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Short non-fiction books to read

By Bobby Voicu

Some books are long, some books are short. And, if they’re non-fiction books, the shorter, the better. At least for me.

I’ve never thought of books in terms of pages, but it kinda makes sense.

Fergus McCullough started to make a list of the best non-fiction books with less than 250 pages.

  • Allen, Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (170)
  • Bayles, Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking (122)
  • Caplan, Open Borders (248)
  • Carse, Finite and Infinite Games (162)
  • Collier, The Bottom Billion (244)
  • Cowen, Stubborn Attachments (161); The Great Stagnation (60)
  • De Solla Price, Science Since Babylon (240)
  • Gibbons, Partition: How and Why Ireland Was Divided (220; h/t Tyler Cowen)
  • Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (72)
  • Jünger, The Forest Passage (120)
  • Karatani, Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy (176)
  • Knight, Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction (158)
  • Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations (244); Pop Internationalism (240)
  • Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (128)
  • Machiavelli, The Prince (144)
  • Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (184)
  • Smil, Oil (219); Energy (210)
  • Thiel, Zero to One (210)
  • Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization (239)
  • Weil, Gravity and Grace (183)
  • Wilde, The Critic as Artist (124)

The original article is not online anymore, so I got the full list from archive.org.

Of all these books, the only one I’ve read is Thiel’s Zero to One, so it’s a good list to start with.

Oh, and apparently there’s a reason why some books are bigger than they should: having a bigger spine allows them to stand out in a bookshop. Or that was the thing in 2006.

via Tyler Cowen

Life Changing Books I’ve Read

By Bobby Voicu

I’ve been writing emails back and forth with a reader of this site and he asked me this:

“Can you tell me in all the books you read, is there one book you think it changed your life the most and would you share it with me?”

I’ve been thinking about it a little bit and I realized that there are no books that changed my life in a profound way that I can talk about. But there are lots of books that changed my life a little bit for the better. While I was answering, I thought that this would be a good article for the blog as well.

Here’s my answer:

Man, there are books that were life changing at that moment, but in retrospect they’re not THAT life changing.

  • The Lean Startup

    – changed my way of doing a startup

  • The Hard Thing about Hard Things

    – made it easier for me to go through the shitty days in my startup, because I knew I wasn’t the only one going through that.

  • Startup Life

    – helped me saved my relationship by highlighting the things your partner goes through when you grow your business

  • Getting Things Done

    – made me much more productive and aware of my time

I don’t think there’s a true life changing book, but there are books that change your understanding of the specific situation you are in.

Image from Canva

My Rediscovery of Isaac Asimov: I, Asimov

By Bobby Voicu

One of the first “modern” SF books I’ve ever read was one in the Foundation series. I don’t remember exactly which one, but I was around 14 and I read all the books written by Isaac Asimov that I could find. Unfortunately, though, you couldn’t find most of them in Romania, where I was born. And you couldn’t find the non-fiction books in particular.

Last week I read I, Asimov: A Memoir, his autobiography. I didn’t read a book that I liked this much in a long time. As I said already, Asimov was part of my youth and I’ve read and re-read the Foundation, Robots and Empire books over and over again over the years. And, through the 600 pages of I, Asimov, I almost turned back in time.

In I, Asimov I’ve discovered a genuine happy person, someone that did what he loved his entire life. I discovered that one of the biggest authors of Science Fiction actually stopped writing fiction novels almost completely for 20 years. I discovered that he enjoyed writing mystery short stories a lot. And this shouldn’t surprise me since most of the books in his SF series are, actually, mysteries. Especially the Robots ones.

His autobiography reads like the archive of a blog, with anecdotes and short stories of the author’s life. It made me smile so often, I didn’t believe it. I was reading in bed and I would read out loud to my fiancée something that made me laugh loudly.

Besides the laughs, I also appreciated the power of Asimov’s convictions. I’m taking example, as well, since sometimes I forget to support my opinions as strongly as I should. And I’m sure my friends might think differently and laugh at the last sentence.

Here, in Asimov’s biography, I found the best reasoning for reading ever. And a refute of watching TV at the cost of reading.

I also pointed out that television yielded so much information that the viewer became a passive receptacle, whereas a book gave so little that the reader had to be an active participant, his imagination supplying all the imagery, sound, and special effects. This participation, I said, gave so much pleasure that television could not serve as a decent substitute.

In short, the age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate. Now that is gone, and the youngsters have their glazed eyes fixed on the television tube. The result is clear. True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily “dumbing down.”

I was born in communism and, even if my parents had a big enough library at home, most of the books I read were available from the school library. I still remember how happy I was when I found, in one corner, a new Jules Verne book I could read and share with my class mates. So I understand the value of access to books. And I’ve started The CEO Library because I know you need more than what the school provides.

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.

I was surprised that Asimov was writing in 1992 that we, as humanity, are destroying the planet. And, 30 years later, he was and is right, unfortunately. And we fight with the results of neglect.

