2019: A roller coaster ride in books
This year was a real roller coaster ride with books. There were some real gems and some real duds. A great decision i made this year was to discontinue books that were either poorly written or weren’t worth the time and effort. Here are some books and the ratings.
My top 3 for the year were:
- Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a US Presidential Historian
- The Signals are Talking by Amy Webb
- I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
Vishnu’s Bookshelf
- Making Breakthrough Innovations Happen, by Porus Munshi (1/5)
- Leadership: Lessons from the Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson for Turbulent Times, by Doris Kearns Goodwin (4/5)
- A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control, by Kartik Hosanagar (4/5)
- Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it, by Martin Ford (4/5)
- The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, by Amy Webb (4/5)
- Connecting the Dots: Leadership Lessons in a Start-up World, by John Chambers
- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong (4/5)
- The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, by Amy Webb (4/5)
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by John Carreyrou (3/5)
- The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, by Daniel Coyle (4/5)
- Sevens Heaven: The Beautiful Chaos of Fiji’s Olympic Dream, by Ben Ryan (3/5)
- Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE, by Phil Knight (3/5)
- Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures that Turn Our World Upside Down, by Tom Standage (3/5)
- The High-Speed Company: Creating Urgency and Growth in a Nanosecond Culture, by Jason Jennings (3/5)
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, by Ben Horowitz (3/5)
- Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World, by Tim Marshall (3/5)
- The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Amir Husain (3/5)
- Measure What Matters, by John E. Doerr
- A Century Is Not Enough: My Roller-coaster Ride to Success, by Sourav Ganguly (4/5)