Fred Wilson Recommended Books

At its heart, the story is all too simple: a man and his son take a lengthy motorcycle trip through America. But this is not a simple trip at all, for around every corner, through mountain and desert, wind and rain, and searing heat and biting cold, their pilgrimage leads them to new vistas of self-discovery and renewal.Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mantenance is an elemental work that has helped to shape and define the past twenty-five years of American culture. This special audio edition presents this adventure in a compelling way - for the millions who have already taken this journey and want to travel these roads again, and for the many more who will discover for the first time the wonders and challenges of a journey that will change the way they think and feel about their lives.

The bestselling business book from award-winning restauranteur Danny Meyer, of Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and Shake ShackSeventy-five percent of all new restaurant ventures fail, and of those that do stick around, only a few become icons. Danny Meyer started Union Square Cafe when he was 27, with a good idea and hopeful investors. He is now the co-owner of a restaurant empire. How did he do it? How did he beat the odds in one of the toughest trades around? In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he learned developing the dynamic philosophy he calls Enlightened Hospitality. The tenets of that philosophy, which emphasize strong in-house relationships as well as customer satisfaction, are applicable to anyone who works in any business. Whether you are a manager, an executive, or a waiter, Danny’s story and philosophy will help you become more effective and productive, while deepening your understanding and appreciation of a job well done. Setting the Table is landmark a motivational work from one of our era’s most gifted and insightful business leaders.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you'll recognize it immediately.

Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest—and most celebrated—books of all time. In recent years it has been named to “best novels” lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer.Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.

This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators?Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor — and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story. Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life — from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy — to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction — to the philosopher who becomes a pirate — to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph — to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad — to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels. You must be prepared, when you read this novel, to check every premise at the root of your convictions.This is a mystery story, not about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit. It is a philosophical revolution, told in the form of an action thriller of violent events, a ruthlessly brilliant plot structure and an irresistible suspense. Do you say this is impossible? Well, that is the first of your premises to check.

The computer revolution brought with it new methods of getting work done—just look at today's news for reports of hard-driven, highly-motivated young software and online commerce developers who sacrifice evenings and weekends to meet impossible deadlines. Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner

环境的极致，信念的极致，生命的极致，你能熬过去吗？700天冰海历劫，20世纪最伟大的南极探险故事！弃船的命令下午5时发出。然而，对于大多数船员来说，其实已经没必要了，因为人人都知道这船彻底完了，是该放弃了。没有人表现出恐惧甚或忧虑。他们已经一刻不停地奋战了整整三天，但最终还是功败垂成。对于逃离沉船后的那种普遍的解脱感，有个人是不认可的。他的名字是欧内斯特·沙克尔顿爵士，就是他率领了这支大英帝国穿越南极探险队。这一天是1915年10月27日。探险船的名字叫“坚忍号”。目前的坐标是南纬69.5度，西经51.3度，处于南极诡秘莫测的威德尔海千里冰原深处，正好在南极点与离得最近的人类居住点之间，居住点距此有1200英里。自从最后一次同现代文明接触之后，已经过去了将近一年时间。外界根本就没有人知道他们遇到了麻烦。当时，他们没有无线电发报机，而且，就算用无线电发出了紧急求救信号, 最后能否有人及时赶来救援还是问题。那是1915年，没有直升机，没有小型登陆车，没有履带式雪地车，也没有合用的救援飞机。已知离得最近的能让他们找到食物和住所的地方，就只有小小的保利特岛。1903年，就在这个小岛上，被威德尔海的坚冰撞坏的瑞典船“南极号”的船员度过了整个冬天。该船最终获救，撤离时船员们将船上的给养留在了保利特岛上，以备日后任何遭遇海难者的不时之需。饶有意味的是，当年正是沙克尔顿受命购买了这些给养，而现在，整整十二年之后，这恰恰是他自己最需要的。

Here is Ignatius Reilly: slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one, who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age, lying in his flannel nightshirt in a back bedroom on Constantinople Street in New Orleans, who between gigantic seizures of flatulence and eructations is filling dozens of Big Chief tablets with invective.His mother thinks he needs to go to work. He does, in a succession of jobs. Each job rapidly escalates into a lunatic adventure, a full-blown disaster; yet each has, like Don Quixote's, its own eerie logic.His girlfriend, Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx, thinks he needs sex. Ignatius is an intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, goof-off, glutton, who should repel the reader with his gargantuan bloats, his thunderous contempt, and one-man war against everybody: Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the assorted excesses of modern times. A tragicomedy, set in New Orleans.

