Taste & recommendation

Which book do you recommend most often to others, and what makes you pass it on?

82 answers answered between 1986 and 2026

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Sebastian Junger War correspondent and author; co-director of the documentary Restrepo
At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matheson. I also recently read Sapiens by a guy named Harari. And I’m going to give that thing over and over again to everyone I know.
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 1 January 2018 source ↗
Malcolm Gladwell Staff writer at The New Yorker; author of The Tipping Point and Outliers
There’s one book I’ve given the most in my life, which is a book called – well, there are several now that I think about it. There’s a book by Timothy Wilson called Strangers to Ourselves , which is one of the loveliest, most insightful books about social psychology that I ever read. And I give that a lot to people. And every time I meet, and really, I’m always meeting people who work in retail, particularly I always send them, particularly if they’re Jewish, I send them a book called The Merchant Princes . It’s a book about the great Jewish retail families of America. So in the 19th century, all of these people come over from Europe who have experience in the garment trade or retailing. And an extraordinary number of the early 20th century/late 19th century department stores pop up around America are founded by Jewish immigrants from Europe from, literally, you go to any town in America, the traditional department store is from one of those families. Well, a guy, and I’ve forgotten his name, wrote a book about those families, and it’s called The Merchant Princes , and it’s fantastic.
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, 1 June 2018 source ↗

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