Recommendations you can check.
by Isaac Asimov, 1951
Who uses, recommends or left Foundation, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
4 people
foundation series is so good.
Asked on The Knowledge Project (Shane Parrish, third conversation) for old books that changed how he thinks; quote from the episode's YouTube automatic captions, so spellings of names are the caption track's.
2026-09-15·youtube.com ↗
Khan Academy was inspired in part by the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. The concept of collecting and spreading knowledge for the benefit of humanity deeply resonated with me.
Opening his Khan Academy blog post "Five Book Recommendations from Sal"
2025-02-26·blog.khanacademy.org ↗
Asimov’s Foundation books were a strong influence on me as a child
Replying on X to a question about what shaped his thinking.
2023-06-06·x.com ↗
Foundation, The Lessons of History, Unqualified Reservations, A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Selfish Gene, Albion's Seed, War and Peace and War, Stalin's War, Energy and Civilization, Who We Are and How We Got Here, The Ancient City, The Fourth Turning, The Grey Lady Winked
The draft reading list for his Network School, in the “Macrohistory” section.
2025-02-02·balajis.com ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.