The bestselling coming-of-age classic novel by John Irving--now in a limited 40th anniversary edition with a new introduction by the author. He is more than popular. He is a Populist, determined to keep alive the Dickensian tradition that revels in colorful set pieces...and teaches moral lessons.--The New York Times The opening sentence of John Irving's breakout novel, The World According to Garp, signals the start of sexual violence, which becomes increasingly political. Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater. Jenny is an unmarried nurse; she becomes a single mom and a feminist leader, beloved but polarizing. Her son, Garp, is less beloved, but no less polarizing.From the tragicomic tone of its first sentence to its mordantly funny last line--we are all terminal cases--The World According to Garp maintains a breakneck pace. The subject of sexual hatred--of intolerance of sexual minorities and differences--runs the gamut of lunacy and sorrow. Winner of the National Book Award, Garp is a comedy with forebodings of doom. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries--with more than ten million copies in print--Garp is the precursor of John Irving's later protest novels.

As a young Florentine envoy to the courts of France and the Italian principalities, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was able to observe firsthand the lives of people strongly united under one powerful ruler. His fascination with that political rarity and his intense desire to see the Medici family assume a similar role in Italy provided the foundation for his "primer for princes." In this classic guide to acquiring and maintaining political power, Machiavelli used a rational approach to advise prospective rulers, developing logical arguments and alternatives for a number of potential problems, among them governing hereditary monarchies, dealing with colonies and the treatment of conquered peoples.Refreshing in its directness, yet often disturbing in its cold practicality, The Prince sets down a frighteningly pragmatic formula for political fortune. Starkly relevant to the political upheavals of the 20th century, this calculating prescription for power remains today, nearly 500 years after it was written, a timely and startling lesson in the practice of autocratic rule that continues to be much read and studied by students, scholars and general readers as well.Reprint of The Prince from Vol. 36 of the Harvard Classics series, translated by N. H. Thompson and published by P. F. Collier & Son Company, New York, 1910.

Wear on edges of covers and spine. Bookstore stamp on first page.

One of the most published and translated books in the world, The Little Prince fascinates the reader with its story of a pilot marooned in the Sahara after something goes wrong with his plane, and a little man with golden hair who has ‘fallen’ to earth by chance. As the pilot tries to repair his plane, the little man requests him to draw a sheep as well as a box to keep the sheep in, so that it may not harm a flower he cares for—and therein begins a friendship that leads us to re-examine the many things we take for granted in our everyday life. Part fantasy, part fable, this is written as much for children as for adults, bringing home the message ‘what is essential, is invisible to the eye’.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE The beloved, award-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a Michael Chabon masterwork, is the American epic of two boy geniuses named Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay. Now with special bonus material by Michael Chabon. A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939. A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and the New York Society Library Book Award Named one of the 10 Best Books of the Decade by Entertainment Weekly

