# Deep Questions with Cal Newport book recommendations

> Every book mentioned on Deep Questions with Cal Newport, most mentioned first, with the strongest quote for each. Compiled by Podshelf from episode transcripts.

- Show page: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/deep-questions-with-cal-newport
- Hosted by Cal Newport
- 137 books, 212 mentions and 1 top pick across 180 episodes since 2024-01-01

## Books

- [Slow Productivity](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593544853) by Cal Newport: 14 mentions, the host's own book
  > “Slow productivity emerged out of that question. I needed to switch my mindset away from the mindset that got me tenure early. Away from the mindset that has produced whatever I have, 70 or 80 peer reviewed papers, 5,000 citations, three best paper awards in my field... Slow productivity, you can think of it as the answer to that question. A reconfiguration of productivity that is based around producing stuff that really makes you proud as part of a life that is really deep and interesting and varied.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [Digital Minimalism](https://podshelf.io/books/9780525536543) by Cal Newport: 11 mentions, the host's own book
  > “However, as you pointed out, you were at the vanguard of this with digital minimalism. We just kind of went into phones with like, oh yeah, we see all the benefits of the phones, but we don't really see the cost. Or if we do, we don't want to think about them. So we'll just kind of accept whatever cost and go with the flow... And we know as a result of that experiment, 10, 15 years later, that you were right. It didn't work out, right? We've got all of these problems with fractured attention and mental illness in youth and ubiquitous distraction and the inability to focus that are increasingly being traced back to phones.” — The AI Resistance is Forming. (Should You Join?) (2026-09-14)
- [Deep Work](https://podshelf.io/books/9781455586691) by Cal Newport: 11 mentions, the host's own book
  > “That led to deep work. How do I get really good at things that are rare and valuable? Well, oh, in the type of stuff I do in the sort of elite knowledge economy, unbroken concentration is the only thing that's producing the real value. Everything else just gets in the way. So I have to really cultivate concentration as a tier one skill if I'm going to get really good at things so I can leverage the effects I talked about and so good they can't ignore you and gain autonomy over my career.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [A World Without Email](https://podshelf.io/books/9780525536550) by Cal Newport: 9 mentions, the host's own book
  > “I mean, I wrote a whole book about how this happened with email, like email. It was like, yeah, this is great. I want to use the fax machine. My voicemail is annoying, but we led to our life without thinking about it. What else is going to happen if we put in low friction digital communication? It made work, knowledge work into a sort of constant stream of stressful catch up on an inbox that makes us switch our contacts once every two minutes, makes it impossible to think clearly, burns us out.” — The AI Resistance is Forming. (Should You Join?) (2026-09-14)
- [The Deep Life](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593544877) by Cal Newport: 8 mentions, the host's own book
  > “…t book. Got it. Because I don't know what's going to come next. I'll do a two-book context if I have two good ideas. I mean, I signed my last two-book deal. It was basically at the end – it was in the pandemic. It was Slow Productivity and the Deep Life. And I was like, I knew I wanted to write those two books next. It's many years later that finally we're almost there. But this time I just want to write this next book and then see what comes next after it. Yep. All right. Well, before we…” — Why Do Digital Detoxes Fail? What Works Better? | Monday Advice (2026-07-27)
- [So Good They Can't Ignore You](https://podshelf.io/books/9781455509126) by Cal Newport: 6 mentions, the host's own book
  > “So Good They Can't Ignore You was me confronting the passion hypothesis as part of, in my own life, answering the question as a postdoc at MIT, how do you cultivate a career that's going to be a source of passion? That was a really important question to me at the time... And So Good They Can't Ignore You came out of that quest. One of the big answers from So Good They Can't Ignore You was get really good at things that are rare and valuable, and then you get autonomy over your working life.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [In Defense of Food](https://podshelf.io/books/9780141034720) by Michael Pollan: 4 mentions
  > “I really have Michael Pollan. I went back and reread In Defense of Food a few months ago because that's my model. In Defense of Food was like he's making his philosophical argument about how food culture has gone awry and why we should care about it. And then also got practical about how do we do that? How as an individual can we care more about food? And that was his like eat less, mostly plants.” — Rethinking the Deep Life Stack (Again!) | Monday Advice (2026-08-31)
- [How to Become a Straight-A Student](https://podshelf.io/books/9780767922715) by Cal Newport: 4 mentions, the host's own book
  > “So if you want to become a better student, and this is going to sound very self-serving, but I'm going to say, read my book, How to Become a Straight A Student... And I just looked it up before the show. I think the sales on how to become a straight-A student is approaching 250,000 copies. A book that has never had any major promotion, has never been talked about on a single major podcast show, or had any footprint on social media. That's all word of mouth.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [The Way of Excellence](https://podshelf.io/books/9780063385948) by Brad Stulberg: 3 mentions
  > “I mean, look, if you listen to my show, you know, Brad, but check out the way of excellence for sure. Sweeping the world of professional sports, uh, because he's on it and then check out his sub stack, which is where this essay came from.” — Am I Optimizing Too Much? | Monday Advice (2026-07-20)
