Reading

Books that have shaped my thinking. Each recommendation includes why it matters and what you might take from it.

Philosophy

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The central insight is that some systems benefit from volatility and disorder rather than merely surviving them. This reframes how I think about building organizations and making decisions under uncertainty. The distinction between fragile, robust, and antifragile is more useful than any risk management framework I have encountered.

The Discourses by Epictetus

A practical manual for distinguishing what is within our control from what is not. Reading it feels like being corrected by someone who has thought more clearly about the same problems you face. The Stoic framework here is less about suppressing emotion and more about directing attention where it can actually matter.

Economics & Institutions

The Use of Knowledge in Society by F.A. Hayek

A short essay that explains why decentralized coordination through prices often outperforms central planning. The argument is about information: knowledge is dispersed across millions of minds and cannot be aggregated into a single plan without losing most of what makes it valuable.

Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott

How large-scale schemes to improve the human condition fail when they ignore local knowledge and complexity. The concept of legibility—making society readable to administrators—explains many pathologies of modern institutions.