Hailed by The Washington Post as "a definitive synthesis of the best editions" and by The Times of London as "a monument to Shakespearean scholarship," The Oxford Shakespeare is the ultimate anthology of the Bard's work: the most authoritative edition of the plays and poems ever published.Now, almost two decades after the original volume, Oxford is proud to announce a thoroughly updated second edition, including for the first time the texts of The Reign of Edward III and Sir Thomas More, recognizing these two plays officially as authentic works by Shakespeare. This beautiful collection is the product of years of full-time research by a team of British and American scholars and represents the most thorough examination ever undertaken of the nature and authority of Shakespeare's work. The editors reconsidered every detail of the text in the light of modern scholarship and they thoroughly re-examined the earliest printed versions of the plays, firmly establishing the canon and chronological order of composition. All stage directions have been reconsidered in light of original staging, and many new directions for essential action have been added. This superb volume also features a brief introduction to each work as well as an illuminating General Introduction. Finally, the editors have added a wealth of secondary material, including an essay on language, a list of contemporary allusions to Shakespeare, an index of Shakespearean characters, a glossary, a consolidated bibliography, and an index of first lines of the Sonnets.Compiled by the world's leading authorities, packed with information, and attractively designed, The Oxford Shakespeare is the gold standard of Shakespearean anthologies.Table of ContentsIntroductionContemporary Allusions to ShakespeareCommendatory Poems and Prefaces (1599-1640)1. The Two Gentlemen of Verona2. The Taming of the Shrew3. The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster (2 Henry VI)4. The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry the Sixth (3 Henry VI)5. The First Part of Henry the Sixth6. The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus7. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third8. Venus and Adonis9. The Rape of Lucrece10. The Reign of King Edward the Third11. The Comedy of Errors12. Love's Labour's Lost13. Love's Labour's Won: A Brief Account14. The Tragedy of King Richard the Second15. The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet16. A Midsummer Night's Dream17. The Life and Death of King John18. The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice, or Otherwise Called the Jew of Venice19. The History of Henry the Fourth (1 Henry IV)20. The Merry Wives of Windsor21. The Second Part of Henry the Fourth (2 Henry IV)22. Much Ado About Nothing23. The Life of Henry the Fifth24. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar25. As You Like It26. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark27. Twelfth Night, or What You Will28. Troilus and Cressida29. Sonnets and 'A Lover's Complaint'30. Various Poems31. Sir Thomas More32. Measure for Measure33. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice34. The Life of Timon of Athens35. The History of King Lear: The Quarto Text36. The Tragedy of Macbeth37. The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra38. All's Well That Ends Well39. Pericles, Prince of Tyre: A Reconstructed Text40. The Tragedy of Coriolanus41. The Winter's Tale42. The Tragedy of King Lear: The Folio Text43. Cymbeline, King of Britain44. The Tempest45. Cardenio: A Brief Account46. All Is True (Henry VIII)47. The Two Noble KinsmenSelect Glossary

Max, a wild and naughty boy, is sent to bed without his supper by his exhausted mother. In his room, he imagines sailing far away to a land of Wild Things. Instead of eating him, the Wild Things make Max their king.

Twenty-Five Hundred years ago, Sun Tzu wrote this classic book of military strategy based on Chinese warfare and military thought. Since that time, all levels of military have used the teaching on Sun Tzu to warfare and civilization have adapted these teachings for use in politics, business and everyday life. The Art of War is a book which should be used to gain advantage of opponents in the boardroom and battlefield alike.

One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendiá family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad and alive with unforgettable men and women—brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul—this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

Siddhartha : An Indian TaleHermann HESSE (1877 - 1962),Translator: Gunther Olesch, Anke Dreher, Amy Coulter, Stefan Langer and Semyon ChaichenetsSiddhartha is one of the great philosophical novels. Profoundly insightful, it is also a beautifully written story that begins as Siddhartha, son of an Indian Brahman, leaves his family and begins a lifelong journey towards Enlightenment. On the way he faces the entire range of human experience and emotion: he lives with ascetics, meets Gotama the Buddha, learns the art of love from Kamala the courtesan, and is transformed by the simple philosophy of the ferryman Vasudeva whose wisdom comes not from learned teachings but from observing the River. Herman Hesse (1877-1962) was a German-Swiss novelist, poet, and painter. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.

Web designers are no longer just web designers. To create a successful web product that’s as large as Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest–or even as small as a tiny app–you need to know more than just HTML and CSS. You need to understand how to create meaningful online experiences so that users want to come back again and again.In other words, you have to stop thinking like a web designer or a visual designer or a UX designer or an interaction designer and start thinking like a product designer.In this breakthrough introduction to modern product design, Etsy Creative Director Randy Hunt explains the skills, processes, types of tools, and recommended workflows for creating world-class web products. After reading this book, you’ll have a complete understanding of what product design really is and you’ll be equipped with the best practices necessary for building your own successful online products.

A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, draws on his own story of founding, running, selling, buying, managing, and investing in technology companies to offer essential advice and practical wisdom for navigating the toughest problems business schools don't cover. His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise—from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, including demoting (or firing) a loyal friend;whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them;if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company; how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you; what to do when smart people are bad employees; why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one; whether you should sell your company, and how to do it.Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.