- [More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity](https://podshelf.io/books/9781541619593) by Adam Becker: 3 mentions
  > “So anyways, there's a lot of connections, which I don't want to go through now, but I would recommend you look at my New York Times op-ed about this from a few weeks ago. Or Cade Metz did a really good appearance on The Daily, the New York Times Daily podcast a couple weeks ago where he walked through this history. Michelle Goldberg did a good column on this history. The Wall Street Journal last weekend had a good column on this history. Look at Adam Becker's book is very good on this. Listen to my podcast with Adam Becker and Ed Zitron where we went through this.” — An Insider's Guide to AI Doom (2026-10-01)
- [The Let Them Theory](https://podshelf.io/books/9781401971366) by Mel Robbins: 2 mentions, 1 top pick
  > “Read The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, the book that's been like number one for roughly all the years, she gave me a copy when I went to do her show” — Ep. 355: Quit Social Media (For Real This Time) (2025-06-02)
- [A Brief History of Intelligence](https://podshelf.io/books/9780063286344) by Max Bennett: 2 mentions
  > “With that in mind, I also read in July A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett, which is, it's like Sapiens, but just about the brain. And it talks about the evolution of the brain from the very first single cell organisms up to Homo sapiens today. We did a podcast episode that I recorded on vacation a couple weeks ago that talked about one idea about the brain function I got from that book that I then applied to our phones.” — How Do I Finish Meaningful Projects? | Monday Advice (2026-08-10)
- [How to Become a High School Superstar](https://podshelf.io/books/9780307715814) by Cal Newport: 2 mentions, the host's own book
  > “One last thing I want to mention before we run out of time here for our listeners in the UK there are new UK editions of my study guides so my first three books how to win a college how to become a straight A student how to become a high school superstar had not been published in the UK up to now and they look great they just sent them to me they have brand new covers and they're all like a coherent color scheme I think they look really good.” — Rethinking the Deep Life Stack (Again!) | Monday Advice (2026-08-31)
- [The Ride of a Lifetime](https://podshelf.io/books/9780399592096) by Robert Iger: 2 mentions
  > “Then I read – I guess I reread this. I think I had read this at some point during the pandemic. The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger. So that's the – now former – recently made former CEO of Disney Corporation. And he wrote this pre-pandemic. It's his like business memoir. An interesting book. He came up through ABC.” — How Do I Reclaim My Schedule? (w/ Laura Vanderkam) | Monday Advice (2026-05-25)
- [Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word](https://podshelf.io/books/9780415538381) by Walter J. Ong: 2 mentions
  > “I read six books in July. Two of them, right, Jesse? Two of them we did talk about on the show earlier in July. The first was Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong, which we talked about in an earlier July episode... This is part, along with the Walter Ong book, this is part of my, I'm in a big research effort now to really understand thinking and the evolution of the human mind.” — How Do I Finish Meaningful Projects? | Monday Advice (2026-08-10)
- [Critique of Pure Reason](https://podshelf.io/books/9780521657297) by immanuel kant: 2 mentions, 1 critical
  > “I'm currently reading a condensed history and philosophy. This made me realize how much philosophers have thought about thinking and its limits. Today I was wrestling with the depiction of Immanuel Kant's critique of pure reason and wondered whether you will address these developments in thinking in your upcoming book about thinking.” — The Truth About Brain Rot (2026-09-21)
- [Aerobics](https://podshelf.io/books/9780553274479) by Kenneth H. Cooper: 2 mentions
  > “Now, the person perhaps most responsible for changing our understanding of exercise was Dr. Kenneth Cooper who was a former Air Force doctor who in 1968 published a groundbreaking book called Aerobics which made the case that cardiovascular activity is not a heart attack machine but actually a way to make your heart and body healthier and you'll live longer.” — Do I Need a “Brain Gym”? | Monday Advice (2026-06-15)
- [Inside the Box](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593715710) by David Epstein: 2 mentions
  > “And I have confidence my books will do well, and I don't necessarily need the comfort of the two-book deal. So no, my plan is to do – my next deal will be a single-book deal. I was inspired by Dave Epstein when he came on the show, I don't know, it was like a month ago? Yeah. Yeah, talking about his book Inside the Box.” — How Do I Reclaim My Schedule? (w/ Laura Vanderkam) | Monday Advice (2026-05-25)
- [Against the Machine](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593850633) by Paul Kingsnorth: 2 mentions
  > “He has this big case against what he calls the machine, a former Wiccan now Greek Orthodox Christian, doesn't come from classical 20th century theory” — Ep. 355: Quit Social Media (For Real This Time) (2025-06-02)
- [Atomic Habits](https://podshelf.io/books/9780735211292) by James Clear: 2 mentions
  > “…utomation. Yeah? Come on. I found it. Well, I found it, but normally when you search a book, there's like a million, but for this one, there was like one little one, like of a photo. It's going to be the Let Them Fear. It's going to be the Atomic Habits of 2026. You've heard it here first. Surprise breakout. I found it actually randomly at Politics and Prose. They had a bunch of copies face out, and I was like, yes, I'll buy that. You should tell the acquired people about it so they can a…” — How Do I Finish Meaningful Projects? | Monday Advice (2026-08-10)
- [How to Win at College](https://podshelf.io/books/9780767917872) by Cal Newport: 2 mentions, the host's own book
