Books Patrick Collison has recommended
Books Patrick Collison flags as particularly great on his personal bookshelf page, several of which Stripe Press later republished.
Patrick Collison has no affiliation with this site and does not endorse it. Recommendations are quoted from public sources listed at the bottom. Background: Wikipedia.
Collison's site has a bookshelf page: a near-complete catalog of the physical books he owns, with the ones he found particularly great highlighted. He is explicit that it is a catalog, not a must-read list, that roughly half are unread, and that it has not been updated in about a decade. The highlighted titles are what this page collects.
The list is a map of the 'progress studies' worldview he and Tyler Cowen named: how knowledge compounds, how institutions and tools shape what gets built, and why growth slowed. Four of the books below were later reissued by Stripe Press, the publishing arm he started.
The list
The Beginning of Infinity
David Deutsch · 2011
Highlighted on his shelf; he has called it a really beautiful modern philosophy book.
A Pattern Language
Christopher Alexander et al. · 1977
Highlighted as particularly great: 253 patterns for towns, buildings and rooms that software people have borrowed from for forty years.
The Dream Machine
M. Mitchell Waldrop · 2001
The story of J.C.R. Licklider and the birth of personal computing; Stripe Press republished it after it went out of print.
The Rise and Fall of American Growth
Robert J. Gordon · 2016
The foundational text of progress studies: why the century from 1870 to 1970 was unrepeatable, and the question of whether it has to be.
Poor Charlie's Almanack
Charles T. Munger, ed. Peter Kaufman · 2023
Highlighted; Stripe Press now publishes the edition in print.
Mindstorms
Seymour Papert · 1980
Papert on children, computers and learning by building: the book behind Logo and much of constructionist education.
Metamagical Themas
Douglas Hofstadter · 1985
Hofstadter's collected Scientific American columns on self-reference, pattern and mind.
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering
Richard W. Hamming · 1997
Hamming's course on how to do work that matters; another Stripe Press reissue.
Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming
Peter Norvig · 1992
Classic AI techniques in Common Lisp; still one of the best books on writing serious programs.
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody?
Stephen Webb · 2015
Seventy-five solutions to the Fermi paradox, one per chapter.
Questions people ask
Is this Patrick Collison's recommended reading list?
Not exactly. His page is a catalog of books he owns, about half unread, with the ones he found particularly great marked. This list collects those marked titles. He notes the page has not been updated in roughly ten years.
What is Stripe Press?
A publishing imprint Collison started at Stripe to reissue out-of-print books about progress and technology, including several from his own shelf: The Dream Machine, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, and Poor Charlie's Almanack.
Sources
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Keep going
Paul Graham
Y Combinator co-founder, essayist
Books Paul Graham has recommended in his essays and on X, each linked to the essay or post where he said it.
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Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman (1924–2023)
The books Charlie Munger recommended in Poor Charlie's Almanack and at Berkshire Hathaway and Daily Journal meetings, with sources.
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