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Marc Andreessen books: every book Marc Andreessen wrote and recommended
Across 13 podcasts. Every show Marc Andreessen appears on, in one place — not just one.
Books by Marc Andreessen
Marc Andreessen’s most recommended books
- When Reason Goes on Holiday by Neven Sesardic
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Private Truths, Public Lies by Timur Kuran
- The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium by Martin Gurri
- Orwell's Revenge by Peter Huber
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
- The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Ancient City by Peter Connolly
- The Red Decade by Eugene Lyons
Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American businessman, venture capitalist, and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first web browser to display inline images; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Across various podcast appearances, Andreessen has recommended several influential books spanning history, economics, and politics. He mentioned David J. Schwartz's The Magic of Thinking Big to explain the early history and creation of Los Angeles, and brought up Chris Hayes's Twilight of the Elites to analyze economic concentration. Andreessen also highlighted Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Abundance to support the perspective that liberals should embrace economic growth and building, and recommended J. Rolf Haltza's Job Stacking as a manual for holding multiple remote jobs. For those interested in historical media, he pointed to Eric Burns's Infamous Scribblers. When discussing political theory and elites on the Lex Fridman Podcast, Andreessen recommended Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, James Burnham's The Machiavellians, and Václav Havel's The Power of the Powerless, describing them as essential texts for understanding mass movements, political realism, and anti-communist resistance.
Books recommended by Marc Andreessen
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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.
Discussed“there's a book that goes through this called when reason goes on holiday that came out a few years ago that kind of goes through all of Einstein's writings and speeches and kind of reconstructs this history”
Where to get it
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is a beloved comedic science fiction classic that satirizes bureaucracy, existentialism, and the absurdities of the universe.
Discussed“Douglas Adams had like the defining description uh of um the guy who wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy of like how technology is received on a generational level”
Where to get it
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Private Truths, Public Lies
Private Truths, Public Lies by Timur Kuran is a social science book that explores how people conceal their true beliefs due to social pressures, introducing the concepts of preference falsification and preference cascades.
Discussed“So it's called Private Truths, Public Lies. And it's written by a social science professor named Timur Kuran”
Where to get it
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The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium by Martin Gurri is a sociological and political analysis examining how digital technology and the internet have empowered ordinary citizens to challenge traditional institutional authority.
Discussed“I think Martin Gurri, the guy who has published this book. I think he really nailed it...”
Where to get it
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Orwell's Revenge
Orwell's Revenge by Peter Huber is a speculative novel that reimagines George Orwell's classic dystopian work, 1984, by introducing a two-way communication technology as a counterforce to totalitarian control.
Recommended“there's another book I'd really recommend on this uh the directly directly to your point uh this guy Peter Huber wrote this book called Orwell's Revenge”
Where to get it
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz is a pragmatic, highly candid business guide that addresses the brutal emotional and operational realities of running a company when standard management rules fail.
Discussed“And Peter's, Peter Thiel's book Zero to One is like that. And Ben's book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is like that thing just like sells and gets translated into, you know, you say they can like 27 languages now or something and sell all over the world.”
Where to get it
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The True Believer
The True Believer by Eric Hoffer is a classic work of social psychology that examines the nature of mass movements, fanaticism, and the underlying motivations that drive individuals to embrace extreme collective beliefs.
Discussed“No, I was just going to say yeah, I know like what Ben said is yeah, so like this is a I posted a link to a book called The True Believer that kind of talk talks about this is, you know, the the old characterization is elites and masses”
Where to get it
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1984
George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 depicts a totalitarian society characterized by perpetual war, government surveillance, and the complete eradication of individual truth and freedom.
Discussed“and you know famously in 1984 you know as you mentioned there there you know there's this concept of the telescreen which is basically the one-way propaganda broadcast device”
Where to get it
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The Ancient City
Peter Connolly's historical work The Ancient City reconstructs the daily life, architecture, and governance of early civilizations and prehistoric communities.
Recommended“great book called the ancient city that goes back and reconstructs basically like pre basically prehistoric civilization like what it was like”
Where to get it
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The Red Decade
The Red Decade by Eugene Lyons is a historical examination documenting the extent of communist enthusiasm and intellectual sympathy among American cultural and political elites during the 1920s and 1930s.
Discussed“you know there was a version of this in the 20s and 30s in the there's this great book called red decade”
Where to get it
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Zero to One
Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters is a prominent business and technology book that challenges conventional startup thinking.
Discussed“And Peter's, Peter Thiel's book Zero to One is like that. And Ben's book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is like that...”
Where to get it
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MOBY-DICK; or, THE WHALE
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is an epic American novel that chronicles the obsessive, self-destructive quest of Captain Ahab to hunt down the giant white whale that maimed him.