  > “One last thing I want to mention before we run out of time here for our listeners in the UK there are new UK editions of my study guides so my first three books how to win a college how to become a straight A student how to become a high school superstar had not been published in the UK up to now and they look great they just sent them to me they have brand new covers and they're all like a coherent color scheme I think they look really good.” — Rethinking the Deep Life Stack (Again!) | Monday Advice (2026-08-31)
- [Dopamine Nation](https://podshelf.io/books/9781524746728) by Dr. Anna Lembke, Anna Lembke: 2 mentions
  > “It's not just a character flaw that you should just buck up and respond to. You should read her book, Dopamine Nation, for more on this. But in our interview, she talked about the growing IT addiction-oriented versions of AA is a big thing. And professional therapy with addiction specialists can really help you walk through this.” — Can I Be a Digital Minimalist in 2026? | Monday Advice (2026-06-29)
- [The Perfect Mile](https://podshelf.io/books/9780007173723) by Neal Bascomb: 1 mention
  > “Did you ever read the Neil Bascom book, The Perfect Mile?” — Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice (2026-05-04)
- [Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning](https://podshelf.io/books/9780008511678) by Nigel Biggar: 1 mention
  > “Nigel was sort of caught up in this because, uh, he wrote a book and I believe had a big grant that was looking critically at colonialism and saying, there's a lot that was bad about colonialism. There's other things. It was good. It's complicated. It was called colonialism, a moral reckoning, but post-colonial studies had emerged as one of the massive ideological, uh, forces in woke one.” — How I’m Organizing My Life this Fall | Advice (2026-09-07)
- [The Laws of Thought](https://podshelf.io/books/9780008711504) by Tom Griffiths: 1 mention
  > “I finished Tom Griffith's book, The Laws of Thought. This came out earlier this year, maybe in the fall. I think it was earlier this in the winter. And it's a popular science book about the various mathematical models we've developed over history for trying to understand thought, going back from like the sort of logic, trying to use propositional logic up through neural thinking, etc. I thought it was very good.” — How to Build a Cognitive Training Plan | Monday Advice (2026-08-24)
- [Telephone: The First Hundred Years](https://podshelf.io/books/9780060105402) by John Brooks: 1 mention
  > “I like to talk about what I'm up to, what I'm reading. I mean, I'm just finishing up a long book, Jesse, that I found at a used bookstore, 1975, Telephone, The First Hundred Years by John Brooks. John Brooks was a New Yorker writer and his economic historian who has given the first access to the AT&T records of any outside person. And I got a first edition of this book randomly that he wrote in 1975 that gave the history of the AT&T, the technology and the system. … A little dry. A lot of like this is what the dividend payment was in 1956 versus 1955. Like it was a little like he's an economic historian, but I really liked it.” — “Rogue” AI Not Inevitable. It’s a Choice. (2026-10-19)
- [Prey](https://podshelf.io/books/9780060540821) by Michael Crichton: 1 mention
  > “Interestingly and coincidentally, at the same time that all this was going on, my 13-year-old son is reading Michael Crichton's 2002 book Prey, where Michael Crichton takes on the topic of AI. And guess how he personifies the AI villain in this book as a literal swarm of small agents that work together and are brilliant and do all sorts of scary things. So swarms are scary.” — Did OpenAI Create “Secret AI Civilizations”? | Tech Decoded (2026-09-03)
- [Flow](https://podshelf.io/books/9780061339202) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: 1 mention
  > “And what we know from all of this research on performance is that we perform our best and we feel our best when we are not focused on ourself. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow, foundational book in performance psychology, defines a flow state as when we completely enter the zone, when we feel one with our activity, when we're really at our best. And a defining feature of flow is a sense of selflessness and loss of ego.” — Am I Optimizing Too Much? | Monday Advice (2026-07-20)
- [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance](https://podshelf.io/books/9780061673733) by Robert M. Pirsig: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “The stream of conscious nonsense. Yeah. No, if I read like Ginsburg, if I read, you know, like Howl or something like that, my head explodes. It's like, what's the stream of conscious nonsense? Structure your arguments. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. I want numbered subsections. Come on. What are you doing here?” — Rethinking the Deep Life Stack (Again!) | Monday Advice (2026-08-31)
- [Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind](https://podshelf.io/books/9780062316097) by Yuval Noah Harari: 1 mention
  > “I read Sapiens by Yuval Harari. This is part, along with the Walter Ong book, this is part of my, I'm in a big research effort now to really understand thinking and the evolution of the human mind. With that in mind, I also read in July A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett, which is, it's like Sapiens, but just about the brain.” — How Do I Finish Meaningful Projects? | Monday Advice (2026-08-10)
- [Pandora's Box](https://podshelf.io/books/9780062991676) by Peter Biskind: 1 mention
  > “In particular, I read Peter Biskins' book, Pandora's Box. And this is a history... of the prestige TV era. So starting with HBO's emergence as a producer of prestige original content, following what happened with the basic cable channels... I think it's a good TikTok history. If you want to know who were the people involved, what was the timeline involved with these coming up and down... So it's a cool book. I'm glad I read it.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [What to Make of a Life: Cliff, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative](https://podshelf.io/books/9780063567375) by Jim Collins: 1 mention