We are now perfectly capable of damaging the planet beyond repair in any reasonable time, and are, in fact, in the process of doing so.

And, again, in 1992, he wrote the perfect explanation of the difference in thinking between “conservatives” and “liberals”. Living in a world where the split is even more obvious and evident, I can’t but wonder at Asimov’s understanding of life.

I have been a liberal all my life. I have had to be. Early in life, I noted that conservatives, who are more or less satisfied with things as they are and even more satisfied with things as they were fifty years ago, are “self-loving.” That is, conservatives tend to like people who resemble themselves and distrust others. In my youth, in the United States the backbone of social, economic, and political power rested with an establishment consisting almost entirely of people of Northwestern European extraction, and the conservatives making up that establishment were contemptuous of others.

If you enjoyed Asimov’s books, you’re gonna love this one.

Best Books of 2019

By Bobby Voicu

At the beginning of November 2019 I asked in the newsletter and on Instagram for our community’s favorite books of 2019. After about 2 weeks of adding books to the database, here are the lists. And yes, I was doing other things as well, it didn’t take me 2 weeks to add 50 or so books, ok?

1. Best New Books of 2019

These books are all published in 2019. You liked them and you recommend them.

2. Best Fiction Books of 2019

Though you wouldn’t think so, some of you actually read fiction :D So here are 10-11 fiction books you said it’s worth reading.

3. Best Non-Fiction Books of 2019

Finally, as expected, this is the biggest list. About 80 books you recommended (including the ones of the first list) are here and it should be enough for everyone to have a full 2020 with the books they didn’t read already.

Some books I’ve read

By Bobby Voicu

Naval Ravikant - The CEO Library

I was looking through the stats of The CEO Library recently and noticed that the page with books recommended by Naval Ravikant is one of the most popular on the site. So I got curious to see if I read any of the books there. And I did:

I have to say some of the books Naval recommends look out of place, but I might actually read some of them (I mean, what’s Tao Te Ching?).

I didn’t write on the blog in some time, so I thought suggesting some books for the summer holiday might not be a bad way to write again :)

Book review: Alex Ferguson – My Autobiography

By Bobby Voicu

I’ve been surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Alex Ferguson managed Manchester United, arguably one of the biggest football clubs in the world, for almost 30 years. His view of management, especially people management, since he worked with multiple generations of footballers, is extremely insightful. I now have a better understanding of how and why teams play one way or the other.

Another reason I loved the book is that I remember the matches he talks about: I remember the 1999 Champions League final when they beat Bayern Munich in the last 3 minutes. I remember the 2009 and 2011 finals when they lost to maybe the best team that ever played football: Messi’s, Xavi’s and Iniesta’s Barcelona. And I remember the moment they lost the Premier League Championship to Manchester City in the 94th minute.

The book is straight to the point and Ferguson explains how he worked with his staff, how he managed the press, the leadership of the club. His age, as well, became an issue as time went by. Not for him, but for everyone around, from the press to the fans.

He talks about his relationship with Beckham, with Roy Keane, with Cristiano Ronaldo or with Rooney. He didn’t forget other managers, like Arsene Wenger from Arsenal, or Jose Mourinho from Chelsea (who, incidentally, is now at Manchester United).

Really, a great book that you should pick up if you have the time. If you are a football fan it’s even more recommended.

Best Startup/Business Books I’ve read in 2016

By Bobby Voicu

I’ve read several business books in 2016 and some of them were worth the time spent :)) Here are the two that I would read if I only had time for just two books.

1. The Hard Thing about Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are no Easy Answers

It took me a little bit of time to read this and I actually wish I read it earlier. Ben Horowitz tells his story from being a Product manager at Netscape to becoming the founder of one of the biggest investment funds in Silicon Valley: Andreessen-Horowitz (a16z). Oh, and between these two things he also built a billion dollar company (Opsware) that he grew during the dotcom bubble.

Why is the book really good? He talks about all the things that you don’t read in Techcrunch and the feel-good startup articles on the web. He talks about firing people while having to convince their friends not to leave the company. He talks about the fights you have as the CEO with the co-founders. With the product managers. He talks about how lonely it is to be the founder and CEO of the company. He talked to me ????

2. Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

Written by a guy that went through Y Combinator, then sold his company in just 9 months to Twitter, which he then quit for Facebook. The book is worth reading because it catches a lot of the efforts you go through when raising money early, when you don’t know what to do and keep pivoting and so on. I felt connected to the book more than usual because he was in the Ads team at Facebook when we were ramping our efforts on ad buying and we felt they didn’t really have all the ducks in a row. They got the product later, but in 2013-2014 it was a fucking mess.

Read it. It’s enjoyable and it will actually make you laugh from time to time.

