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Nick Harkaway's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Nick Harkaway recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Nick Harkaway's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

On Art and Life

Two of Ruskin's famous essays: "The Nature of the Gothic" and "The Work of Iron" from his book The Stones of Venice. less
Recommended by Nick Harkaway, and 1 others.

Nick HarkawayI’m a little bit obsessed with John Ruskin at the moment. He had the idea that mass-produced items – the perfect precision of stones made with machines, for example – were un-Christian and diminished the soul of man. “You must either make a tool of the creature,” he wrote, “or a man of him.” You can’t do both. That means you either create someone who can express an identity, or create a cog in a... (Source)

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2

Tweets From Tahrir

Egypt’s revolution as it unfolded, in the words of the people who made it.

The Twitter accounts of the activists who brought heady days of revolution to Egypt in January and February this year paint an exhilarating picture of an uprising in real-time. Thousands of young people documented on cell phones every stage of their revolution, as it happened. This book brings together a selection of key tweets in a compelling, fast-paced narrative, allowing the story of the uprising to be told directly by the people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Many of the activists were “citizen...
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Recommended by Nick Harkaway, and 1 others.

Nick HarkawayTweets from Tahrir is a document that could not have existed before the digital age. Even if you went to all of those people in the aftermath of Tahrir Square and asked them to write down what they thought at the time, they would write down something different, because recollection always colours events differently. This is a genuine live stream of what took place. (Source)

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3

Cryptonomicon

With this extraordinary first volume in an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse—mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy—is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702—commanded by Marine...
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Marc AndreessenThe Sovereign Individual—written 20 years ago, this is the most thought provoking book on the unfolding nature of the 21st Century that I’ve yet read. It’s packed with ideas on every page, many that are now fast becoming conventional wisdom, and many that are still heretical. Two related books to read are The Twilight of Sovereignty and Cryptonomicon. (Source)

Risto SiilasmaaThe one book on Siilasmaa's list is this fantasy offering from Neal Stephenson. The novel relates two parallel stories, one about an elite group of code-breakers in World War II, and another set in the present day, about two grandchildren of members of the group trying to track down a previously unknown – and rumored to be unbreakable – Nazi code. The book's subject matter resonates with current... (Source)

Nick HarkawayCryptonomicon is a real humdinger of a novel. Stephenson is a hugely enjoyable writer of action and comedy, I find him a joy to read. (Source)

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4
Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin?

Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn't possibly be caught?

Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?

Why do we go back for second helpings at the unlimited buffet, even when our stomachs are already full?

And how did we ever start spending $4.15 on a cup of coffee when, just a few years ago, we used to pay less than a dollar?

When...
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Max Levchin[Max Levchin recommended this book as an answer to "What business books would you advise young entrepreneurs read?"] (Source)

Nick HarkawayPredictably Irrational is an examination of the way in which we make decisions irrationally, and how that irrationality can be predicted. (Source)

Jonah LehrerDan Ariely is a very creative guy and was able to take this basic idea, that humans are irrational, and mine it in a million different directions. (Source)

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5
David S. Landes tells the long, fascinating story of wealth and power throughout the world: the creation of wealth, the paths of winners and losers, the rise and fall of nations. He studies history as a process, attempting to understand how the world's cultures lead to - or retard - economic and military success and material achievement. Countries of the West, Landes asserts, prospered early through the interplay of a vital, open society focused on work and knowledge, which led to increased productivity, the creation of new technologies, and the pursuit of change. Europe's key advantage lay... more

John KayHe provides an explanation for why Western Europe was the cradle for modern economic growth and looks at the development of the institutions that made modern economic development possible. (Source)

Diane CoyleThe Wealth And Poverty of Nations is one of several really fantastic economic history books of recent times. (Source)

Sean TurnellIt’s the most erudite examination of what causes economic development and growth that’s been written in many decades. (Source)

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