# List of 40 books which cover major tech ideas that are influential 

Source: https://x.com/patrickc/status/1825618450837885036
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/List-of-40-books-which-cover-major-tech-ideas-that-are-influential?index=0x66c440bbe24ff61d3eb51234517dd2356de22aacc44c93785f230b8e270f5ebbc62a8bca
Submitted by 0x1E92...C2d4 on 2024-08-20 UTC, 1 upvote, 0 comments

## Summary

A list of 40 books is offered as a rough map of the major ideas influential in tech circles, not as a list everyone should read. The compiler suggests the list may be stratified by generation. It includes works such as Seeing Like a State, The Mythical Man-Month, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Zero to One, The Lean Startup, The Selfish Gene, and Gödel, Escher, Bach, alongside biographies like Ashlee Vance's Elon biography and Titan on Rockefeller.

## Article

I think it's stratified by generation, but here's an attempt. (This isn't the list of books that I think one ought to read -- it's just the list that I think roughly covers the major ideas that are influential here.)

The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce
Seeing Like a State
The Dream Machine
The Sovereign Individual
The Beginning of Infinity
Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman
Softwar
Ashlee Vance's Elon biography
The Mythical Man-Month
Mindstorms
Masters of Doom
Skunk Works
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Thinking in Systems
Superintelligence
The Whole Earth Catalog
Zero to One
The Hard Thing about Hard Things
Founders at Work
Showstopper
Dealers of Lightning
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
PG's essays
The Rise and Fall of American Growth
The Big Score
Finite and Infinite Games
A Pattern Language
The Selfish Gene
The Lean Startup
Marginal Revolution (if it has to be a book, Stubborn Attachments)
Revolution in the Valley
Uncanny Valley
LessWrong
Slate Star Codex(/ACT)
The PayPal Wars
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Diamond Age
What the Dormouse Said
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Titan (on Rockefeller)
The Power Broker
Gödel, Escher, Bach