Reading List

Cogley: What’s the matter? Don’t you like books?

Kirk: Oh, I like them fine, but a computer takes less space.

Cogley: A computer, huh? I got one of these in my office. Contains all the precedents, a synthesis of all the great legal decisions written throughout time. I never use it.

Kirk: Why not?

Cogley: I’ve got my own system. Books, young man, books.

Star Trek, Court Martial

Winners

The Mythical Man Month Fred Brooks, 1995 (20th anniversary edition)

Don’t Make Me Think Steve Krug, 2006 The 2014 “revisited” edition is also good, but the examples from the ancient Internet in the earlier editions are charming

The Undercover Economist Tim Harford, 2007

Honorable Mentions

• • The Accidental Investment Banker
    Jonathan Knee, 2007
  • The Big Short
    Micheal Lewis, 2011
  • The Design of Everyday Things
    Donald Norman, 2002 (original copyright 1988)
  • Effective Java
    Joshua Bloch, 2010
  • Extreme Brewing
    Sam Calagione, 2006
  • Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry – and Made Himself the Richest Man in America
    Stephen Manes, Paul Andrews, 1994
  • Groovy In Action
    Dierk König, 2007
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
    Robert Cialdini, 1993 (original copyright 1984)
  • In Search of Stupidity
    Merrill Chapman, 2003 (The 2003 edition is the good one. If you can’t get it, buy the 2006 edition, then rip out chapters twelve and on.)
  • Java Puzzlers
    Joshua Bloch, Neal Gafter, 2007
  • Liar’s Poker
    Michael Lewis, 1990
  • Leave It to Psmith
    PG Wodehouse, 2005 (original copyright 1924)
  • The Logic of Life
    Tim Harford, 2009
  • A Mathemetician Reads the Newspaper
    John Allen Paulos, 1995
  • The Non-Designer’s Design Book
    Robin Williams, 1994
  • The Peter Principle
    Laurence J Peter & Raymond Hull, 2009 (40th anniversary edition)
  • The Productive Programmer
    Neal Ford, 2008
  • The Undercover Economist Strikes Back
    Tim Harford, 2013
  • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
    Edward Tufte, 2013 (original copyright 2001)
  • Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?
    Fred Schwed, 2006 (original copyright 1940)

I’ve listed dates of the printing that I own.