Library

Some of my favorite books and documentaries in rough order of preference.

Nonfiction

Men To Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West 1840-1900

Irving Stone

The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Robert A. Caro

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

Robert A. Caro

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Robert M. Pirsig

The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

Thomas Hager

The Story of Civilization

Will Durant

The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West

Gregory Crouch

Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II

Jennet Conant

The Wright Brothers

David McCullough

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

Marc Levinson

The Last Lone Investor

John Wasik

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King

Rich Cohen

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Steve Martin

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Anthony Bourdain

McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire

Jeffrey Rothfeder

Becoming Trader Joe

Joe Coulombe

A Million Little Pieces

James Frey

Based on a True Story

Norm Macdonald

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard Feynman

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Daniel James Brown

Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing

Robert A. Caro

Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Intelligent Investor

Benjamin Graham

Fiction

Legends of the Fall

Jim Harrison

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

Documentaries

The Vietnam War

Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

The Brooklyn Bridge

Ken Burns

The Civil War

Ken Burns

Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery

Ken Burns

Operation Odessa

Tiller Russell

New York: A Documentary Film

Ric Burns

The War

Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio

Ken Burns