Bookshelf

The books that shaped how I see the world
and inform how I think and act.

Sections: Climate Books | Product Books

All-time favourites

Books that had a lasting impression on me and that I keep going back to.

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Book cover of «Range» by David Epstein Book cover of «Factfulness» by Hans Rosling Book cover of «Thinking, Fast and Slow» by Daniel Kahneman Book cover of «On Bullshit» by Harry G. Frankfurt Book cover of «Gegen den Hass» by Carolin Emcke Book cover of «The Uninhabitable Earth» by David Wallace-Wells Book cover of «Invisible Women» by Caroline Criado Perez Book cover of «Between the World and Me» by Ta Nehisi-Coates Book cover of «Darkness Visible» by William Styron Book cover of «A Little Life» by Hanya Yanagihara Book cover of «The Life You Can Save» by Peter Singer Book cover of «The Art of Gathering» by Priya Parker Book cover of «Wie Mutter sein» by Michèle Roten Book cover of «It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work» by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson Book cover of «Punished By Rewards» by Alfie Kohn Book cover of «Utopia for Realists» by Rutger Bregman Book cover of «Competing Against Luck» by Clayton M. Christensen Book cover of «Radical Candor» by Kim Scott Book cover of «The Scout Mindset» by Julia Galef Book cover of «The Precipice» by Toby Ord Book cover of «Drawdown» by Paul Hawken Book cover of «On Writing» by Stephen King Book cover of «Lost & Found» by Kathryn Schultz Book cover of «Hope in the Dark» by Rebecca Solnit Book cover of «How I Learned to Understand the World» by Hans Rosling Book cover of «The Sixth Extinction» by Elizabeth Kolbert

2024

Book cover of «Ice» by Amy Brady Book cover of «I Am a Book. I Am a Portal to the Universe.» by Stefanie Posavec & Miriam Quick Book cover of «Not The End of The World» by Hannah Ritchie Book cover of «Evidence Guided» by Itamar Gilad Book cover of «Never Split the Difference» by Chris Voss Book cover of «Climate Capitalism» by Akshat Rathi Book cover of «Landkrank» by Nikolaj Schultz Book cover of «How Migration Really Works» by Hein de Haas

2023

Book cover of «Nomad Century» by Gaia Vince Book cover of «Thinking in Bets» by Annie Duke Book cover of «On Bullshit» by Harry G. Frankfurt Book cover of «Hot Air» by Peter Stott Book cover of «Stuff Matters» by Mark Miodownik Book cover of «The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks» by Rebecca Skloot Book cover of «The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism» by Martin Wolf Book cover of «How Big Things Get Done» by Bent Flybjerg & Dan Gardner Book cover of «The World for Sale» by Javier Blas & Jack Farchy Book cover of «Not Too Late» by Rebecca Solnit & Thelma Young Lutunatabua Book cover of «Demokratie im Feuer» by Jonas Schaible Book cover of «AI 2041» by Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan Book cover of «Excellent Advice for Living» by Kevin Kelly Book cover of «Liquid Rules» by Mark Miodownik Book cover of «What's Our Problem» by Tim Urban Book cover of «The Great Derangement» by Amitav Ghosh Book cover of «Hot Mess» by Matt Winning Book cover of «Wütendes Wetter» by Friederike Otto Book cover of «Paved Paradise» by Henry Gabar Book cover of «Zeit der Mauersegler» by Julian Schmidli Book cover of «Earth for All» by Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Ghosh, Jorgen Randers, Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes Book cover of «Demand-Side Sales 101» by Bob Moesta & Greg Engle Book cover of «The Art of Explanation» by Ros Atkins Book cover of «Same as Ever» by Morgan Housel Book cover of «The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows» by John Koenig Book cover of «Die Kunst des klugen Streitgesprächs» by Reto U. Schneider Book cover of «A Therapeutic Journey» by Alain De Botton

