I strongly recommend all of these books. There is no particular order and this list is far from complete, but I’m happy to discuss any and all of these books further if you are having trouble choosing your next book.

• The Expanse – Excellent sci-fi space thriller
• The Baroque Cycle – Trilogy of books covering the development of early capitalism, political liberalism, and the scientific method
• 1177 BC – Book covering the late bronze age collapse
• Seeing Like a State – Top down approaches often fail due to incomplete information
• The Moral Economy of the Peasant – An examination of the priorities and economies of Southeast Asian peasant farmers
• Tuxedo Park – The story of a Wall Street financier and the development of RADAR
• 1491 and 1493 – The Americas pre- and post-Colombus
• Napoleon – By far the best biography on Napoleon’s life
• Windows for the Crown Prince – The memoirs of the personal tutor of Prince Akihito, an American Quaker Woman
• Heart of Europe – The complete history of the Holy Roman Empire as an institution
• God’s Chinese Son – A biography of Hong Xiuquan, the Taiping Heavenly King
• Imperial Twilight – The story of the Opium Wars
• Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom – The Story of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
• The Terra Ignota series – Difficult to succinctly describe but wonderful scifi series
• Diamond Age – A young girl grows up in a post-cyberpunk world
• Snow Crash – Action-packed story involving pizza delivery and brain washing
• Delta-V – The story of the first human asteroid mining mission
• The Son Also Rises – How much of our income and wellbeing is tied to our ancestry?
• Hoover – Wonderful biography of an underrated President
• Dune – Scifi classic exploring the relationship between commerce, power, and religion
• The Orthogonal Trilogy – One of the most interesting scifi series I’ve read, taking place in a universe with slightly different physics
• Distant Force – A history of Teledyne and Henry Singleton. Shows the importance of strong financial management
• Postwar – A history of Europe post-1945
• The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire – How a declining empire (that was almost always weaker than its opponents) survived nearly 1000 years after the collapse of its western counterpart
• MITI and the Japanese Miracle – Mid-20th century Japanese industrial planning
• Prometheus Shackled – Early 18th century British government policy slowed the industrialization of England noticeably
• Sulla – Biography of one of the most interesting Romans in the late Republic
• The Enterprise of Law – Provisioning legal services without a state
• Days of Rage – Leftist terrorism in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s
• Lakota America – A history of the Lakota
• Maisky Diaries – Personal diaries of the Soviet Ambassador to the UK during the early days of WW2
• Escape from Rome – The collapse of the Western Empire and the warring states period (1300s-1945) led to dramatic improvements in technology and culture that improved European wellbeing
• The Rise and Fall of American Growth – A history of American TFP and speculation as to its future
• Castles of Steel – The story of WWI at sea
• The Edge of the World – The North Sea is best thought of as a single economic and cultural entity in the pre-modern era
• The Cheese and the Worms – The theology of a 16th century Venetian peasant
• Taliban – Best book on the Taliban, published pre-9/11
• The Tyrannicide Brief – Biography of John Cooke, the prosecutor of King Charles I
• Going the Distance – Why did Europeans, despite a distinct cultural and technological disadvantage at the start of the 1600s, come to dominate the Indian Ocean by 1700?
• Children of Time – Creative story about genuinely alien life and its cultural and technological evolution
• Broken Spears – The Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs, from the Aztec point of view
• Guns of August – The first month of WWI
• Kentucky Barracuda – Entertaining biography of one of the 19th century’s best characters
• A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire – Title summarizes it well
• Salazar – Biography of the 20th century Portuguese dictator
• The Medici Bank – How the Medici made their money and organized their affairs
• Metropolis and Hinterland – The economic relationship between Ancient Rome and the rest of Italy
• Roman Republics – Rome was, in reality, multiple republics before ultimately transitioning to its imperial phase
• Electronic Value Exchange – A history of VISA
• Cable Cowboy – History of John Mallone, cable entrepreneur and promoter of EBITDA
• Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide? – How to create a superfund site
• One Man’s Meat – Observations on life at a Maine saltwater farm
• Peasants into Frenchmen – The transformation of France from a collection of regional identities to a national one
• Finance in America – History of American finance
• Ant Encounters – Ant colony behavior
• The Dutch Republic – History of the Dutch Republic
• Landed Obligations – Power in pre-colonial Buganda
• Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda – History book covering the structure of Bugandan society
• The Ancient City – Difficult to summarize, but the most interesting overview of how ancient religion worked, how it drove the creation of Greek and Latin societies, and something of a counter to prevailing notions of how those cultures worked
• The Bankers of Puteoli – A case study of a Roman bank operating in the first century AD. This book is a wonderful companion to Going the Distance

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