Patrick Collison's Favorite Books
Parsing his personal website's Bookshelf section for book recommendations
Who is Patrick Collison?
Patrick Collison and his brother John (pictured above, with Patrick on the left) are cofounders of Stripe, a tremendously successful Silicon Valley payments company.
Among people who follow tech businesses and Silicon Valley startups, Stripe isn’t just popular because it’s worth tens of billions of dollars. It’s also known as a place where ambition and excellence are celebrated, without being particularly cutthroat. Paul Graham, Grand Poobah of Y Combinator, frequently cites Stripe and the Collison brothers as targets worth emulating.
Stripe is known for implementing and iterating quickly but also having a long term mindset. The company is also branded as being a place that balances intellection and execution—as in, they get things done, but there is a big focus on being smart and doing things “the right way.”
Patrick is famous for using his newfound wealth to fund scientific research explicitly focused on scientific progress. What I find interesting is that when I’ve heard Patrick Collison on podcasts and in interviews, he sounds different from a lot of wealthy founders and Silicon Valley types in that he seems very hopeful and optimistic. He also loves to read—and not just in a trite “CEOs have to read” airport books type of way. He was responsible for the launch of Stripe Press, a publishing house focused on books around scientific progress. I’ve bought a few Stripe Press books and, in addition to being well-written and interesting, the quality of the books—as in paper, illustrations, and binding—is simply top notch.
Patrick Collison Loves Books
Years ago on a podcast I heard Patrick explain John’s philosophy on how to decide which books to read and it’s always stuck with me. To paraphrase, John’s idea was this:
There are more quality, enjoyable-to-read books that exist than one could ever finish in one’s lifetime; if you are ever reading anything other than what you think is the very best book in the world for you to read at that moment in time, you have chosen a sub-optimal strategy for picking which book to read.
I don’t completely agree, however I was probably too far in the opposite direction—forcing myself to finish every book. And even though I don’t agree, as an avid reader I’m always excited to find out that there is a smart person out there concerning themselves with the search for “the best books.”
If you are like me in this way, always looking for new great books to read, you will be happy to know that on Patrick’s website, he has a list of the books in his personal library. He puts the books into three categories:
Particularly great
Substantially above average
Everything else
When I read these categories, I searched for a sorted, clickable list elsewhere but couldn’t find one. I could not tell whether he meant for particularly great or substantially above average to be better, so I checked out the source code for the page, downloaded the whole list, used Excel to trim out the HTML, and pivoted them back into a new table to see what was going on. (As of writing this in September 2022) the results were that there are 778 books on the list:
20 are particularly great
71 are substantially above average
687 are left over
So I am going to assume particularly great is the highest praise he’s giving since it’s the shortest list. Here are Patrick Collison’s favorite books, separated into three categories and listed alphabetically by title. I plan to read a lot of these in the future, and when I do, I will mark them with an asterisk and leave a separate link for my review.
Patrick Collison’s Book Recommendations
Particularly Great Books
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure)
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great
Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos
Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp
Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the world he made up
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal
Click here to back to the top.
Substantially Above Average Books
A Decade of Research: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, 1970-1980
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Infrastructures)
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation
In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Great
Midnight's Children: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
Orality and Literacy: 30th Anniversary Edition (New Accents)
Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love
Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity
Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World
The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution
The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects
The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding
The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley
The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World
The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912
Click here to back to the top.
Good Books (Everything Else on the List)
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
A Minor Momentousness in the History of Love (in) One Story: Volume 8, Number 14
A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Transatlantic Classics)
A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving
A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing
A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It 1st Edition
A Window on Eternity: A Biologist's Walk Through Gorongosa National Park
Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage
Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators: NAVWEPS 00-80T-80 (FAA Handbooks series)
An Introduction to Harmonic Analysis (Cambridge Mathematical Library)
And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared: TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving
Ask Me Anything (A collection of Reddit's best from r/IAmA Volume 1)
Backpacking California: Mountain, Foothill, Coastal and Desert Adventures in the Golden State
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
Beyond The Checkride: What Your Flight Instructor Never Taught You
Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion
Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing
Branding Terror: The Logotypes and Iconography of Insurgent Groups and Terrorist Organizations
Bunreacht na hEireann (English and Irish Edition) Constitution of Ireland
Calculus On Manifolds: A Modern Approach To Classical Theorems Of Advanced Calculus
Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
Coding the Matrix: Linear Algebra through Applications to Computer Science
Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism
Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education
Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions
Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital
Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City
Designing Data Visualizations: Representing Informational Relationships
Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares A Context Sensitive Approach
Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language
Engines of Logic: Mathematicians and the Origin of the Computer
Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring sanity to our politics, our economy, and our lives
FAR/AIM 2013: Federal Aviation Regulations/Aeronautical Information Manual (FAR/AIM series)
Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought
Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectuals
Flying the Alaska Wild: The Adventures and Misadventures of an Alaska Bush Pilot
From Satori to Silicon Valley: San Francisco and the American Counterculture
Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy
Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management
Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire
Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe, and America
Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great
How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy)
How to Be a Carioca: The Alternative Guide for the Tourist in Rio
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
In Praise of Idleness: And Other Essays (Routledge Classics)
In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World
Instrument Flight Training Manual As Developed by Professional Instrument Courses, Inc. 3rd Ed.
Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World
John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman
Kawasaki Klr650 1987-2006: Service, Repair, Maintenance (Clymer Motorcycle Repair)
Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game (Volume I) (Learn to Play Go Series)
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
Life in Moving Fluids: The Physical Biology of Flow (Princeton Paperbacks)
Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker (Modern Library Paperbacks)
Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (Inside Technology)
Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb
Manifestoes: A Study of the National Recovery Administration
Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change
Max Trescott's G1000 Glass Cockpit Handbook with WAAS 4th Edition
Memory Machines: The Evolution of Hypertext (Anthem Scholarship in the Digital Age)
Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
Model View Culture Quarterly No. 1: New writing on technology, diveristy and culture
Model View Culture Quarterly No. 2: New writing on technology, diveristy and culture
My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles (Dover Recreational Math)
Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Canto)
Nmap Network Scanning: The Official Nmap Project Guide to Network Discovery and Security Scanning
No One a Neutral: Political Hostage-Taking in the Modern World
Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity 1st Edition
Out of the Blue Too: More scary and often funny tales from the Royal Air Force and Friends
Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge: FAA-H-8083-25A (FAA Handbooks)
Pioneer Aviators of the World: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Pilots of 100 Countries
Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment
Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the Tactics Behind China's Production Game
Priceless: The Case that Brought Down the Visa/MasterCard Bank Cartel
Princes of the Yen: Japan's Central Bankers and the Transformation of the Economy (East Gate Books)
Programmers at Work: Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry (Tempus)
Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job, 2nd Edition
Quantum Physics of Atoms, Molecules, Solids, Nuclei, and Particles
Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West
Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128
Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century
Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World
Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business
Simulation and Its Discontents: (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World
Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965
Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet
Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012: A Fortune Magazine Book
Technological Nature: Adaptation and the Future of Human Life
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology 1st Edition
The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science
The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth
The Anabasis: Or, Expedition of Cyrus, and the Memorabilis of Socrates
The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 1: Fundamental Algorithms, 3rd Edition
The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life (Harvard Business School Press)
The Bell System Technical Journal: July-August 1978, Vol 57 No. 6 Pt. 2 , UNIX Time-Sharing System
The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky 1st ed.
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee: Growing, Roasting, and Drinking, with Recipes
The Chicken from Minsk: And 99 Other Infuriatingly Challenging Brain Teasers from the Great
The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer
The Children's Machine: Rethinking School In The Age Of The Computer
The Chosen Instrument: Pan Am, Juan Trippe, The Rise and Fall of an American Entrepreneur
The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Inside Technology)
The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life
The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought
The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational
The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution
The Emperor's New Mind - Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics
The Entrepreneur's Manual: Business Start-Ups, Spin-Offs, and Innovative Management
The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, The Definitive Edition Volume 3 (2nd Edition)
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1: Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat
The Fifth Generation: Artificial Intelligence & Japan's Computer Challenge to the World
The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup
The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress
The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society (The Da Capo series in science)
The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World
The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates the Gift of Language
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books) 1st Edition
The Missing Risk Premium: Why Low Volatility Investing Works
The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur
The Moon: Resources, Future Development and Settlement (Springer Praxis Books)
The Move beyond Form: Creative Undoing in Literature and the Arts since 1960
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mysteries)
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
The New Rules of Lifting: Six Basic Moves for Maximum Muscle
The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science
The New Typography: A Handbook for Modern Designers (1st English translation)
The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area
The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global Stability
The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey
The Rain Forests of Home: Profile Of A North American Bioregion
The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World (Bradford Books)
The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great
The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications 1st Edition
The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics
The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation, 1900-1950
Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students
This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital
This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future (Edge Question Series)
Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses, Old Man, The Bear (Vintage International)
Toward a radical middle: Fourteen pieces of reporting and criticism
Trading Places: How We Are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It
Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist
Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual Behaviour 1st Edition
Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda
What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer
What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence
Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future
Wireshark Network Analysis: The Official Wireshark Certified Network Analyst Study Guide
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
I’ll borrow any of the particularly great books from you when you’re done with them.