2022

→ Twitter thread with mini-reviews of each book

Book cover of «Matrix» by Lauren Groff Book cover of «The Cold Start Problem» by Andrew Chen Book cover of «Losing Earth» by Nathaniel Rich Book cover of «Speed & Scale» by John Doerr Book cover of «To Paradise» by Hanya Yanagihara Book cover of «Lost & Found» by Kathryn Schultz Book cover of «Die Erschöpfung der Frauen» by Franziska Schutzbach Book cover of «The Great Mental Models Vol.3» by Rhiannon Beaubien and Rosie Leizrowice Book cover of «The Power of Regret» by Daniel H. Pink Book cover of «The Morning Star» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Bewilderment» by Richard Powers Book cover of «When We Cease to Understand the World» by Benjamin Labatut Book cover of «Erzählende Affen» by Samira El Ouassil & Friedemann Karig Book cover of «Bloodlands» by Timothy Snyder Book cover of «Demystifying Disability» by Emily Ladau Book cover of «Humble Pi» by Matt Parker Book cover of «Für den Zweifel» by Carolin Emcke & Thomas Strässle Book cover of «Why We Make Things & Why It Matters» by Peter Korn Book cover of «Invisible Cities» by Italo Calvino Book cover of «Radical Focus» by Christina Wodtke Book cover of «Continuous Discovery Habits» by Teresa Torres Book cover of «The Swimmers» by Julie Otsuka Book cover of «The Half-life of Facts» by Samuel Arbesman Book cover of «How I Learned to Understand the World» by Hans Rosling Book cover of «Laufen» by Isabel Bogdan Book cover of «Build» by Tody Fadell Book cover of «Being Wrong» by Kathryn Schultz Book cover of «The Year of Magical Thinking» by Joan Didion Book cover of «The Wet Engine» by Brian Doyle Book cover of «The Science of Storytelling» by Will Storr Book cover of «Around the World in Eighty Days» by Jules Verne Book cover of «An Immense World» by Ed Yong Book cover of «Where is my flying car» by J. Storrs Hall Book cover of «The Dawn of Everything» by David Graeber, David Wengrow Book cover of «The Handmaid's Tale» by Margaret Atwood Book cover of «The Innovator's Dilemma» by Clayton M. Christensen Book cover of «What We Owe The Future» by William MacAskill Book cover of «Son of Elsewhere» by Elamin Abdelmahmoud Book cover of «The Alignment Problem» by Brian Christian Book cover of «Get Together» by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh & Kai Elmer Book cover of «What If 2» by Randall Munroe Book cover of «On Tyranny» by Timothy Snyder Book cover of «Electrify» by Saul Griffith Book cover of «Hope in the Dark» by Rebecca Solnit Book cover of «Gegen die Ohnmacht» by Luisa Neubauer & Dagmar Reemtsma Book cover of «The Climate Book» by Created by Greta Thunberg Book cover of «The Chaos Machine» by Max Fisher Book cover of «Klartext Klima» by Sara Schurmann

2021

→ Twitter thread with mini-reviews of each book

Book cover of «Sum» by David Eagleman Book cover of «How Democracies Die» by Steven Levitzky & Daniel Zieblatt Book cover of «The Future We Choose» by Christiana Figueres & Tom Rivett-Carnac Book cover of «Twilight of Democracy» by Anne Appelbaum Book cover of «The Life You Can Save» by Peter Singer Book cover of «Stuff You Should Know» by Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant Book cover of «Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows» by Melanie Joy Book cover of «We Should All Be Feminists» by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Book cover of «Beginners» by Tom Vanderbilt Book cover of «The Great Mental Models Vol. 1» by Shane Parrish Book cover of «The Great Mental Models Vol. 2» by Shane Parrish & Rhiannon Beaubien Book cover of «Autumn» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «We Need New Stories» by Nesrine Malik Book cover of «Putin's People» by Catherine Belton Book cover of «Doughnut Economics» by Kate Raworth Book cover of «Odes» by David van Reybrouk Book cover of «Under a White Sky» by Elizabeth Kolbert Book cover of «Good Strategy Bad Strategy» by Richard Rumelt Book cover of «Winter» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Climate: A New Story» by Charles Eisenstein Book cover of «Science Fictions» by Stuart Ritchie Book cover of «Shape Up» by Ryan Singer Book cover of «The Art of Leadership» by Michael Lopp Book cover of «The Code Breaker» by Walter Isaacson Book cover of «Journal» by Carolin Emcke Book cover of «Empowered» by Marty Cagan & Chris Jones Book cover of «Spring» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Summer» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Superforecasting» by Philip E. Tetlock & Dan Gardner Book cover of «The Scout Mindset» by Julia Galef Book cover of «The Elements of Eloquence» by Mark Forsyth Book cover of «The New Breen» by Kate Darling Book cover of «Can't Even» by Anne Helen Peterson Book cover of «The Little Book of Hygge» by Meik Wiking Book cover of «The Power of Not Thinking» by Simon Roberts Book cover of «The Precipice» by Toby Ord Book cover of «Noise» by Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein Book cover of «Outline» by Rachel Cusk Book cover of «Die kleinste gemeinsame Wirklichkeit» by Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim Book cover of «Think Again» by Adam Grant Book cover of «How To Live» by Derek Sivers Book cover of «The Inevitable» by Kevin Kelly Book cover of «Wie mit (m)einem Körper Leben» by Michèle Roten Book cover of «Time Travel» by James Gleick Book cover of «How to Own the Room» by Viv Groskop Book cover of «Word Perfect» by Susie Dent Book cover of «The Hummingbird's Gift» by Sy Montgomery Book cover of «The Monster at Our Door» by Mike Davis Book cover of «The 99% Invisible City» by Roman Mars Book cover of «In Defense of Food» by Michael Pollan Book cover of «The Passion Economy» by Adam Davidson Book cover of «Apocalypse Never» by Michael Shellenberger Book cover of «Under The Sky We Make» by Kimberly Nicholas Book cover of «Machen» by Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschäppeler Book cover of «Barça» by Simon Kuper Book cover of «Four Thousand Weeks» by Oliver Burkeman Book cover of «Snow Crash» by Neall Stephenson Book cover of «The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People» by Stephen R. Corvey Book cover of «The Good Enough Parent» by The School of Life Book cover of «Several Short Sentences About Writing» by Verlyn Klinkenborg Book cover of «The Racial Contract» by Charles Mills Book cover of «Everything» by Rutherford & Fry Book cover of «How to Measure Anything» by Douglas W. Hubbard Book cover of «The Year in Tech 2022» by Harvard Business Review Book cover of «How To Blow Up a Pipeline» by Andreas Malm Book cover of «Arriving Today» by Christopher Mims Book cover of «Breath» by James Nestor Book cover of «Shape» by Jordan Ellenberg Book cover of «Nothing is Wrong and Here is Why» by Alexandra Petri Book cover of «Auf Lange Sicht» by Marie-José Kolly & Simon Schmid Book cover of «This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends» by Nicole Perlroth Book cover of «Radical Candor» by Kim Scott Book cover of «Out of Office» by Charlie Warzel & Anne Helen Petersen Book cover of «A Bigger Picture» by Vanessa Nakate