The Chief Investment Officer of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management explains why goals, not markets, should be the primary focus of your investment strategy—and offers a practical, innovative framework for making smarter choices about aligning your goals to your investment strategy. Today all of us bear the burden of investing wisely, but too many of us are preoccupied with the wrong priorities—increasing returns at all costs, finding the next star fund manager, or beating “the market.” Unfortunately conventional portfolio theory and the grand debates in finance have offered investors only incomplete solutions. What is needed, argues Ashvin B. Chhabra, is a framework that shifts the focus of investment strategy from portfolios and markets to individuals and the objectives that really things like protecting against unexpected financial crises, paying for education or retirement, and financing philanthropy and entrepreneurship. The Aspirational Investor is a practical, innovative approach to managing wealth based on key goals and the careful allocation of risks rather than responding to the whims of the financial markets. Chhabra introduces his “Wealth Allocation Framework,” which accommodates the three seemingly incompatible objectives that must underpin every sound wealth management the need for financial security in the face of known and unknowable risks; the need to maintain current living standards over time despite inflation; and the need to pursue aspirational goals for wealth creation. Chhabra reveals some surprising facts about wealth creation, reinterprets the success formulas of investing greats like Warren Buffett, and closes the gap between theory and practice by simplifying our understanding of key asset classes and laying out a concise roadmap for identifying, prioritizing, and quantifying financial goals. Raising the bar for what we should expect from our investment portfolios—and our financial advisors— The Aspirational Investor sets us on a path to more confident and fulfilling financial lives.

With a foreword from Steve Blank, Talking to Humans is a practical guide to the qualitative side of customer development, an indispensable skill for vetting and improving any new startup or innovation. This book will teach you how to structure and run effective customer interviews, find candidates, and turn learnings into action.

This "brilliant and provocative" (Walter Isaacson) guide shares nine principles to adapt and survive the technological changes shaping our future from the director of the MIT Media Lab and a veteran Wired journalist.The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, transforming every aspect of society, from business to culture and from the public sphere to our most private moments. The people who succeed will be the ones who learn to think differently.In Whiplash , Joi Ito and Jeff Howe distill that logic into nine organizing principles for navigating and surviving this tumultuous Filled with incredible case studies and cutting-edge research and philosophies from the MIT Media Lab and beyond, Whiplash will help you adapt and succeed in this unpredictable world.

The definitive pioneering blueprint covering the what, why and how of the blockchain. Blockchains are new technology layers that rewire the Internet and threaten to side-step older legacy constructs and centrally served businesses. At its core, a blockchain injects trust into the network, cutting off some intermediaries from serving that function and creatively disrupting how they operate. Metaphorically, blockchains are the ultimate non-stop computers. Once launched, they never go down, and offer an incredible amount of resiliency, making them dependable and attractive for running a new generation of decentralized services and software applications. The Business Blockchain charts new territory in advancing our understanding of the blockchain by unpacking its elements like no other before. William Mougayar anticipates a future that consists of thousands, if not millions of blockchains that will enable not only frictionless value exchange, but also a new flow of value, redefining roles, relationships, power and governance. In this book, Mougayar makes two other strategic assertions. First, the blockchain has polymorphic characteristics; its application will result in a multiplicity of effects. Second, we shouldn’t ask ourselves what problems the blockchain solves, because that gives us a narrow view on its potential. Rather, we should imagine new opportunities, and tackle even more ambitious problems that cross organizational, regulatory and mental boundaries. Drawing on 34 years of technology industry experience as an executive, analyst, consultant, entrepreneur, startup mentor, author, blogger, educator, thought leader and investor, William Mougayar describes a future that is influenced by fundamental shifts brought by blockchain technology as the catalyst for change. William Mougayar has been described as the most sophisticated blockchain business thinker. He is a blockchain industry insider whose work has already shaped and influenced the understanding of blockchain for people around the world, via his generous blogging and rigorous research insights. He is a direct participant in the crypto-technology market, working alongside startups, entrepreneurs, pioneers, leaders, innovators, creators, enterprise executives and practitioners; in addition to being an investor, advisor, and board member in some of the leading organizations in this space, such as the Ethereum Foundation, OpenBazaar and Coin Center. Just as the Internet created new possibilities that we didn’t foresee in its early years, the blockchain will give rise to new business models and ideas that may still be invisible. Following an engaging Foreword by Vitalik Buterin, this book is organized along these 7 chapters: 1. What is the Blockchain? 2. How Blockchain Trust Infiltrates 3. Obstacles, Challenges & Mental Blocks 4. Blockchain in Financial Services 5. Lighthouse Industries & New Intermediaries 6. Implementing Blockchain Technology 7. Decentralization as the Way Forward The Business Blockchain is an invitation for technologists to better understand the business potential of the blockchain, and for business minded people to grasp the many facets of blockchain technology. This book teaches you how to think about the blockchain.