Discussed“And a whailing expedition like in Moby Dick, it's like literally a ship and a captain and a crew and they're going to like go out and they're going to try to like go get a whale and bring it back, right?”
Where to get it
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Superintelligence
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom is a foundational exploration of artificial intelligence, examining the path toward human-level and superhuman machine intellect and the profound existential risks it poses.
Discussed“the book that got the doomers all spun up I love pointing the this out the book that got the doomers all spun up was this uh book uh from 10 years ago by this guy Nick Bostrom is a philosopher um from Oxford um um and uh he wrote this book called Super intelligence”
Where to get it
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The Managerial Revolution
The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham is a political and economic analysis arguing that modern societies are shifting away from traditional capitalism toward a technocratic system dominated by managers and administrators.
Discussed“one's called the managerial Revolution um and it's basically um you could spend time on it if you want but it's basically it it basically says you know basically these movements that look like they have you know these movements have real differences obviously those three big movements”
Where to get it
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the two culture and the scientific revolution
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution by C.P.
Discussed“ideally it's cultural uh cultural orientation towards new technology and then ideally it's it's education of people learning and kind of uh yeah or you know the CP snow two cultures things”
Where to get it
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The Lean Startup
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is a foundational business guide that advocates for validated learning, rapid experimentation, and minimum viable products to help entrepreneurs build successful companies without wasting time or resources.
Recommended“The Lean Startup book by Eric Ries is very very good and that book should be read front to back”
Where to get it
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Read Write Own
Read Write Own by Chris Dixon is a comprehensive exploration of blockchains, artificial intelligence, and the future architecture of the internet.
Discussed“Chris is there something you wish because you you're the nature of book publishing u wrote the book a while back is there something you wish you could have included in the book and will there be a followup”
Where to get it
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The Great Stagnation
Discussed“there's a whole genre of books with titles like the rise and fall of American growth and the great stagnation written by top economists talking about how back to the first thesis about basically there's no innovation and productivity growth”
Where to get it
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A Conflict of Visions
A Conflict of Visions is a work of political philosophy by Thomas Sowell that examines the underlying assumptions about human nature that shape competing political and social ideologies.
Recommended“um I'm very influenced on this by Thomas Soul wrote this great book called the conflict of visions and he talks about fundamentally there are two two classes of visions of the future”
Where to get it
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Abundance
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson is a widely debated political manifesto that challenges progressive orthodoxy by arguing that liberals must embrace economic growth, regulatory reform, and actual physical building to achieve their goals.
Recommended“there's this new book out called abundance from Ezra Klene who I would say I disagree with on approximately zero of everything”
Where to get it
- Days of rage by Bryan Burrough
- Enchanted Objects by Allan Hepburn
- Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
- Infamous Scribblers by Eric Burns
- Job Stacking by J. Rolf Haltza
- Lenin by Victor Sebestyen
- Men, Machines, and Modern Times by Elting E. Morison
- Radical Son by David Horowitz
- Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock
- Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital by C. Perez
- The Ancient City - Imperium Press by Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges
- The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
- The Machiavellians by James Burnham
- The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
- The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya
- The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, Michelle Charrier
- The Odyssey by Homer
- The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel
- The Reckoning by David Halberstam
- The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich
- Tubes by Andrew Blum
- Twilight of the Elites by Chris Hayes
- Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon by David McGowan
- Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
- Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren by John Maynard Keynes
- Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani
- Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act by United States United States Congress
- High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
- How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco
Questions about Marc Andreessen’s book recommendations
What book does Marc Andreessen recommend most?
When Reason Goes on Holiday by Neven Sesardic. Marc Andreessen recommended it in 4 episodes, with 2 explicit recommendations.
How many books has Marc Andreessen recommended on podcasts?
We have found 79 books Marc Andreessen recommended or discussed, across 48 episodes of 13 podcasts. Ad reads and passing mentions are not counted.
What books are on Marc Andreessen's reading list?
The books Marc Andreessen has recommended most on podcasts are When Reason Goes on Holiday by Neven Sesardic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Private Truths, Public Lies by Timur Kuran, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium by Martin Gurri and Orwell's Revenge by Peter Huber. The year-by-year lists below have all 79.
What books has Marc Andreessen written?
Techno-Optimist Manifesto (2025).
What did Marc Andreessen recommend on The Ben & Marc Show?
When Reason Goes on Holiday, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium and The Red Decade, among 29 books in all.
What is the latest book Marc Andreessen recommended?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, discussed on a16z Podcast (2026-10-22).
People who recommend the same books
Marc Andreessen’s latest episodes with books
Marc Andreessen’s book recommendations by year
All 79 books Marc Andreessen recommended or discussed across 48 episodes, filed by the year each episode came out. Each year goes episode by episode, with the minute every book came up.