You’ve got 31 flavors of vanilla. These kids... (Source)
“Raucous, profane, and thrillingly original, Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States turns the myths of the ‘American character’ on their heads with a rare mix of wit, scholarship, and storytelling flair” (Steven Johnson, author of... more
Bryan CallenWhat I like about Thaddeus is that his book he actually takes a look at things I never heard. I was a history major and historians tend to be pretty conservative, stagy people, right? Your average college history teacher is a pretty conservative guy, even though he might be very left wing, they’re conservative people [...] And when they write history, they always write it from this really stagy... (Source)
The 4-Hour Chef isn’t just a cookbook. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure guide to the world of rapid learning.
#1 New York Times bestselling author (and lifelong non-cook) Tim Ferriss takes you from Manhattan to Okinawa, and from Silicon Valley to Calcutta, unearthing the secrets of the world’s fastest learners and greatest chefs. Ferriss uses cooking to explain “meta-learning,” a step-by-step process that can be used to master anything, whether searing steak or shooting 3-pointers in... more
Bryan Callen[Bryan Callen recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)
Marin GerovTalking of Tim Ferriss, his series (The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef) have been extremely good resources for improving work, health, and learning. (Source)
Cristina RiesenFirst, a word on career paths. In time, I realised that career paths are like one-way streets. Magic happens in unexplored territories. Plus life is how you choose to live every moment, every day. So today, rather than building a career, I prefer to make lateral moves in life, working with great people and being part of ambitious projects impacting the world. There are a few books that got me... (Source)
Don't have time to read Bryan Callen's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Is it possible to:
Reach your genetic potential in 6 months?
Sleep 2 hours per day and perform better than on 8 hours?
Lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing?
Indeed, and much more. This is not just another diet and fitness book.
The 4-Hour Body is the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of... more
Jon FavreauI’ve given [this book] to people. (Source)
Bryan CallenI probably have recommended The Art of Learning and The 4-Hour Body, I'm not kidding, more than any other books. (Source)
Marin GerovTalking of Tim Ferriss, his series (The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef) have been extremely good resources for improving work, health, and learning. (Source)
Publisher's Note: The 25th Anniversary Edition has been reset, causing the text to reflow. Page references... more
Jocko WillinkThe other book that I've read multiple times is Blood Meridian [by Cormac McCarthy]. (Source)
Esi EdugyanA difficult read that I savour for its wondrous prose and stark vision of humanity. (Source)
Robert MacfarlaneIt’s wild in the astonishing indifference of the desert landscape to human practice – McCarthy evokes this more purely than any other writer. (Source)
Naval RavikantI’m rereading The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. Sometimes I think it’s better to just to reread the greats than it is to read something that’s not as great. (Source)
Bryan CallenJoseph Campbell was the first person to really open my eyes to [the] compassionate side of life, or of thought... Campbell was the guy who really kind of put it all together for me, and not in a way I could put my finger on... It made you just glad to be alive, [realizing] how vast this world is, and how similar and how different we are. (Source)
Park HowellThis is one of the books I recommend to people looking for a career in advertising. (Source)
Joan BoixadosRecover soon from your mistakes. (Source)
Erik RostadFor career books, I'll focus on more overarching themes. You can get books on particular skills you need for a given job, but these books will help having the right mindset for a career and how work should fit into the greater story of your life. For learning new skills: The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. (Source)
Chris OliverThe Art of Learning as well is phenomenal. You're always learning new things in programming and startups so being good at learning is a crucial skill to have. (Source)
The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two... more
Bryan CallenI love [this author]. (Source)
Mary HabeckThis is a fantastic account of the origins of al Qaeda, the individuals who laid the foundations of the organisation and why they carried out 9/11. (Source)
Peter TaylorIf anybody wishes to understand what Al-Qaeda is, where it came from and what it is trying to do, I think that this is the key book to read. (Source)
Patrick CockburnWhen you read about Iraq, you need to know that it is a country more divided than almost anywhere else in the world. (Source)
Bryan Callen[Bryan Callen recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)
Jeremy GreenstockRicks writes fluently and eloquently. His book shows what the Americans thought about Iraq, and what they thought the Iraqis thought. (Source)
Bryan CallenI love [this author]. (Source)
Bryan CallenThe equivalent of, [...] intellectual red meat. (Source)
In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerges a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society and the sublimation of basic human instincts. The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato's mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of... more
Bryan Callen[Bryan Callen recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)
Edward SkidelskyPlato is the founding figure in the Western philosophical tradition and the Symposium is one of his most charming books – you can read it like a novel. (Source)
Don't have time to read Bryan Callen's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.