Library

7 books · 7 movies · 7 shows

Bryan Burrough and John Helyar · 1990

Deal theater, incentives, ego, and capital structure told with enough texture to stay useful.

Charles T. Munger · 2005

A compounding manual disguised as speeches and mental models.

Walter Isaacson · 2011

A useful, imperfect study of taste, intensity, product judgment, and the cost of bending reality.

David Deutsch · 2011

Explanations, progress, and the strange optimism of taking ideas seriously.

Richard W. Hamming · 2020

A clear push toward better questions, deeper work, and choosing problems that can compound.

Claire Hughes Johnson · 2023

A practical operating manual for hiring, feedback, meetings, and the systems that let teams keep pace.

Rick Rubin · 2023

Less about art advice, more about keeping attention clean enough to notice what is alive.

CH 02 The Wire David Simon · 2002

Institutions, incentives, language, and systems failure with almost no wasted motion.

Taste, status, reinvention, and the quiet violence of people selling stories to themselves.

A clean escalation study: choices, consequences, and the slow conversion of competence into damage.

Maybe the best show about building: ambition, taste, ego, timing, and the work between versions.

Capital, family systems, language games, and the comedy of people mistaking proximity for power.

Operations as emotion: standards, pressure, systems, taste, and the small rituals that hold it together.

A newer signal: strange premise, precise world-building, and the kind of show that rewards close watching.

Books 7

Barbarians at the Gate Bryan Burrough and John Helyar 1990 Deal theater, incentives, ego, and capital structure told with enough texture to stay useful.
Poor Charlie's Almanack Charles T. Munger 2005 A compounding manual disguised as speeches and mental models.
Scaling People Claire Hughes Johnson 2023 A practical operating manual for hiring, feedback, meetings, and the systems that let teams keep pace.
Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson 2011 A useful, imperfect study of taste, intensity, product judgment, and the cost of bending reality.
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering Richard W. Hamming 2020 A clear push toward better questions, deeper work, and choosing problems that can compound.
The Beginning of Infinity David Deutsch 2011 Explanations, progress, and the strange optimism of taking ideas seriously.
The Creative Act Rick Rubin 2023 Less about art advice, more about keeping attention clean enough to notice what is alive.

Her Spike Jonze 2013 Still one of the better emotional reference points for software that becomes intimate.
Home Alone Chris Columbus 1990 Comfort movie, but also a tiny masterpiece of place, timing, and physical comedy.
Inception Christopher Nolan 2010 Architecture, memory, teams, and layered rules built into a very rewatchable puzzle.
Lilo & Stitch Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois 2002 Warm, strange, and sharper than it looks: family, misfit energy, and actual visual personality.
Moneyball Bennett Miller 2011 A clean story about constraints, taste, and finding leverage where the room refuses to look.
The Dark Knight Christopher Nolan 2008 A near-perfect machine: pressure, tradeoffs, escalation, and the feeling of a city becoming a system.
The Social Network David Fincher 2010 Founders, status, momentum, and the cost of wanting the machine to move faster.

Breaking Bad Vince Gilligan 2008 A clean escalation study: choices, consequences, and the slow conversion of competence into damage.
Halt and Catch Fire Christopher Cantwell, Christopher C. Rogers 2014 Maybe the best show about building: ambition, taste, ego, timing, and the work between versions.
Mad Men Matthew Weiner 2007 Taste, status, reinvention, and the quiet violence of people selling stories to themselves.
Pluribus Vince Gilligan 2025 A newer signal: strange premise, precise world-building, and the kind of show that rewards close watching.
Succession Jesse Armstrong 2018 Capital, family systems, language games, and the comedy of people mistaking proximity for power.
The Bear Christopher Storer 2022 Operations as emotion: standards, pressure, systems, taste, and the small rituals that hold it together.
The Wire David Simon 2002 Institutions, incentives, language, and systems failure with almost no wasted motion.