  > “I read a book called What to Make of a Life. This is Jim Collins' new book... I like the book.” — Am I Addicted to My Phone? (w/ Anna Lembke) | Monday Advice (2026-05-18)
- [Theory of Constraints Handbook](https://podshelf.io/books/9780071665544) by Eliyahu Goldratt: 1 mention
  > “it also led to this 1,200 page Theory of Constraints handbook. And Goldratt wrote the foreword.” — Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice (2026-05-04)
- [One Simple Idea](https://podshelf.io/books/9780071756150) by Stephen Key: 1 mention
  > “There's a great book on inventing in general and licensing versus venturing called One Simple Idea by Stephen Key, he's created stuff for all these gigantic brands” — IN-DEPTH: The Game of Life (w/ Tim Ferriss) (2025-09-04)
- [Who Wrote the Bible](https://podshelf.io/books/9780139585135) by Richard Elliott Friedman: 1 mention
  > “The first book I really recommend it's called who wrote the Bible by Richard Elliot Friedman. Let me tell you why I recommend this. This book is doing something that is incredibly hard to do well, and when I see it done well, I really appreciate it... He makes it not only accessible, but it reads like a detective novel... So anytime I see a scholar taking an incredibly complicated topic and without diluting the complexity of the topic, making it compelling to read for the lay reader, I tip my cap because I know how hard it is.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [The Odyssey](https://podshelf.io/books/9780140268867) by Homer: 1 mention
  > “I'm actually right now reading Daniel Mendelsohn's translation of The Odyssey to my three-year-old. And he loves it. It's his whole life. … I figure why not make the content something that can last their entire life, that they can have a relationship with. Something as enriching and enduring as Homer, where he can understand it as a three-year-old and then in 10 years as a 13-year-old and then as a grown man.” — Should I Turn Off the Internet? (Lessons From a Family That Did) | Monday Advice (2026-07-06)
- [The Nicomachean Ethics](https://podshelf.io/books/9780140449495) by Aristotle: 1 mention
  > “We have this ability that Aristotle talks about in the Nicomachean Ethics. We have this ability that no one else has to contemplate deeply, to aim our brain at abstract ends. Dogs don't do this. Cats don't do this. Parakeets don't do this. Humans can't. So Aristotle would say this is perhaps the ultimate teleolo…” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [War and Peace](https://podshelf.io/books/9780140955408) by Leo Tolstoy: 1 mention
  > “But other things like reading or writing might need to be smaller bits of time for somebody who has a really big, you know, busy life. But could you find 10 to 15 minutes a day for something? If you could, you could read War and Peace in a year, right? It's 361 very short chapters. So you read one chapter a day. Takes just 5 to 10 minutes each day. You'll get through it in a year.” — How Do I Reclaim My Schedule? (w/ Laura Vanderkam) | Monday Advice (2026-05-25)
- [Hit Makers](https://podshelf.io/books/9780141981598) by Derek Thompson: 1 mention
  > “I've talked – I've told you all about what I'm doing here in Asheville and the thinking I'm doing. The book I brought with me here, which I'm enjoying, is Derek Thompson's Hitmakers because I thought it would be relevant when thinking about like writing and podcasting. Hey, what makes these type of things successful?” — Should I Press Pause? | Monday Advice (2026-06-08)
- [East of Eden](https://podshelf.io/books/9780142000656) by John Steinbeck: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “It was East of Eden by John Stiebeck. Terrible book. Hack.” — Am I Addicted to My Phone? (w/ Anna Lembke) | Monday Advice (2026-05-18)
- [Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business](https://podshelf.io/books/9780143036531) by Neil Postman: 1 mention
  > “What do you think of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death? I feel like that book fits well as a route for your digital minimalist philosophy... That's a good book. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman... I like Amusing Ourselves to Death. It definitely is a standalone book worth reading. What people often get wrong about it is they think it's just a book about TV being bad.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Kick My Scrolling Habit? | Monday Advice (2026-08-17)
- [Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity](https://podshelf.io/books/9780191790331) by Olle Häggström: 1 mention
  > “There's a statistician named Ole Hagstrom who is generally sympathetic with long-termism. But he has this moment of – what I would describe as moment of clarity in his – I think it was 2015 book, Here Be Dragons, where he talks about – Nick Bostrom has said that reducing – because there could be so many digital people in the far future and hence so much value. Again, his estimate is like 10 to the 58 digital people at least. That decreasing the probability of an existential catastrophe by a tiny, tiny amount, which is just to say – it's just another way of saying increasing the probability of this cosmic post-human utopia by a tiny, tiny amount – is worth the lives of billions and billions of actual living human beings, right?” — A Stark Warning From a Former AI Doomer (2026-10-08)
- [In the Swarm](https://podshelf.io/books/9780262533362) by Byung-Chul Han: 1 mention
  > “Byung-Chul Han, In the Swarm: Digital Prospects, an MIT Press book, five passages from the book that caught my attention, the Internet's new favorite philosopher” — Ep. 357: What Worries the Internet’s Favorite Philosopher? (2025-06-16)
- [Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films](https://podshelf.io/books/9780300189827) by Molly Haskell: 1 mention
  > “Then I finished Molly Haskell's book, Steven Spielberg, A Life in Films. This is actually an academic press book. She's a well-known film critic. It's like a biography of Spielberg but told through his films, like what was going on in his life as he wrote each film. I wanted to finish that before I went to see Spielberg's new movie, and so I finished that right before.” — Am I Lazy or Overstimulated? | Monday Advice (2026-06-22)
