Mark Zukerberg's List of Books - so far

Below is the list of books that Mark Zukerberg is and will be reading this year. If any of the books interests me I would pick it up.

1. End of Power by Moises Niam
The book goes about the dilution of power in the new age.
Interesting quote from the book -

"easier to get, harder to use, and easier to lose". 

That sounds interesting. I have queued it to my book list to read for this year.

Other books from the author:

2. The Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker
Are we as the entire human race less violent than before? What made us so - culture, modernization - a dissection of causes - This is the theme of this book.

Interesting quote used in the book - 

“The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers, those who are still breastfeeding their babies."--Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.”

There are some negative reviews from Nasim Taleb, the famed hedge funder who is one of the handful that profited phenomenally from the Great Recession and from others including International Social Review. This book is not in my queue yet.

Other books from the author worth mentioning:

3.Gang Leader For a Day
This is an inside peak into the crack dealing gang in Chicago through Sudhir's access to JT's gang.
"It is easy to blame but hard to change" - This is not a quote from the book but mine.

This book gives a chance to empathize with people who are driven to the darkest places and don't have the means to come out. I will add this to my list

Other books from the author worth mentioning:

Mortal Instruments

I recently read the Mortal Instruments trilogy - yes the ones that are being made as a movie. These books have nothing original about it. If you have entirely nothing else to do you can read these books. But I would rather suggest you wait for the movie - at least you won't waste more than 1.5 hrs

On the positive side, unlike other books it is an easy to read, as any young adult book should be and you will not waste more than two days to finish a book. It is like a one night stand - there is nothing good that will come out of it but you will not feel like putting the book down once you have started and you might feel bad after finishing the book that you wasted your time.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

This is an amazing book that has great insights into human psychology that would be helpful to anybody in understanding one's customers and in working with multiple stakeholders both external and internal to the company. Below is a small excerpt from the book that will give you an idea of the value that you would get from this book.

Chapter1:

Break the cyle of relativity.

          1) When given 3 options to buy a.) Object A b) an inferior Object A at same price and c.) Object B, we generally buy Object A. This is because there is something to compare for Object A and no comparison avaliable for Object B.

          2) If there is a discount of $7 on a $20 pen in one store but not in the other we might travel to the other store to get the discount. But if there is a discount of $7 on a $1000 suit in a different store we might consider it much to travel to that store from the visiting store.

Chapter 2:

Arbitrary Coherence - Anchor price- People are influenced by random numbers. Without a point of reference, people would anchor the first seen price and everything else be compared to it.

Magic Free - Offering a product for 1cent is not the same as offering a product for free. Free has a different place in the minds of people. Freebies - best promotion possible.

Chapter 3:

Cost of social norms - one has to be careful not to mix social norm with market norm. Take dating for example, if a person mixes market norms with social norms-think about price of the meals and so.. he might lose the relationship forever.

Chapter 4:

Procastination and self control - Cure to procastination is to have fixed deadline or target and have a penalty if you do not meet it.

Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

Cognitive Surplus is a great book and a must read for people who still can't understand why Facebook is huge!
In this book, Clay Shirky has gone in great lengths about social production and about human psych to utilize opportunities in a social way. What changed to bring about social in everything that we see now? Any person who is about to start a social startup should read this.

Few important takeaways from the book for the launch of  a new social media:
1) Start small
2) Ask why? - motivation for each person.
3) Behavior follows opportunity - - Behavior of the users depends on the opportunity presented.
4) Default to social
5) Keep growing - "social systems have 2 modes - dynamic and dead"
6) People differ. More people differ more.
7) Intimacy doesn't scale
8) Support a supportive culture
9) Adapting - No one is right the first time.
10) Success causes more problems than failure
11) Try anything. Try Everything.

The book is really refreshing and thought provoking. Looking with the perspective of Clay Shiky, one can understand the value of Cognitive Surplus and it importance for the future.

The Greatest Trade Ever by Gregory Zuckerman

This book provides a look into how a bunch of people who are not regularly considered to be part of wallstreet make it big during the bleak times of the economic downturn that started in late 2007. With SEC suing Goldman Sachs for material misrepresentation and John Paulson in news lately, this book has gained even more popularity.

The book shows how John Paulson, a merger arbitrageur, Michael Burry, a doctor based in San Jose, California , Jeff Greene, real estate baron in Los Angeles area and Andrew lahde, an amateur hedge fund manager bet against the housing market using credit default swaps and synthetic CDOs to gain a windfall profit of more than 40%, when the entire stock market lost more than 30% in 2008. One thing to note is that Jeff Greene is the only individual investor in the bunch while others are fund managers.

It is a very entertaining book. I would expect Hollywood to make a movie out of it in a few years.

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb

This is a nice quote from the book "Fooled by randomness" explaining a common mistake that we make in probability.

"Our operation has a mortality rate of 1%. So far we have operated on 99 patients with great success; you are our 100th, hence you have a 100% probability of dying on the table."

This is the first book related to finance, that I read in a single day! It kept me going. A very good read. Every point made on probability and our incapacity to think through probability properly, most of the times, was golden. After reading this book, I have a great surge to go through the probability lessons that I had taken before again.

Forgetting about the egoistic nudges made in the book, this is a must read.

The Windup girl

Bacigalupi's debut work in science-fiction novel seems to be more derived from his short stories written under "Pump Six and Other Stories". The storyline can be summarised as "What holds in the future with companies like Monsanto genetically modifying the crops? What would happen if people are let to be modified similarly?".The plot takes place in Thailand in not so future, where there are two main political entities, one is the environmental department and trade department. The author takes us through the tug of war between the trade and environment departments and the in between instigator, Agri gen, one of the companies that creates genetically modified food. There are a few characters in the story which seems to be just added up for no reason. It is not a ground breaking science fiction novel but a decent read.