Tim Oreilly

Tim Oreilly

Technology Publisher and Open Source Advocate

Founder of O'Reilly Media and influential voice in tech culture. Has recommended 35 books spanning philosophy, economics, and technology.

Founders

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, a leading publisher of technology books and online learning. He coined the term "Web 2.0" and has shaped how the tech industry thinks about open source, innovation, and digital culture for over three decades.

35 Books Recommended by Tim Oreilly

Ranked by popularity across all reading lists on this site

The Lean Startup book cover
#2

The Lean Startup

by Eric Ries

16 people recommended

[This book] isn't just about how to create a more successful entrepreneurial business, it's about what we can learn from those businesses to improve virtually everything we do.

Buy on Amazon β†’

Also recommended by: Mark Cuban, Dustin Moskovitz, Kevin Systrom, Marc Andreessen, Sheryl Sandberg, Andrew Ng, Ben Horowitz, Chris Dixon, Patrick Bet David, Jason Calacanis, Marty Cagan, Mike Maples Jr, Raoul Pal, Steve Blank, Derek Sivers

AI Superpowers book cover
#3

AI Superpowers

by Lee, Kai-Fu

10 people recommended

If you care about the future being brought to us by AI, this is the one indispensable book of 2018.

Buy on Amazon β†’

Also recommended by: Balaji Srinivasan, Marc Benioff, Balaji S. Srinivasan, Arianna Huffington, Chris Anderson, Yuval Noah Harari, Peter Diamandis, Ryan Shea, Satya Nadella

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#4

by

6 people recommended

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast.

Also recommended by: Jay Z, Caterina Fake, Michael Pollan, Stewart Brand, Walter Isaacson

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#5

The Essential Rumi

by Jalal Al-Din Rumi

5 people recommended

The introduction alone [...] will make the hair stand up on your arms.

Buy on Amazon β†’

Also recommended by: Adam Robinson, Harry Styles, Kevin Kelly, Tara Brach

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#6

by

4 people recommended

A time machine into this place when our financial economy went crazily wrong.

Also recommended by: Chamath Palihapitiya, Tim Ferriss, Trung Phan

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#7

Working Backwards

by Colin Bryar

4 people recommended

[The authors] dive deep into how Amazon has become the company to study if you want to succeed in 21st-century business.

Buy on Amazon β†’

Also recommended by: Austen Allred, Marty Cagan, Tyler Cowen

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#8

by

3 people recommended

Most people who know me have heard me quote from this book.

Also recommended by: Ev Williams, Dr Andrew Weil

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#9

Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

2 people recommended

In terms of classics, you can’t do better than [this author] for understanding the human soul.

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Also recommended by: Hillary Clinton

πŸ“–
#10

The Collected Poems

by Wallace Stevens

2 people recommended

Maybe it’s too intellectual for some people, but [...] go find a couple of poems of [this author].

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Also recommended by: Caterina Fake

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#11

The Way We Live Now

by Anthony Trollope

2 people recommended

About the great railroad bubbles of the 1860s.

Buy on Amazon β†’

Also recommended by: Sarah Jessica Parker

The Second Machine Age book cover
#12

The Second Machine Age

by Erik Brynjolfsson

2 people recommended

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast.

Buy on Amazon β†’

Also recommended by: Michael Dell

πŸ“–
#13

The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats

by W. B. Yeats

2 people recommended

I learned [that 20 of these poems] do nothing for me, and there’s this one that just goes 'Bang!'

Buy on Amazon β†’

Also recommended by: Christopher Hitchens

πŸ“–
#14

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

by Tom Wolfe

2 people recommended

[Gets you] into the world of psychedelia and that era of the β€˜70s.

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Also recommended by: Jordan Peterson

πŸ“–
#15

The Meaning of Culture

by John Cowper Powys

Talks about the interplay of culture and life, the way that what we read can enrich what we experience, and what we experience can enrich what we read.

Buy on Amazon β†’
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#16

Night Train to Lisbon

by Pascal Mercier

Sometimes there was just a line in [this book] that changed my life in some way.

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#17

Makers and Takers

by Rana Foroohar

All about the financialization of the economy.

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πŸ“–
#18

The Discovery of the Mind

by Bruno Snell

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast.

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#19

Information Rules

by Carl Shapiro

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast.

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#20

The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog

by Ed Krol

It had a catalogue in the back of interests to internet sites. If you tell that to this site, you’ll get earthquake information. [...] There were only 200 web sites.

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πŸ“–
#21

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life

by Russ Roberts

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast.

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#22

Intermediate Microeconomics

by Hal R. Varian

Almost every economist learned from [this book].

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πŸ“–
#23

The Kabir Book

by Robert Bly

I love [this book].

Buy on Amazon β†’
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#24

Unrig

by Daniel G. Newman

I love [this book]. A graphic 'novel' explaining how to unrig the US's broken democracy.

Buy on Amazon β†’
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#25

Babel-17 / Empire Star

by Samuel R. Delany

I’d loved [this] little book.

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πŸ“–
#26

Can You Forgive Her?

by Anthony Trollope

It’s this sort of proto-feminist novel about these women who made choices that were unconventional in who they would marry.

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πŸ“–
#27

Loving Every Child

by Janusz Korczak

A wonderful book.

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πŸ“–
#28

Riders of the Purple Sage

by Zane Grey

A time machine into how people felt about the world in [1915].

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#29

The Warden

by Anthony Trollope

You read [this book] and you go, 'Oh, my God, I’m reading a novel about the moral quandaries of an 1850s British cleric, and it’s fricking fascinating.'

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#30

Trilby

by George Du Maurier

Everybody knows Charles Dickens, but only a certain number of people will have read [this book].

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#31

Charlie Chan

by Earl Derr Biggers

Like a time machine with the casual racism.

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#32

Islandia

by Austin Tappan Wright

A personal passion project of a Boston lawyer.

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#33

Rissa Kerguelen

by F. M Busby

Influenced me deeply.

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#34

When Nietzsche Wept

by Irvin D. Yalom

An imagined story of early psychoanalysis about a guy who was a predecessor to Freud.

Buy on Amazon β†’
πŸ“–
#35

The Civil War

by Bruce Catton

Tim O’Reilly mentioned this book on "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast.

Buy on Amazon β†’