Person
Every book Ben Horowitz recommended on podcasts
Across 2 podcasts. Every show Ben Horowitz appears on, in one place — not just one.
Ben Horowitz’s most recommended books
- The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
- Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
- Radical Son by David Horowitz
- The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Patrick Henrich
- When Reason Goes on Holiday by Neven Sesardic
- Fordlandia by Greg Grandin
- Freedom's Forge by Arthur Herman
- God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
- Life Force by Tony Robbins
- Snowpiercer by Jacques Lob
Benjamin Abraham Horowitz is an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a technology entrepreneur and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz along with Marc Andreessen. He previously co-founded and served as president and chief executive officer of the enterprise software company Opsware, which Hewlett-Packard acquired in 2007. Horowitz is the author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, a book about startups, and What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture. On podcasts, he recommended David Horowitz's Radical Son to highlight political and media cover-ups surrounding the AIDS epidemic, and Joseph Henrich's The WEIRDest People in the World to discuss societal and psychological differences between Western cultures and tribal kin-based cultures. He also recommended Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk biography to illustrate the crises hardware startup CEOs face, and Neven Sesardic's When Reason Goes on Holiday to show how high-IQ intellectuals can become misguided in politics. Furthermore, he discussed Greg Grandin's Fordlandia regarding vertical integration, Frederick P. Brooks Jr.'s The Mythical Man-Month to explain software development constraints, and Arthur Herman's Freedom's Forge concerning World War II industrial production.
Books recommended by Ben Horowitz
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The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P.
Discussed“So for example if I had a product and I was two years behind I could not hire a thousand engineers and catch my competitor like it's a mythical man-month. Nine women can't have a baby in a month. Everybody knows that.”
Where to get it
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is a comprehensive biography exploring the tumultuous life, career, and complex psychology of one of the world's most prominent technology entrepreneurs.
Recommended“If you're not familiar with this, you can read like Elon's the the the the book that Walter Isaacson wrote on Elon cuz it kind of goes through a lot of the crises he ran into in both SpaceX and Tesla.”
Where to get it
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Radical Son
This autobiography details a political journey and critiques modern leftist movements through a personal and historical lens.
Recommended“That whole story by the way is in David's David Horwitz's book called Radical Sun. Um which is one of the most it's one of the most shattering and preient books by the way.”
Where to get it
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The WEIRDest People in the World
The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Patrick Henrich, Joseph Henrich, and Korey Jackson is an exploration of how psychology, anthropology, and culture intersect to shape distinct societal structures.
Recommended“there's this am outstanding book called the weirdest people in the world that actually goes through and studies the differences between this am monogamous marriage am you know God family work Protestant ethic sort of society that grew up in the west”
Where to get it
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When Reason Goes on Holiday
When Reason Goes on Holiday by Neven Sesardic is a nonfiction book exploring how brilliant scientists and high-IQ individuals can hold radical, misguided, or seemingly irrational political and social views.
Recommended“I'll give a plug for great book that you recommended when reason goes on holiday which is sort of the story of how the great physicists and inventors did on politics and policy and Game Theory you take super high IQ people and you put them in a research or university setting”
Where to get it
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Fordlandia
Fordlandia by Greg Grandin chronicles the ambitious, ultimately ill-fated attempt by Henry Ford to build a rubber plantation and company town in the Amazon rainforest.
Discussed“And there's a great book called Ford Landia where so because he wanted to like own like the complete vertical thing where he created this city called Ford Landia in the Amazon jungle”
Where to get it
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Freedom's Forge
Freedom's Forge by Arthur Herman is a historical non-fiction book chronicling the massive industrial mobilization and the American corporate leaders who successfully built the wartime manufacturing machine during World War II.
Discussed“So a question, you guys alluded to this, but you know, there's this famous book Freedoms Forge, you know, talking about the ramp up of US industrial production during World War II”
Where to get it
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God Is Not Great
God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens is a prominent polemical manifesto of the New Atheism movement that argues organized religion poisons everything, undermines moral responsibility, and distorts human understanding.
Discussed“my friend Christopher Hitchens wrote a book called God Is Not Great and my father's criticism of that he's like look you have two choices”
Where to get it
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Life Force
Life Force by Tony Robbins, Peter H.
Discussed“as Tony's last book is a book called life force which is h a book all about regenerative medicine and um how to basically live your best healthiest life with the uh best health span possible”
Where to get it
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Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer by Jacques Lob is a dystopian graphic novel depicting the last remnants of humanity surviving aboard a perpetually moving train circling a frozen, post-apocalyptic Earth.
Discussed“and then with AI helping us design these systems and understanding you know like there's all kinds of things in the atmospherics like we it scared me a little but I just got a a a pitch on um the thing that can control how much heat comes in from the sun which is you know there's a great dystopia”
Where to get it
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Tempest
Tempest by William Shakespeare is one of the celebrated playwright's final masterworks, exploring themes of magic, betrayal, illusion, and reconciliation on a remote island.
Discussed“Whitaker Chambers tells this amazing story in his book about how he tried to out himself to the U.S. government as a Soviet military intelligence recruiter and it took him six years to be taken seriously by the FBI and the Justice Department.”
Where to get it
Books Ben Horowitz wrote
Appearances
Other mentions (3: passing, ad reads, own books)
“When I talk to like Ted Sarandos or somebody like that, they're like, "Oh yeah, that's a book I like." But you have to run a very large organization and you you have to have gotten beyond the things hard thing about hard things to start to think about okay how do you program the culture of the whole organization”
“and one of the albums he listened to was Pink Floyd's The Wall”
“and then one of the films he saw was Rainman”