Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

Send feedback

What is it?
Screenshots, up to 3 (optional)
or paste one with Ctrl+V

We use your email only to reply to you.

Urbanisation

Secular themes

The move to cities as a driver of property, infrastructure and consumption demand, and the agglomeration economics behind it.

Books 10Experts 1Recommenders 16

Start here

  1. Triumph of the CityEdward L. Glaeser, 2011
  2. The Death and Life of Great American CitiesJane Jacobs, 1961
  3. Order Without DesignAlain Bertaud, 2018
The Death and Life of Great American CitiesThe Death and Life of Great American Cities
T1 The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Jane Jacobs · 1961
Open LibraryGoodreads

What makes city streets work, and how 1950s planning and slum clearance broke them.

Recommended by: Patrick Collison, Chris Dixon, Daniel Burka and 1 other

A Pattern LanguageA Pattern Language
T1 A Pattern Language
Christopher Alexander · 1977
Open LibraryGoodreads

253 patterns for building, from the layout of towns down to a window seat.

Recommended by: Naval Ravikant, Patrick Collison, Sam Altman and 1 other

Triumph of the CityTriumph of the City
T1 Triumph of the City
Edward L. Glaeser · 2011
Open LibraryGoodreads

How dense cities make people more productive, inventive and green.

“on the central role cities play in our world and why it's so important for us to build them” — Marc Andreessen

Source: @pmarca, companion thread to 'It's Time to Build'

Recommended by: Marc Andreessen, Mohnish Pabrai and 2 others

The Economy of CitiesThe Economy of Cities
T2 The Economy of Cities
Jane Jacobs · 1969
Open LibraryGoodreads

Cities, not farms, drive economic growth by adding new work to old.

The New Geography of JobsThe New Geography of Jobs
T2 The New Geography of Jobs
Enrico Moretti · 2012
Open LibraryGoodreads

Why US cities have split apart in wages and jobs, and why innovation hubs pull ahead.

AbundanceAbundance
T2 Abundance
Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson · 2025
Open LibraryGoodreads

Why America lost the ability to build housing, energy and infrastructure.

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Bill Gates

The World We Have LostThe World We Have Lost
T3 The World We Have Lost
Peter Laslett · 1965
Open LibraryGoodreads

Pre-industrial English society before wage labour and cities

“Laslett, The World We Have Lost” — Paul Graham

Source: Rarely-Asked Questions — paulgraham.com

Recommended by: Paul Graham

Arrival CityArrival City
T3 Arrival City
Doug Saunders · 2010
Open LibraryGoodreads

The migrant districts on the edges of growing cities, where rural people move to.

Order Without DesignOrder Without Design
T3 Order Without Design
Alain Bertaud · 2018
Open LibraryGoodreads

Cities as labour markets, and planning that works with land markets.

Recommended by: Alexis Ohanian, Emmett Shear and 1 other

Outside Lies MagicOutside Lies Magic
T4 Outside Lies Magic
John R. Stilgoe · 1998
Open LibraryGoodreads

Reading the built landscape; observation trained as a research habit

“Professor John Stilgoe at Harvard is trying to teach it and wrote an interesting book recently entitled "Outside Lies Magic” — Nick Sleep

Source: Nomad Investment Partnership, Annual Letter for the period ended December 31st, 2005, p. 76

Recommended by: Nick Sleep

More secular themes

← Space EconomyWater Scarcity →All secular themes