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24 Books That Shaped Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang
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items The books that shaped Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Brian Chesky, Patrick Collison and Jensen Huang, from Zen and Shakespeare to Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. Each note says who recommended it and links to where. I may earn a small commission if you buy t...
Sections
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Steve Jobs's shelf: Zen and India
Mark Zuckerberg on how the world works
Mark Zuckerberg on innovation and people
Brian Chesky's shelf: Disney and scaling a company
Where modern computing came from (Patrick Collison)
Steve Jobs's shelf: Diet, classics and business
Steve Jobs's shelf: Zen and India
The spiritual and Zen books Steve Jobs returned to throughout his life, as described by Walter Isaacson.
Yogananda's account of his spiritual search in India and his move to America. Steve Jobs reread it every year, and it was reportedly the only book he downloaded to his iPad 2.
Autobiography of A Yogi
Ram Dass's guide to meditation and spiritual life, written after his time in India. Jobs said it was profound and transformed him and many of his friends.
Be Here Now
Short, simple talks on Zen practice and keeping the open mind of a beginner. Jobs practiced Zen for years and this was one of the books he leaned on.
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
Talks on how ego can quietly take over even a spiritual practice. Isaacson lists it among the books that shaped Jobs.
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Mark Zuckerberg on how the world works
From Zuckerberg's 2015 Year of Books, the picks about power, history and economics.
Moises Naim argues that power is getting easier to win and harder to keep, for governments and companies alike. It was the first pick of Mark Zuckerberg's 2015 Year of Books.
The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be
Thomas Kuhn's influential account of how science changes through paradigm shifts rather than steady progress. Zuckerberg chose it to understand how breakthroughs actually happen.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
Ibn Khaldun's 1377 attempt to explain why societies rise and fall, often called an early work of social science. Zuckerberg read it for his Year of Books and found the worldview of the time fascinating.
The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History - Abridged Edition
Acemoglu and Robinson argue that institutions, not geography or culture, decide whether countries get rich. Zuckerberg picked it in 2015, and the authors went on to share the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics.
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Mark Zuckerberg on innovation and people
More Year of Books picks, about how creative work and innovation happen.
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull on how the studio protects creativity as it grows. Zuckerberg picked it because he loves first-hand accounts of how great companies get built.
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
A sociology student spends years inside a Chicago gang and writes about how it actually works. Zuckerberg chose it as a way to understand lives very different from his own.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
Jon Gertner's history of Bell Labs, where the transistor, information theory and the laser came from. Zuckerberg picked it to understand what kinds of people and places produce innovation.
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
Cixin Liu's science fiction novel about first contact, physics and China's Cultural Revolution. It was Zuckerberg's fiction pick for his 2015 book club.
The Three-Body Problem (Three-Body Problem Series #1) (Hugo Award Winner)
Brian Chesky's shelf: Disney and scaling a company
Three Brian Chesky picks: Neal Gabler's biography of Walt Disney, Bob Iger's memoir of running Disney, and Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh on how companies grow very fast.
Neal Gabler's full biography of Walt Disney, from a struggling cartoon studio to Disneyland. Brian Chesky has said it had a huge impact on him.
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination
Bob Iger's memoir of running Disney, including the Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm deals. Chesky called it great and Iger an excellent CEO.
The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company
Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh on how companies grow very fast and what breaks when they do. Chesky called it the book the start-up world had been waiting for.
Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
Where modern computing came from (Patrick Collison)
Stripe's Patrick Collison keeps a page on Silicon Valley history, and these are his picks for the best books on it.
The story of J.C.R. Licklider and the people who imagined personal, networked computing decades early. Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison calls it the best book on early computing history.
The Dream Machine
Michael Hiltzik's history of Xerox PARC, where the graphical interface, Ethernet and the laser printer were born. Collison calls it the best history of PARC.
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
Steve Jobs's shelf: Diet, classics and business
Jobs's lifelong interests in diet and food, plus the classics and the business book that Walter Isaacson says deeply influenced him.
Frances Moore Lappe's 1971 case for plant-based eating as a way to feed the world. It shaped Jobs's lifelong interest in diet and vegetarianism.
Diet for a Small Planet (20th Anniversary Edition)
Melville's novel of Captain Ahab's obsessive hunt for the white whale. Walter Isaacson lists it among the books Jobs loved.
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
Shakespeare's tragedy of a king who splits his kingdom between his daughters and loses everything. Jobs put it simply: he loved King Lear.
King Lear (Folger Shakespeare Library Series)
Clayton Christensen explains why well-run market leaders keep losing to cheaper, simpler upstarts. Walter Isaacson says it deeply influenced Steve Jobs, and Jensen Huang calls Christensen's series the best.
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Brian Chesky's shelf: running a startup, travel and the next internet
Three Brian Chesky picks: Ben Horowitz on running a company through hard moments, Alain de Botton on why we travel, and Steve Case on the next era of the internet.
Ben Horowitz's honest account of running a company through near-death moments, with practical advice for each. Chesky has recommended it and calls Horowitz a mentor.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Alain de Botton's essays on why we travel and what we actually get out of it. A fitting pick from the Airbnb co-founder.
The Art of Travel
AOL co-founder Steve Case on the next era of the internet, where tech meets health, education and government. Chesky has recommended it.
The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future