3. Zero to One, Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

OK, there’s three books, not two. The thing is, though, while the book is interesting, it didn’t really hit the mark with me. I’m not too much of a fan of the contrarian view that Peter Thiel has, but he understood faster than a lot of us that Trump was more than a clown and that he would be the President of the United States. So the book is worth a read. The ideas are not necessarily bad but I think he pushes them too much to the limit.

Giveaway! Each book for one lucky subscriber :)

Finally, I will give one of these books to three subscribers from my email list, randomly. If you’re not on the list, you can subscribe here (or use the form on the sidebar). I send a weekly newsletter with interesting articles that I’ve read (usually business related, but not all the time). You can see an example here.

The random pick for the three will happen on the 15th of January and I will contact you via the email you used to register to the newsletter. Oh, and I prefer to send the books for Kindle, so you should own one of those (or use the free app from Amazon on your phone or desktop). I will send the books as a gift to your Amazon account (I prefer the US store, but any will do).

Book Review: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone

By Bobby Voicu

Amazon is one of the most interesting companies I’ve read about. Not especially Jeff Bezos, but Amazon. Obviously, you can’t really separate the two, but I’ve been always interested in how Amazon, a company that started on the internet by selling books, then became a retailer, then became again a technology company, single handedly starting the “cloud” revolution.

the-everything-store-jeff-bezos

The latest book I’ve read about the company (I just finished it about 20 minutes ago) is The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. I’ve heard about it some time ago, but only recently had the time to read it. More, I’ve become even more interested when I’ve heard about the review that MacKenzie Bezos (the wife of Jeff) wrote on Amazon (you can read it here), awarding one star to the book for the fact that it underlines the sensationalist aspects of Amazon’s evolution, while also having big factual errors.

The thing is, though, I found the book really interesting. Obviously, I do not know about the factual errors (especially strictly related to the founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos) and I don’t care about it, anyway, but it’s a good read if you want to follow and understand the evolution of Amazon starting almost 20 years ago. From what I know about the company and what I’ve read in the last 10 years about it, I think that those aspects are pretty accurate.

Amazon is, in my opinion, one of the companies that wasn’t afraid to test things, to go outside their default area of expertise, and try (and succeed) in reinventing itself. I mean, 10 years ago, the biggest issue they faced was the chaos in the deposits, now it’s the fact the their phone, the Fire phone, was a flop. How do you go from getting packages to customers in overnight delivery to starting the startup/cloud revolution?

You need to read the book to find out more, but I will add some quotes I found interesting.

“It is far better to cannibalise yourself than have someone else do it,”. I totally agree with this.

I didn’t know that Kodak actually had the digital cameras technology available since the ’70s and didn’t want to use it so that they do not lose on the profits from normal cameras. The quote above also was related to this: “The reference was to the century-old photography giant whose engineers had invented digital cameras in the 1970s but whose profit margins were so healthy that its executives couldn’t bear to risk it all on an unproven venture in a less profitable frontier.“

Another interesting quote about focus: “If you are running both businesses you will never go after the digital opportunity with tenacity,” he said. It regards the move of the person responsible with the books at Amazon (one of the most influential positions in the company) to Kindle only books. The reason Bezos didn’t want to let that guy handle both businesses was the aforementioned quote.

People always feel the need to understand the context a CEO/manager takes decisions. But what do you do if the context is not that easy to understand? This is what Bezos told the designers of Kindle when he told them to include space for the cellular/wifi module in the first device so that anybody could download the books instantly, free of charge. The designers fought back saying that this wasn’t possible, that it would cost too much. The answer? “I’ll figure this out and it is not going to be a business model you understand. You are the designers, I want you to design this and I’ll think about the business model.”

One of the companies I enjoyed reading about and visiting while in Las Vegas was Zappos. The thing is I always thought of the company being a fast mover, achieving success and growing fast. Well. apparently it wasn’t like this and this is the reason they sold to Amazon. Here is what Mike Moritz, investor and board member at Zappos, had to say about it: “We just didn’t move quickly enough,” Moritz says. “You could sense it was going to be much harder to achieve, and we were squandering the opportunity. The hiring was too slow, the engineering department was not good enough, and the software was inferior to Amazon’s. It was very frustrating, and the Las Vegas location, plus an unwillingness to pay competitively, made it even harder to recruit talented people. We were starting to compete with the very best in the business and they had a lot of arrows in their quiver to make life painful. The last thing we wanted to do was to sell. It was mortifying.”. It’s interesting for me because we always thought MavenHut is moving really fast. Well, we might need to move a lot faster, or else Amazon might buy us :)

And, finally, I didn’t know, but Bezos may not get ferried to work in a black sedan, but Amazon still spends $1.6 million per year on personal security for him and his family, according to the company’s financial reports. It’s not that simple being a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company.

I’ve highlighted a lot more content, but I think you need to read the book to make sense of it :)

Finally, go buy it (or borrow it from a friend). By the way, all these links are affiliate links, just so you know.

Oh and, finally, if you are interested, you can see the interview Bezos gave to the Business Insider recently (or read the main ideas):