- [The Dog Stars](https://podshelf.io/books/9780307959942) by Peter Heller: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “I started reading The Dog Stars after this and I aborted it... The style wasn't vibing with me.” — Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice (2026-05-04)
- [Rock Paper Incisors](https://podshelf.io/books/9780316588416) by Amy Timberlake, Jon Klassen: 1 mention
  > “these latest ones. The latest ones are the Skunk and Badger books. So Skunk and Badger, Egg Marks the Spot and Rock Paper Incisors.” — Ep. 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”? (2026-04-13)
- [If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies](https://podshelf.io/books/9780316595643) by Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “So, for example, I mentioned that Joukowsky is not anti-ASI or pro-human, even though if you read his book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, you kind of get that impression. But he has explicitly said in interviews that once post-humanity arrives, then it may be unethical to continue to have biological humans.” — A Stark Warning From a Former AI Doomer (2026-10-08)
- [The Road](https://podshelf.io/books/9780330469487) by Cormac McCarthy: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “I never read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It kind of bums me out.” — Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice (2026-05-04)
- [Jurassic Park](https://podshelf.io/books/9780345538987) by Michael Crichton: 1 mention
  > “I found a first edition, first printing of Jurassic Park. It was $2,000. That was a bridge too far.” — Ep. 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”? (2026-04-13)
- [The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI](https://podshelf.io/books/9780374621568) by Cory Doctorow: 1 mention
  > “and then the book I'm about to finish The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow who I like a lot the reverse centaur is a reference to so in human computer interaction there's a notion of a centaur system where a human is augmented by a computer and then they can perform better than a human alone can so centaur chess is where the term comes from... The reverse centaur is Doctorow's term for like you are being used by the technology so the like the AI is like using you basically and it's no good.” — Combating the Whirlwind with a Single Sheet of Paper (2026-10-05)
- [America's Game](https://podshelf.io/books/9780375725067) by Michael MacCambridge: 1 mention
  > “How did it compare to America's Game when you read that a couple years ago? You know, it's very different because America's Game is a history. It's like, what is the history of the NFL? Like, how did this go? Klausterman, he just like has ideas and runs with them. So it's esoteric, kind of nonlinear, eccentric observational essays, like on football.” — Do I Need a “Brain Gym”? | Monday Advice (2026-06-15)
- [The Seven Storey Mountain](https://podshelf.io/books/9780385023566) by Thomas Merton: 1 mention
  > “There's a famous book, for example, it was published back in 1948. It was called The Seven-Story Mountain. It's the autobiography of Thomas Merton who goes from being a sort of a drift academic in New York to a Trappist monk down in Kentucky.” — How Do I Build “Cognitive Fitness”? | Monday Advice (2026-04-27)
- [But What If We're Wrong?](https://podshelf.io/books/9780399184123) by Chuck Klosterman: 1 mention
  > “I don't want to bring it with me because it's a signed copy and it's big. But Chuck Klosterman's book on football, which I really enjoyed. It has a very specific style that I really like. I'll talk more about that, I guess, after I finish the final chapter. So I have some good books with me.” — Should I Press Pause? | Monday Advice (2026-06-08)
- [The Singularity Is Nearer](https://podshelf.io/books/9780399562761) by Ray Kurzweil: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “But the next step of this line of thinking was recognizing that, oh, actually, yeah, it's that no humans have a place in the future. Right. Obviously, like, we're going to create these post-humans. And like Ray Kurzweil says in The Singularity is Near, if you don't want to upgrade your genes or, you know, become post-human in some other manner, that's fine with me, but you won't be around for very long to influence the debate. Right. So he's essentially saying become post-human or just die out.” — A Stark Warning From a Former AI Doomer (2026-10-08)
- [being and time](https://podshelf.io/books/9780429603761) by martin heidegger: 1 mention
  > “A key caveat here, it should be understandable to you. Meaning if you grab a book that's going to use terminology or reference frameworks that you don't understand, that's going to be basically unreadable. So don't just go grab Heidegger, you know, on being and be like, I don't really understand what's going on here.” — How to Build a Cognitive Training Plan | Monday Advice (2026-08-24)
- [Paddle Your Own Canoe](https://podshelf.io/books/9780451472298) by Nick Offerman: 1 mention
  > “I really like Nick Offerman's first book. I think it was called Paddle Your Own Canoe or something like this... So if you haven't, if you're read, I think it's called paddle your own canoe. It tells his whole story. It's fantastic. I love Nick Offerman. His story is great.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [Where the Deer and the Antelope Play](https://podshelf.io/books/9780451485038) by Nick Offerman: 1 mention
  > “Then I read Where the Deer and the Antelope Play. This is the latest book by Nick Offerman, the actor you probably know from Parks and Recreation... Uneven is what I would say... The standout in this book is his long section on when him and his wife... buying an RV during the pandemic and going on this long road trip. It's fantastic storytelling. So some of it's really good. Some of the stories seemed like they just weren't that good of stories and weren't that interesting. The thing that was kind of annoying about this book is he keeps switching over to this mode of politics.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [Life 3.0](https://podshelf.io/books/9780451485076) by Max Tegmark: 1 mention
