Library

This is my Library—a collection of books, websites, and tools that have been transformative for me.

A quick note about books:

For convenience, I’ve included links, generally from Amazon (not affiliate links) for the books in this list. But many of these books may be available at your library, including as instantly-downloadable ebooks on the Libby app. When I was in law school, I looked forward to being a working lawyer, rich enough to buy any book I wanted! With the Libby app, everyone with a cell phone or a Kindle feels that rich! What a world!

For me, though, reading is a tactile and physical process. I underline and dog-ear. And I love buying used books that bear similar marks of having passed through other hands. I got Alan Watt’s Eastern Wisdom at Merrill’s bookstore in Hallowell, Maine, where proprietor John Merrill only accepts cash and writes receipts in long-hand. While he wrote out my receipt, Merrill told me that he decided to open the bookstore after reading a different copy of this same book I was buying! You can’t buy that kind of connection from Jeff Bezos.

Heart

Most of the books in this Heart section are about the tension between left-brain and right-brain.

Lawyers make our living with our left brains, what Robert Pirsig calls “Phaedrus’ Knife” – “the division of the world into parts and the building of [a] structure.”

When I was a lawyer, almost everything I did to find peace was about trying to turn off my left brain, and turn up my more laid-back, open, and intuitive right brain.

  • Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
    • Stunningly beautiful vision of what it could be like to live in gratitude, generosity and contentment. The audio book is read by the author; her voice is a balm for cynical times.
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
    • A classic, brilliant meditation on effort and attention. Written in the early 1970s—before everyone was talking about “flow” or “peak performance.”
  • The Divine Within. Aldous Huxley
    • Huxley speaks in the language of lawyers—words, analysis, logic—but he points to something that transcends all of that.
  • A Stroke of Insight: a Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, Jill Bolte Taylor., PhD
    • The author is a neurologist who suffered a stroke that disabled parts of her left brain. With language, logic, and judgments muted she felt less anxious and more connected to the world. As she recovered, she learned to consciously “turn down” her left brain and tap into her right brain’s peace. In clear language, she teaches the reader to do the same.
  • Tao Te Ching, Lao-tsu (the Stephen Mitchell translation)
    • This book was written around 500 B.C.E.. But if you can catch its wavelength, it will be extraordinarily relevant to your career—and everything else. I can’t tell you how many times I pulled out this thin volume on hard days. A sample
  • Eastern Wisdom, Alan Watts
    • Watts was the original podcaster, broadcasting countless hours of reflections on his PBS radio show between the 1950s and the 1970s. You can find those recordings here. Watts offers a path to peace through unflinching contemplation of the nature of the human condition: what we are. I recommend this particular book because the discussion of sound meditation at the end is the best meditation tutorial I’ve ever seen.

Health

  • Ultra-processed People. The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food. Chris van Tulleken.**
    • Excellent summary of the medical underpinnings of what your body already knows: Ultra-processed food isn’t good for our bodies or minds.
  • Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. John J. Ratey and Eric Hagerman.
    • Excellent summary of the medical underpinnings of what your body already knows: Exercise is good for our bodies and our minds.
  • Fast. Feast. Repeat. Gin Stephens.

Freedom

  • Mr. Money Mustache’s blog
    • I would never have been able to retire early if my friend Shannon had not turned me on to this blog. MMM’s genius is making spending less money about living a better life. The financial and environmental impact is icing on the cake. Start from the beginning and read this whole blog if you’ve got any interest in early retirement or frugal living.
  • Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life, Bill Perkins
    • This is the book that got me to finally pull the trigger on retiring early after so many years of saying “just one more year.” Re-framing your life as maximizing fulfillment, rather than maximizing your stockpile of money, is a powerful tool.
  • The Bitcoin Standard. Saifedean Ammous.
    • If you read one book about finance, it should be this one. Many of Ammous’ core conclusions—like his discussion of the connection between money-printing and war— are novel insights that seem obvious in retrospect. His book changed my life and, if we are all very lucky, it may change the world.
  • Michael Saylor’s podcasts. Start with Saylor’s Digital Gold Rush speech, here. If you are really intrigued, dive into Robert Breedlove’s series of interviews with Saylor, here. Really long, but worth it.
    • Saylor is an MIT-educated engineer and technologist who got turned on to Bitcoin as a way to preserve his business’s capital when the United States started printing money to address the COVID crisis. Make no mistake: Saylor is an advocate. In fact, for lawyers, his podcasts are worth listening to simply as an example of clear, compelling persuasion done well. But if he is right, and he pulls it off, the world could change profoundly for the better.