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.

MA

Meaning and the good life

Holds practical books on how to live: purpose, happiness, mortality and grief, advice and letters to the young, and collections of maxims and aphorisms.

Start here

  1. Poor Richard's AlmanackBenjamin Franklin, 1732
  2. Being MortalAtul Gawande, 2014
  3. Finite and Infinite GamesJames P. Carse, 1986
  4. Excellent Advice for LivingKevin Kelly, 2023
  5. MasteryGeorge Leonard, 1991
Benjamin Franklin · 1732

An almanac of proverbs and maxims urging thrift, industry and courtesy.

Recommended by: Tim Ferriss

Atul Gawande · 2014

End-of-life and hospice care, and why medicine should aim at well-being.

James P. Carse · 1986

Finite games are played to win; infinite games are played to keep playing.

Kevin Kelly · 2023

Short pieces of advice on living, goals, generosity, careers, family and money.

George Leonard · 1991

The plateau and long practice; mastery as a delayed reward

Guy Kawasaki · 1993

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

Guy Spier · 2014

Spier on the psychology and habits behind durable value investing.

“…books I've recommended, highlighted to death, or forced on friends.” — Andrew Wilkinson

Source: Andrew Wilkinson's Bookshelf, neverenough.com

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Christopher Bloomstran and 1 other

Oliver Burkeman · 2021

Burkeman's book on finitude is the necessary counterweight to grandiose civilizational thinking. Four thousand weeks is approximately an 80-year life, and Burkeman's argument — that productivity systems typically function as denial mechanisms against this fact — forces the question of how a mortal agent ought to orient toward long-term causes. The tension between personal finitude and multigenerational obligation is never fully resolved here, which is exactly right.

Johan Huizinga · 1938

Recommended by: Stewart Brand

Viktor E. Frankl · 1968

Life in Nazi concentration camps, and logotherapy: finding meaning to survive.

“I have been deeply influenced by the existentialist and eminent psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who wrote the perennial best seller Man's Search for Meaning, one of the most influential books I've ever…” — Frank Martin

Source: Martin on one of the most influential books he has read and reread

Recommended by: Frank Martin, Mohnish Pabrai, Nat Eliason and 24 others

Ernest Becker · 1973

How people and cultures react to death, and what that reaction does to them.

Recommended by: Nat Eliason, Eric Weinstein

Richard Bach · 1977

Recommended by: Naval Ravikant

Goldian Vandenbroeck · 1991

Recommended by: Tim Ferriss

Jacob Needleman · 1991

Myth, psychology and Sufi wisdom on how money can become a means of self-knowledge.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai

Randy Komisar · 2000

A venture adviser on startups and the trap of the deferred life plan.

Alain de Botton · 2004

Where the worry about others' judgement of us comes from, and how people overcome it.

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Garry Tan

Jonathan Haidt · 2005

Ancient wisdom on happiness tested against modern psychology and brain research.

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Tony Hsieh

T4 Sum
David Eagleman · 2008
David Foster Wallace · 2009

Recommended by: Nat Eliason, Julie Zhuo

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 2010

Aphorisms stating Taleb's ideas on randomness, knowledge and modern life.

Brené Brown · 2010

Courage, compassion and connection as choices that lead to wholehearted living.

Recommended by: Brené Brown, Melinda Gates

Alexander Green · 2011

Recommended by: Ali Abdaal

William J. Dawson · 2011

Edwardian essay on living deliberately below your means

Recommended by: Morgan Housel

Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon · 2012

Business strategy theories applied to career, family and integrity.

Oliver Burkeman · 2012

Recommended by: Paul Jarvis

Todd Henry · 2013

Recommended by: David Kadavy

Ichiro Kishimi · 2013

Alfred Adler's psychology taught through five nights of dialogue.

“This book is oddly written (it's translated from Japanese), but it changed my life.” — Andrew Wilkinson

Source: Newsletter

Recommended by: Ali Abdaal, Andrew Wilkinson, Tim Ferriss and 11 others

Greg McKeown · 2014

A method for finding the few activities that matter and dropping the rest.

Will Durant · 2014

“a book that historian Will Durant wrote in his 90s, a summation of his thoughts on the meaning of life at the end of his” — Andrew Wilkinson

Source: Newsletter

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Matt Mullenweg and 1 other

Janet Bray, Chris Attwood · 2014

Recommended by: Jim Kwik

Jordan Peterson · 2015

Twelve rules for living, each drawn from clinical practice, biology and myth.

Cheryl Strayed · 2015

Recommended by: Shane Parrish

David Brooks · 2015

“It certainly was a stimulating read, and it got me thinking about my own motivations and limitations in new ways.” — Bill Gates

Source: Gates Notes review of The Road to Character

Recommended by: Bill Gates, Mohnish Pabrai, Alfred Lin and 1 other

Erin Loechner · 2016

Recommended by: Paul Jarvis

Hector Garcia Puigcerver, Francesc Miralles · 2016

Recommended by: Ryan Hoover

Mo Gawdat · 2016

An engineer's approach to happiness: the illusions and brain flaws behind suffering.

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Peter Attia

Sarah Manguso · 2017

Recommended by: Frank Blake

Kamal Ravikant · 2017

A grieving man walks the Camino de Santiago after scattering his father's ashes.

Recommended by: Matt Mullenweg

David Clark · 2017

Quotation collection with commentary; thin, but the quotes are sourced.

James Hollis · 2018

“I love this line from Dr. James Hollis' incredible book (one of my favorites from the last few years)” — Andrew Wilkinson

Source: Essay

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson

Fred Kofman · 2018

Leadership treated as the creation of meaning inside organisations

Recommended by: Reid Hoffman

Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga · 2019

Recommended by: Ryan Hoover

Eric Jorgenson · 2020

Naval Ravikant's ideas on building wealth and being happy, gathered from his talks.

Derek Sivers · 2021

“I also recommend Derek's other books (How To Live is especially good).” — Andrew Wilkinson

Source: Newsletter

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson

Derek Sivers · 2024

“Derek is one of my favorite writers, and his latest book is focused on a simple idea: our beliefs are often not necessarily true, but simply useful to us. That beliefs are tools, not truths.” — Andrew Wilkinson

Source: Newsletter

Recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson

Oliver Burkeman

Recommended by: Matt Mullenweg

Derren Brown

Recommended by: Ali Abdaal

Natasha Milne

Examples of people who turned their concern for the world into their work.

Recommended by: Richard Branson

More philosophy