  > “this idea that you can imagine that AI capability is like water... I first saw in the Max Tegmark book, Intelligence 3.0” — Is AI About to “Eat Everything”? | AI Reality Check (2026-05-14)
- [Nicomachean Ethics](https://podshelf.io/books/9780511040177) by Aristotle: 1 mention
  > “We have this ability that Aristotle talks about in the Nicomachean Ethics. We have this ability that no one else has to contemplate deeply, to aim our brain at abstract ends. Dogs don't do this. Cats don't do this. Parakeets don't do this. Humans can't. So Aristotle would say this is perhaps the ultimate teleology of the human experience.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Learn Hard Things? | Monday Advice (2026-08-03)
- [The Lord of the Rings](https://podshelf.io/books/9780544003415) by J.R.R. Tolkien: 1 mention
  > “The person I want to talk about today is J R R Tolkien, author of other things, among other things of the Lord of the Rings trilogy... His imagination was soaring when Lord of the Rings began to do well. He finally saw that he had a chance. To spend less time with all of these grinding activities. That he just sort of felt were put upon him.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Kick My Scrolling Habit? | Monday Advice (2026-08-17)
- [In the Shadow of Man](https://podshelf.io/books/9780547334165) by Jane Goodall: 1 mention
  > “Jane Goodall's first account of her time in the Gombe stream chimpanzee reservation, a big bestseller at the time because people didn't know anything about chimps” — Ep. 388: What’s Worrying Jon Haidt Now? + Should You Buy a Landline? (Cal just did…) (2026-01-19)
- [Silent Spring](https://podshelf.io/books/9780547527628) by Rachel Carson: 1 mention
  > “In the U.S., Carson's work led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the first Earth Day celebration in 1970. Silent Spring influenced several federal conservation policies, including the ban of DDT in 1972. It completely created an environmental movement and a whole government environmental apparatus and regulatory apparatus that we take for granted today did not exist. Her argument in this book was so powerful, it completely changed the way that we and the government thought about the environment.” — How to Build a Cognitive Training Plan | Monday Advice (2026-08-24)
- [The Hobbit](https://podshelf.io/books/9780547928227) by J.R.R. Tolkien: 1 mention
  > “You can see for those who are watching on the screen, um, an illustration that Tolkien did himself of, uh, for the Hobbit. You sort of see this fantastical English landscape. I assume this might be the Shire done in pastel colors.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Kick My Scrolling Habit? | Monday Advice (2026-08-17)
- [I, Robot](https://podshelf.io/books/9780553294385) by Isaac Asimov: 1 mention
  > “How do we get from there to this casual confidence that the economy is going to be destroyed if not for like some like very creative reinvention and pivoting by business leaders? We don't have HAL 9000 right now. We're not in an Asimov iRobot short story. We have a cool new programming utility that we're still trying to figure out and some like truly mediocre narrow business applications. That's the reality.” — Do Managers Actually Understand AI? (I’m Not So Sure.) | AI Reality Check (2026-07-09)
- [The Goal](https://podshelf.io/books/9780566073946) by Eliyahu Goldratt: 1 mention
  > “In 1984, a former physicist turned business guru named Eliyahu Goldratt published a strange book. It was called The Goal... The Goal went on to sell more than 10 million copies.” — Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice (2026-05-04)
- [Steven Spielberg: A Biography](https://podshelf.io/books/9780571191772) by Joseph McBride: 1 mention
  > “There's only really two good biographies of Spielberg. There's this one and Joseph McBride's one. They're both psychological. So the McBride biography is very Freudian, right? It was written in the 90s, so it's a lot of, like, trying to understand Spielberg through his relationship to his parents.” — Am I Lazy or Overstimulated? | Monday Advice (2026-06-22)
- [Working](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593081914) by Robert Caro: 1 mention
  > “In 2019 he wrote a book about his process called Working, and he did a lot of interviews about this book, a professional memoir” — Ep. Ep 381: Life Advice from Legendary Writers (2025-12-01)
- [1929](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593296967) by Andrew Ross Sorkin: 1 mention
  > “But I read 1929... Sorkin writes in a fast style.” — Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice (2026-05-04)
- [Building](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593449127) by Mark Ellison: 1 mention
  > “Building: A Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work by Mark Ellison, profiled in the New Yorker as a carpenter doing super high-end custom installations in Manhattan” — Ep. 355: Quit Social Media (For Real This Time) (2025-06-02)
- [The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in the Age of Emptiness](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593545423) by Arthur Brooks: 1 mention
  > “Brooks has a new book out that's called The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. In it, he argues that we entered into this age of emptiness” — Ep. 398: How Do I Find Purpose in a Distracted World? (W/ Arthur Brooks) (2026-03-30)
- [The Anxious Generation](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593655030) by Jonathan Haidt: 1 mention
  > “Jonathan Haidt exploded into the public conversation with The Anxious Generation, argued smartphones triggered a mental health epidemic, massive bestseller sold over a million copies” — Ep. 388: What’s Worrying Jon Haidt Now? + Should You Buy a Landline? (Cal just did…) (2026-01-19)