2020

→ 10+1 great summer reads in 2020

Book cover of «Das Flüssige Land» by Raphaela Edelbauer Book cover of «The Order of Time» by Carlo Rovelli Book cover of «Algorithms of Opression» by Safiya Noble Book cover of «Kurt» by Sarah Kuttner Book cover of «The Art of Stillness» by Pico Ayer Book cover of «The Laws of Simplicity» by John Maeda Book cover of «The Night of the Gun» by David Carr Book cover of «The Value of Everything» by Mariana Mazzucato Book cover of «Why We Book cover of «Sprache und Sein» by Kübra Gümüşay Book cover of «Inspired» by Marty Cagan Book cover of «Competing Against Luck» by Clayton M. Christensen Book cover of «What You Do Is Who You Are» by Ben Horiwitz Book cover of «Punished By Rewards» by Alfie Kohn Book cover of «Prisoners of Geography» by Tim Marshall Book cover of «The Man Who Solved The Market» by Gregory Zuckerman Book cover of «Flour Water Salt Yeast» by Ken Forkish Book cover of «Pandemics» by Christain W. McMillen Book cover of «Lead From The Outside» by Stacey Abrams Book cover of «The Manual» by Epictetus Book cover of «No Filter» by Sarah Frier Book cover of «Humankind» by Rutger Bregman Book cover of «Difficult Women» by Helen Lewis Book cover of «Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen aber wissen sollten» by Alice Hasters Book cover of «I Contain Multitudes» by Ed Yong Book cover of «How To Be An Antiracist» by Ibram X. Kendi Book cover of «How to be Black» by Baratunde Thurston Book cover of «Why I Book cover of «The Biggest Bluff» by Anna Konnikova Book cover of «The Design of Everyday Things» by Don Norman Book cover of «The Number Bias» by Sanne Blauw Book cover of «How Are We Going to Explain This» by Jelmer Mommers Book cover of «Hell Yeah or No» by Derek Sivers Book cover of «Six Degrees» by Mark Lynas Book cover of «Calling Bullshit» by Carl T. Bergstrom & Jevin D. West Book cover of «Born a Crime» by Trevor Noah Book cover of «A Woman of No Importance» by Sonia Purnell Book cover of «Caste» by Isabel Wilkerson Book cover of «Working» by Robert A. Caro Book cover of «A World Without Work» by Daniel Susskind Book cover of «The Idle Traveller» by Dan Kieran Book cover of «The Hedgehog and the Fox» by Isaiah Berlin Book cover of «Endure» by Alex Hutchinson Book cover of «All We Can Save» by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine Wilkinson Book cover of «Give People Money» by Ann Lowrey Book cover of «The School of Life» by Alain De Botton Book cover of «Atomic Habits» by James Clear Book cover of «Rework» by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson Book cover of «Cribsheet» by Emily Oster Book cover of «Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy» by Tim Harford Book cover of «The Next Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy» by Tim Harford Book cover of «Biased» by Jennifer L. Eberhardt Book cover of «The Dictator Book cover of «The Fearless Organization» by Amy C. Edmondson Book cover of «The Innovation Stack» by Jim McKelvey Book cover of «x+y» by Eugenia Cheng Book cover of «How to be Successful Without Hurting Men's Feelings» by Sarah Cooper Book cover of «Sisters of the War» by Rania Abouzeid Book cover of «Hearts and Minds: Harnessing Leadership, Culture and Talent to Really Go Digital» by Lucy Küng Book cover of «The Ministry of the Future» by Kim Stanley Robinson

