Ray King's Book Picks

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edit Macro Thinking

edit Here Comes Everybody


edit The Wisdom of Crowds

  • How can 800 non experts come up with a better guess as to the weight of a fully dressed cow? This phenomenon is explored and applied to Las Vegas odds, the stock market and more.
  • Author - James Surowiecki (just found out he's a graduate of Choate Rosemary Hall -- where I went for summer session while in High School)
  • Wisdom of Crowds on Amazon


edit Emergence

  • The book talks about emergent systems and the difference between individual and group behavior. He starts with an explanation of slime mold and then compares that with ant colonies, cities and the Internet. I found it fascinating.
  • Author: Stephen Johnson
  • Emergence on Amazon


edit Operational Excellence

edit Elements of User Experience

  • Recommended to me by Vinh
  • Author: Jesse James Garrett
  • Neat and concise way to view the design process, the book provides a framework in which you can organize your thoughts and be thinking about the right things at the right times. Oftentimes all kinds of ideas come up at all stages of site design and it's maddening; Garrett brings some order to that chaos.


  • Mastering the Rockefeller Habits - Verne Harnish
  • Good to Great - Jim Collins (a must read)
  • Pat Lencioni (short fable style books)
    • 5 Temptations of a CEO
    • Death by Meeting
    • 5 Dysfunctions of a team

edit Domain Industry

  • Ruling the Root - Milton Mueller

edit How the Mind Works

edit Investigative Reporting

  • Jon Krakauer books:
    • Into Thin Air (Mt. Everest)
    • Under the Banner of Heaven (Mormon Fundamentalism)
    • Into the Wild (Alaska)
  • Three Cups of Tea (Northern Pakistan)
  • The New New Thing - Michael Lewis
  • Liars Poker - Michael Lewis

edit About Specific Businesses

  • Only the Paranoid Survive, Andy Grove (Intel)
  • Maverick - Ricardo Semler (Semco)
  • Odyssey - John Scully (Apple)
  • Faster Company - Patrick Kelly (Physician Sales & Service)
  • Business at the Speed of Thought - Bill Gates (Microsoft)
  • The Road Ahead - Bill Gates (Microsoft)

edit Biographical

  • The Motorcycle Diaries - Che Guavara
  • Lessons: An Autobiography - An Wang (Wang Laboratories)
  • The Ultimate Entrepreneur - Ken Olsen (DEC)
  • The Winner Within - Pat Riley (Lakers, Knicks)
  • The Snowball - Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Alice Schroeder (reading now)

edit Fiction

edit Down and out in the Magic Kingdom

  • A cure for death has been found and as a result the only real currency that matters in this version of the future is personal reputation. Adhocracy defined.
  • Author: Cory Doctorow
  • Down and out in the Magic Kingdom on Amazon


  • Curious incident of the dog in the nighttime
  • Kite Runner
  • Memoirs of a Geisha
  • Fountainhead
  • Dan Brown Books (ok I'll admit it)
    • DaVinci Code (Best in my opinion)
    • Angels and Demons
    • Digital Fortress
    • Deception Point

edit Recommended to me

  • Obed's picks:
    • A god of small things, Arundhuti Roy
    • Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
    • Dancing Girls of Lahore, ?
    • The Sandman Comics, Neil Gaiman
    • A Case of Exploding Mangoes
  • Adad's picks:
    • Things fall apart, Chinua Achebe