- [Time Anxiety](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593799550) by Chris Guillebeau: 1 mention
  > “Chris Guillebeau has a new book called Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live, a great complement to Oliver Burkeman's work” — IN-DEPTH: The Art of Non-Conformity (w/ Chris Guillebeau) (2025-06-12)
- [Dungeon Crawler Carl](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593820247) by Matt Dinniman: 1 mention
  > “I then read Dungeon Crawler Carl it's actually for a book group I joined that's what they wanted to read so I read that. It's a genre called lit RPG like literature RPG so the characters like in a game essentially and it's like you're watching a Twitch streamer in the sense of like they get achievements they level up they're moving through... I don't know if that's like really clever or depressing I'm not sure but it was creative.” — Combating the Whirlwind with a Single Sheet of Paper (2026-10-05)
- [Technopoly](https://podshelf.io/books/9780679745402) by Neil Postman: 1 mention
  > “So, I argue in this article that Technopoly is probably the best full summary of Neil Postman's philosophy regarding technology. And in that article, I get into the impact of Postman's Technopoly theory on my own thinking about technology and techno criticism, and it did have a big impact. I draw probably more heavily from Technopoly than Amusing Ourselves to Death.” — Classic Episode: How Do I Kick My Scrolling Habit? | Monday Advice (2026-08-17)
- [Addiction by Design](https://podshelf.io/books/9780691127552) by Natasha Dow Schüll: 1 mention
  > “…ph I want to define here. Da-da-da. Okay. So up here it says, contemporary digital platforms are explicitly designed to maximize engagement by leveraging well-characterized reinforcement mechanisms. What scholars study gambling have termed addiction by design, including variable reward schedules, emotionally salient feedback, and frictionless continuation. And social media, algorithmic feeds, and AI chat system, the risk is further amplified by hyper-personalization. Modern recommendation syste…” — Why Do Digital Detoxes Fail? What Works Better? | Monday Advice (2026-07-27)
- [Thoreau's Axe](https://podshelf.io/books/9780691214771) by Caleb Smith: 1 mention
  > “Read Thoreau's Axe by Caleb Smith, more of an academic book, Princeton University Press” — Ep. 355: Quit Social Media (For Real This Time) (2025-06-02)
- [Range](https://podshelf.io/books/9780735214484) by David Epstein: 1 mention
  > “compared to the sports gene and range, inside the box, I was way more efficient” — Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice (2026-05-04)
- [The Andromeda Strain](https://podshelf.io/books/9780739312254) by Michael Crichton: 1 mention
  > “I was thinking about some first edition Michael Crichton's. I found a second edition, Andromeda Strain. So not first edition, second edition. So from 1970 that's signed by Crichton.” — Ep. 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”? (2026-04-13)
- [The Great Gatsby](https://podshelf.io/books/9780743273565) by F. Scott Fitzgerald: 1 mention
  > “I'm actually in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm staying here in a mountain lodge where F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly wrote part of The Great Gatsby. Now, for those who are interested, here's what it looks like. I'm here to finish edits on my next book and to visit with some writer friends to help figure out our future in the publishing industry.” — Should I Press Pause? | Monday Advice (2026-06-08)
- [Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave](https://podshelf.io/books/9780743294201) by Peter Heller: 1 mention
  > “I read the memoir KUK by Peter Heller. So it's a memoir of him taking like in his mid-40s, taking six months to try to go from someone who has no idea how to surf.” — Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice (2026-05-04)
- [Getting Things Done](https://podshelf.io/books/9780743520348) by David Allen: 1 mention
  > “Other people have, they run their life off of a task list. If you're using, like, David Allen's getting things done, he suggests answering the win question with physical context. So he divides all of his tasks in the context. And then when you find yourself in a given context, you just look at the list for that context.” — How I’m Organizing My Life this Fall | Advice (2026-09-07)
- [Essentialism](https://podshelf.io/books/9780753555163) by Greg McKeown: 1 mention
  > “I'm going to borrow this from Greg McKeown from his book Essentialism. I call this force that creates this flatness the whirlwind. Let's use that as our name because you're surrounded by all the digital intrusions that your overload creates.” — Combating the Whirlwind with a Single Sheet of Paper (2026-10-05)
- [The Name of the Wind](https://podshelf.io/books/9780756404741) by Patrick Rothfuss: 1 mention
  > “I accidentally said Brandon Sanderson was the author of name of the wind instead of Patrick Rufos” — Ep. 397: Why Do “Productivity Technologies” Make My Job Worse? (2026-03-23)
- [Gaining Ground](https://podshelf.io/books/9780762794379) by Forrest Pritchard: 1 mention
  > “I talk about a farmer named Forrest Pritchard, who I met here in the farmer's market in Tacoma Park. He wrote a book, cool memoir called Gaining Ground.” — Ep. 397: Is Deep Work Still Possible in 2026? (2026-04-06)
- [Mistborn: The Final Empire](https://podshelf.io/books/9780765399557) by Brandon Sanderson: 1 mention
  > “My fifth book is mentioned as this Brandon Sanderson book, Mistborn, that my middle son has insisted that I read. Jesse, I'm about 400 pages into this book” — Ep. 398: How Do I Find Purpose in a Distracted World? (W/ Arthur Brooks) (2026-03-30)
- [How to Be a High School Superstar](https://podshelf.io/books/9780767932585) by Cal Newport: 1 mention, the host's own book
  > “Also, you need to read how to win a college, how to become a straight student, and how to become a high school superstar. I'll tell you, you know, my oldest son's in eighth grade and he rues the fact that I wrote all those books because they're relevant to where he is in life and he doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to hear it from his dad.” — Kids Should *Not* Use Chatbots! (You Should Be Wary, Too…) (2026-09-28)