2019

→ 11 books that have inspired me in 2019

Book cover of «The Joy and Sorrows of Parenting» by The School of Life Book cover of «Asymmetry» by Lisa Halliday Book cover of «Fundamentals of Data Visualization» by Claus O. Wilke Book cover of «21 Lessons for the 21st Century» by Yuval Noah Harari Book cover of «Haltung» by Melik Kiyak Book cover of «The Guns of August» by Barbara W. Tuchman Book cover of «The Sympathizer» by Viet Thanh Nguyen Book cover of «Clean Meat» by Paul Shapiro Book cover of «The Uninhabitable Earth» by David Wallace-Wells Book cover of «Scale» by Geoffrey West Book cover of «Debt — The First 5000 Years» by David Graeber Book cover of «So Sterben Wir» by Roland Schulz Book cover of «Invisible Women» by Caroline Criado Perez Book cover of «Factfulness» by Hans Rosling Book cover of «The Next Factory of the World» by Irene Yuan Sun Book cover of «Sprawlball» by Kirk Goldsberry Book cover of «AI Superpowers» by Kai-Fu Lee Book cover of «Fooled By Randomness» by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Book cover of «Ja Heisst Ja und» by Carolin Emcke Book cover of «Eine Frage der Moral» by Anatol Stefanowitsch Book cover of «Leadership on the Line» by Marty Linsky & Ronald Heifetz Book cover of «Prediction Machines» by Ajay Agrawal, Avi Goldfarb, Joshua Gans Book cover of «Super Thinking» by Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann Book cover of «Shape Up» by Ryan Singer Book cover of «The Entrepreneurial State» by Mariana Mazzucato Book cover of «Because Internet» by Gretchen McCulloch Book cover of «Range» by David Epstein Book cover of «The Summer Book» by Tove Jansson Book cover of «The Moment of Lift» by Melinda Gates Book cover of «She Said» by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey Book cover of «GDP — A Brief But Affectionate History» by Diane Coyle Book cover of «Outliers» by Malcom Gladwell Book cover of «Tausend Zeilen Lüge» by Juan Moreno Book cover of «Between the World and Me» by Ta Nehisi-Coates Book cover of «How To» by Randall Munroe Book cover of «Herkunft» by Sasa Stanišić Book cover of «How to Do Nothing» by Jenny Odell Book cover of «The Hard Thing About Hard Things» by Ben Horiwitz Book cover of «On Writing» by Stephen King Book cover of «Radikalisierungsmachinen» by Julia Ebner Book cover of «Our Women on the Ground» by Zahra Hankir Book cover of «Exit West» by Mohsin Hamid Book cover of «Unconditional Parenting» by Alfie Kohn Book cover of «Thick» by Tressie McMillan Cotton Book cover of «Men Explain Things to Me» by Rebecca Solnit Book cover of «Bird by Bird» by Anne Lamott Book cover of «Remote» by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

