Co-founder and CEO of Shopify; Rails core alumnus, writes occasionally at tobi.lutke.com.
loved
I almost always will mention the lessons of history which is I just think the densest like the highest token quality book in existence like given for the length
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.
Investor and writer; former CTO of Coinbase, author of The Network State, and founder of Network School.
recommended
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.
Investment researcher and engineer who runs Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, writing on macroeconomics, currency systems and equity analysis.
recommendedaffiliate link
It’s not an investing book, but The Lessons of History is one of the most important books for long-term investors to read, in my opinion.
Her ranked list of the investing books she recommends (schema datePublished 2019-01-30, dateModified 2025-05-04). Every third-party book on the page links to Amazon through her affiliate tag (tag=lynalden-20).
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:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.