- [The 4-Hour Workweek](https://podshelf.io/books/9780786168651) by Tim Ferriss: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “We want it to be true that we can find a secret list of things to do. And if we just do these right things, we'll be a successful author. We'll be a successful professor. We're going to suddenly have promotions at work. So checklist productivity, it's very infectious. It was really big in like West coast productivity type literature in the 2000s. Hey, just get the right information. You can optimize, like think about some pieces of like a four hour work week had a real checklist productivity vibe.” — How I’m Organizing My Life this Fall | Advice (2026-09-07)
- [Blind Man's Bluff](https://podshelf.io/books/9780786218769) by Sherry Sontag: 1 mention
  > “I also read Into the Deep, a memoir, Bob Ballard, who he co-authored with Christopher Drew, who's a sort of nautical science writer, New York Times writer. He wrote Blind Man's Buff, which is a good book about submarine espionage. My brother was a submariner.” — How to Build a Cognitive Training Plan | Monday Advice (2026-08-24)
- [That Girl Lucy Moon](https://podshelf.io/books/9780786852994) by Amy Timberlake: 1 mention
  > “I think my first novel, it ended up being called that girl, Lucy moon, but it was about a 12 year old activist.” — Ep. 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”? (2026-04-13)
- [The Second Mountain](https://podshelf.io/books/9780812993264) by David Brooks: 1 mention
  > “it reminds me of like David Brooks' book, The Second Mountain.” — Am I Addicted to My Phone? (w/ Anna Lembke) | Monday Advice (2026-05-18)
- [Howl](https://podshelf.io/books/9780872860179) by Allen Ginsberg: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “The stream of conscious nonsense. Yeah. No, if I read like Ginsburg, if I read, you know, like Howl or something like that, my head explodes. It's like, what's the stream of conscious nonsense? Structure your arguments. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. I want numbered subsections. Come on. What are you doing here?” — Rethinking the Deep Life Stack (Again!) | Monday Advice (2026-08-31)
- [This Is for Everyone](https://podshelf.io/books/9781035023684) by Tim Berners-Lee, Stephen Witt: 1 mention
  > “I read Tim Berners-Lee's memoir. This is for everyone. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. I used to run into him all the time, Jesse, because when I was at MIT, I was on the sixth floor of the status center, which is where the theory group was. And Tim worked on the fifth floor, which is where the World Wide Web Consortium was. And we would ride the elevator sometimes together. That was a good book. History of the Web is interesting.” — How to Build a Cognitive Training Plan | Monday Advice (2026-08-24)
- [The Omnivore's Dilemma](https://podshelf.io/books/9781101147177) by Michael Pollan: 1 mention
  > “It's deep – it's a lot of like science reporting on like this study came out and this legislation happened. And like very much – it's very – more repertorial than the book that inspired it was his previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is based around four set-piece stories. And it's also – I reread that not long ago as well, and that's also a good book.” — How Do I Escape the “Busyness Singularity”? | Monday Advice (2026-06-01)
- [The Hit Makers](https://podshelf.io/books/9781101980323) by Derek Thompson: 1 mention
  > “I finished Derek Thompson's first book, The Hitmakers, which is about why things are popular or not popular. It's like a classic 2010-style idea book with, like, stories and science, and he's a good writer, and I enjoyed it. Then I finished Molly Haskell's book, Steven Spielberg, A Life in Films.” — Am I Lazy or Overstimulated? | Monday Advice (2026-06-22)
- [Magic Journey](https://podshelf.io/books/9781368020480) by Kevin P. Rafferty: 1 mention
  > “I read a book over the weekend called magic journey by Kevin Rafferty. He's a kind of like a big time Disney imagineer.” — Ep. 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”? (2026-04-13)
- [Start With Yourself](https://podshelf.io/books/9781398550964) by Emma Grede: 1 mention
  > “And then it's Start With Yourself, which is Emma Greed's book, which has an interesting cover.” — Am I Addicted to My Phone? (w/ Anna Lembke) | Monday Advice (2026-05-18)
- [The Naked Roommate](https://podshelf.io/books/9781402253485) by Harlan Cohen, John Grisham: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “All of the books I tried, I wanted to buy books about how to do this. And they were all, like, the naked roommate and, like, how to have fun at college. It's why I wrote my first books were, like, no nonsense. Here's how you actually study. Because they didn't exist. I had to figure it out for myself.” — Am I Optimizing Too Much? | Monday Advice (2026-07-20)
- [The Gambler](https://podshelf.io/books/9781406734362) by Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский: 1 mention
  > “You read Dostoevsky's The Gambler, which he wrote, by the way, because he was so out of money that he was — that he actually had to wager everything he had to get a novel written in one month” — Ep. 398: How Do I Find Purpose in a Distracted World? (W/ Arthur Brooks) (2026-03-30)
- [Drug Dealer, MD](https://podshelf.io/books/9781421421407) by Dr. Anna Lembke: 1 mention
  > “In 2016, she published a book titled Drug Dealer MD about the opioid epidemic.” — Am I Addicted to My Phone? (w/ Anna Lembke) | Monday Advice (2026-05-18)
- [Into the Deep](https://podshelf.io/books/9781426220999) by Robert Ballard and Christopher Drew: 1 mention
  > “I also read Into the Deep, a memoir, Bob Ballard, who he co-authored with Christopher Drew, who's a sort of nautical science writer, New York Times writer. He wrote Blind Man's Buff, which is a good book about submarine espionage. My brother was a submariner.” — How to Build a Cognitive Training Plan | Monday Advice (2026-08-24)

These are the 100 most-mentioned of 137 books. The full list is on the show page.