2018

Book cover of «Adler und Engel» by Julie Zeh Book cover of «Kämpfen» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat» by Samin Nosrat Book cover of «The Unwinding» by George Packer Book cover of «Post-Truth» by James Ball Book cover of «Sapiens» by Yuval Noah Harari Book cover of «The Information» by James Gleick Book cover of «Jenseits» by Yassin Musharbash Book cover of «Nudge» by Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein Book cover of «Homo Deus» by Yuval Noah Harari Book cover of «The Objects That Power the Global Economy» by Quartz Book cover of «1Q84» by Haruki Murakami Book cover of «Irrational Exuberance» by Robert J. Shiller Book cover of «1Q84 Book 3» by Haruki Murakami Book cover of «What I Talk About When I Talk About Running» by Haruki Murakami Book cover of «Zero» by Charles Seife Book cover of «Newsgames» by Bobby Schweizer, Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari Book cover of «Soccernomics» by Simon Kuper & Stefan Szymanski Book cover of «Algorithms to Live By» by Brian Christian & Thomas L. Griffiths Book cover of «The Evolution of Everything» by Matt Ridley Book cover of «Norma» by Sofi Oksanen Book cover of «Die Laufbibel» by Matthias Markquardt Book cover of «The Checklist Manifesto» by Atul Gawande Book cover of «Babyjahre» by Remo H. Largo Book cover of «Both Flesh and Not» by David Foster Wallance Book cover of «Hello Ruby» by Linda Ljukas Book cover of «Die Vereindeutigung der Welt» by Thomas Bauer Book cover of «Drawdown» by Paul Hawken Book cover of «Männer mit Erfahrung» by Castle Freeman Book cover of «Calypso» by David Sedaris Book cover of «The Sixth Extinction» by Elizabeth Kolbert Book cover of «Fear» by Bob Woodward Book cover of «Love, Pa» by Salome Müller Book cover of «If Beale Streat Could Talk» by James Baldwin Book cover of «Breaking News» by Alan Rusbridger Book cover of «The Art of Gathering» by Priya Parker Book cover of «Wie Mutter sein» by Michèle Roten Book cover of «It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work» by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson Book cover of «The Brain — A User's Guide» by The New Scientist Book cover of «No1» by Christof Gertsch & Mikael Krogerus

Before 2018

I didn't track my reading before 2018. What follows is a selection of books I remember reading before then.

Book cover of «The Filter Bubble» by Eli Pariser Book cover of «Sapiens» by Yuval Noah Harari Book cover of «Changing the World Is the Only Fit Work for a Grown Man» by Steve Harrison Book cover of «Understanding Comics» by Steve McCloud Book cover of «A Tear And A Smile» by Khalil Gibran Book cover of «Träumen» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Utopia for Realists» by Rutger Bregman Book cover of «Spielen» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Super Sad True Love Story» by Gary Shteyngart Book cover of «So schön wie im Himmel kanns hier gar nicht sein» by Christoph Schlingensief Book cover of «The Martian» by Andy Weir Book cover of «Sterben» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Leben» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «A History of the Future in 100 Objects» by Adrian Hon Book cover of «Nachtzug nach Lissabon» by Pascal Mercier Book cover of «Kämpfen» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Libra» by Don DeLillo Book cover of «Fahrenheit 451» by Ray Bradbury Book cover of «Weil es sagbar ist» by Carolin Emcke Book cover of «Epilogue» by Will Boast Book cover of «Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein» by Paul Watzlawick Book cover of «Program Or Be Programmed» by Douglas Rushkoff Book cover of «Play It Again» by Alan Rusbridger Book cover of «Present Shock» by Douglas Rushkoff Book cover of «Do No Harm» by Henry Marsh Book cover of «The Art of Game Design» by Jesse Schell Book cover of «Dark Matter» by Blake Crouch Book cover of «We Are Anonymous» by Ole Reissmann, Konrad Lischka Book cover of «Free» by Chris Anderson Book cover of «Here I Am — The Story of Tim Hetherington» by Alan Huffman Book cover of «A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again» by David Foster Wallace Book cover of «Steve Jobs» by Walter Isaacson Book cover of «No Logo» by Naomi Klein Book cover of «Congo» by David Van Reybrouck Book cover of «Lieben» by Karl Ove Knausgaard Book cover of «Darkness Visible» by William Styron Book cover of «A Little Life» by Hanya Yanagihara Book cover of «Thinking, Fast and Slow» by Daniel Kahneman Book cover of «On Bullshit» by Harry G. Frankfurt Book cover of «Gegen den Hass» by Carolin Emcke Book cover of «Im Westen nichts neues» by Erich Maria Remarque





Hello, nice to meet you. I'm David Bauer. I’m a journalist by training, a product person by conviction, and a generalist at heart. I love complex issues and helping people navigate them. Learn more →

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Weekly Filet

Make sense of what matters, today and for the future. Every Friday, I send out carefully curated recommendations on what to read, watch and listen to. Trusted by thousands of curious minds, since 2011.