• Small Things Considered: Why There is No Perfect Design by Henry Petroski
  Review: This book is about twice as long as it needs to be. In short, there is no perfect design because there are always tradeoffs to be made.
• Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan
  Review: Kaplan starts the book describing the auction of assets from his failed startup. The rest of the book is a thrilling adventure about how he got to this point. Must-read material for anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit.
• The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny by Nicholas Carr
  Review: Carr makes a compelling case that computing will eventually be delivered as a service, just like electricity is today. He traces the beginnings of the electrical utility and software companies and argues convincingly for his thesis.
• The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It's Transforming the American Economy by Charles Fishman
  Review: What's the effect of a local Wal-Mart store opening in your town? What's the full impact of being able to buy salmon for $3.99 per pound? What happens to those who supply to Wal-Mart, and to those who refuse? Reading about the answers to these questions (loss of about five local jobs in five years, pollution from salmon farms, it's a mixed bag) is illuminating.
• Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World by Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone
  Review: A history of the persecution of Michael Servetus and the Unitarian Church. I thought I knew a lot about religious persecution during the Reformation, but there was even more going on.
• AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis by William H. Brown, Raphael C. Malveau, Hays W. McCormick III, Thomas J. Mowbray
  Review: Educational. Watch out for the warning signs in this book!
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
  Review: Bryson shows you how rewarding and difficult it is to hike the Appalachian Trail.
• Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
  Review: As an IBMer, it's an inspiring read. Lou's tale is about how simple but difficult it is to run an extra-large business.
• The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker
  Review: Beinhocker debunks several theories of Traditional Economics and introduces the reader to a new field called Complexity Economics. The gist is that economies can grow best when there are many different products and businesses, and that the best products and businesses rise to the top through evolutionary measures.
• The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky by Joel Spolsky
  Review: Another must-read book for computer scientists. Joel selects essays from the best writing software engineers, and each one teaches a valuable lesson. Learn why Python imposes a style on a developer, why Microsoft fixes application bugs by changing Windows itself, how many people it really takes to add a feature, and more.
• Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes by Alfie Kohn
  Review: The title is counter-intuitive, but Kohn gives a convincing argument. The primary failure of rewards is that they destroy intrinsic (internal, self) motivation, and focus effort on the reward instead of the task. This book touches on ideas I first read from Joel Spolsky about how hard it is to measure people at a task, since people will starting 'gaming' the measurement system instead of performing the task.
• Beside Still Waters by Gregg Easterbrook
  Review: An earlier work by the author of The Progress Paradox, it presents a compelling new way to read the Bible -- not as a story of Man's growth, but of God's. Easterbrook takes both believers and non-believers to task for framing religious debate as being an all-or-nothing affair. This is not a conversion text, and it's a great read no matter your beliefs.
• The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad by Michael A. Cusumano
  Review: Great insight for how software businesses can succeed
• Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach by Gerald M. Weinberg
  Review: A primer on how to achieve the MOI of leadership: Motivation, Organization, and Innovation
• Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters that will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity by Joel Spolsky
  Review: Perhaps the longest-titled book on software engineering in print! Joel has worked at Microsoft and Juno, as well as at his own company. Joel's insights on management should be required reading for software managers, as soon as they finish with the Mythical Man-Month.
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks
  Review: A must-read book for computer scientists, most of the content is still relevant over twenty years after the initial publish. The man-month is a mythical unit of measurement because software engineers are not interchangable. In addition, adding more programmers to a late project can make it later because the number of potential interactions rises quadratically despite a linear increase in programmers. This book is filled with great thought exercises from a knowledgable author.
• The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
  Review: The world is flat, the world is flat, the world is flat. Ok Tom, we hear you! Seriously, the book is a good read. Friedman explores many aspects of the globalized world. Globalization and increased communication abilities are the forces that have flattened the world. The Internet has helped make communication easier to opposite sides of the world, which enables companies to offshore work to places where labor is cheapest. The solution proposed by Friedman is to ride the flattening wave, and to make yourself more valuable. In his words, it is not sufficient to make vanilla ice cream anymore, because anyone can do that. Instead, you should sell sundaes.
• Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
  Review: I didn't know what to expect from this book after I heard all the controversey around it. The most controversial claim is that legalized abortion in the US was a major factor in the lower violent crime rates of the 1990s, but it is presented with rather compelling evidence. My biggest complaint about the book is that it did not have footnotes marked in the text, but included a separate Notes section at the end with all of the citations.
• Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
  Review: This book is a collection of essays that appear on Paul Graham's website (paulgraham.com). Graham has interesting ideas about the software engineering field and is a major advocate of the Lisp programming language. The chapters on spam filtering and nerd psychology are quite interesting.
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
  Review: Michael Lewis tells the tale of Billy Beane and Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics, a team that has one of the highest winning percentages for the decade despite its relatively low payroll. Lewis explores the new approaches taken in evaluating players, such as ignoring traditional statistics like batting average and instead using on-base percentage, and other ways of finding talented players that other teams are missing. A fascinating read for sports lovers, and a great lesson in thinking outside the box.
• The Innovator's Dilemma : The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen
  Review: The innovator's dilemna is how to deal with disruptive technology, which solves different problems than the ones your customers want solved today. Ignoring a disruptive technology in favor of a current, "sustaining" technology is initially more profitable, as a disruptive technology is only desired at the low end of a market. As the technology improves, the disruptive technology moves upmarket and can sink companies that did not invest in it. A very interesting read for technologists and managers.
• The Progress Paradox : How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse by Gregg Easterbrook
  Review: An uplifting book that debunks the notion of "the good old days". By nearly any metric you choose, life is getting better in this country and around the world. Most of life's primary problems have been solved for the average individual (such as food, water, and shelter), which leaves only secondary problems. However, secondary problems are innumerous and cannot all be solved. Essentially, we have more time to feel worse, precisely because we don't have to spend as much time working! Of course there were fewer problems in the times of 14 hour workdays versus 40 hour weeks -- you only had time to worry about feeding yourself, if that. A great read for anyone.
• Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
  Review: The subconscious part of your mind acts quickly and with powerful effect. Gladwell also tells us how to train the subconscious. Well-written and recommended for anyone.
• Next: The Future Just Happened by Michael Lewis
  Review: Lewis takes an interesting look at some dot-com technologies, including how a teenage boy ran afoul of the SEC, even though the SEC was not sure what he was doing.
• What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles
  Review: Perhaps the premier book for those deciding what career path to take. My graduate advisor had me read this to determine that I really wanted to go into the software field.
• Critical Mass by Philip Ball
  Review: Interesting applications of concepts from theoretical physics to real-life situations. One chapter points out the similarity between physical states of gaseous particles to rush-hour traffic. A rudimentary understanding of basic physics helps when reading this book. Very informative.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Universe by Douglas Adams
  Review: Maybe the funniest book collection I have ever read. This five-part "trilogy" is written with teriffic dry English wit. I re-read the entire anthology about every two to three years. Must-read for any humor fan, and much better than the movie.
• The Humane Interface by Jeff Raskin
  Review: Raskin was the lead on the Apple Macintosh project and has several profound insights on human-computer interaction (HCI). Should be required reading for any computer interface designers.

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Ben & Jerry's: The Inside Scoop by Fred Lager
• Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
• The Macintosh Way: The Art of Guerrilla Management by Guy Kawasaki
• Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism by Thomas Friedman
• The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest: A Silicon Valley Novel by Po Bronson
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

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