It was another busy first half of the year, so it took me longer to write my 2024 book list. Other than reading, I spent a chunk of my time learning and experimenting with the AI tools and using them to simplify my own daily usage. And also wondering what a future workplace would look like. But that's for a separate post.
After 1177 BC: The survival of Civilizations, by Eric Cline. This book is the sequel of the earlier book by Eric Cline - "1177 BC: The year the civilization collapsed". It follows the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean world through the four centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse, asking why some societies perished while others adapted and thrived. Cline reframes the “First Dark Age” as a period of resilience and reinvention: as palace economies fell and long-distance trade faltered, new actors and systems emerged—the Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians—alongside transformative innovations such as widespread iron use and the alphabet. The narrative moves region by region to show uneven outcomes—some polities failed to adjust and disappeared; others reconfigured their economies, networks, and political orders to fit the new constraints, laying groundwork for the Greek resurgence by 776 B.C.. I loved how this book offered a lens for the present: complex systems absorb shocks through adaptation, redundancy, and decentralization, and societies that diversify and learn can turn collapse into a pivot rather than an end. This book seems very relevant in the age of change that we are living in; and offers lessons to individuals, communities, and nations on how to adapt to change.
Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track, by Will Larson. I would recommend this book to any senior (or even entry-level) technical individual-contributor and their manager. The book lays out what senior individual-contributor leadership actually looks like once one is past the senior level: not more code, but durable influence across roadmaps, quality, and cross-team outcomes. Larson frames four archetypes: the Tech Lead (owning execution and cohesive delivery across a team), the Architect (shaping systems over time and holding the long-term line on quality), the Solver ( parachuting into ambiguous, high-stakes problems and making them tractable), and the Right Hand (a trusted partner to an executive, amplifying org-wide priorities). Operating at staff means working on what matters (stack-ranking leverage), writing and socializing engineering strategy, guarding technical quality without being a blocker, and creating space for others to do their best work. A recurring theme is that title-chasing is less effective than doing the work at scope; the title tends to follow when your impact becomes undeniable and visible to the calibration process. The author used to maintain their web page and a podcast (last episode is from 2021). On my favorite topic of coding, this was a fun line: “Most do, some don’t, but almost everyone codes less than what they have ever done at their peak”. I remain convinced that coding is the best way to stay connected to reality, even as the primary coding language moves from C/C++ to Java to Python to English.
Je devais être impératrice: Mémoires de la dernière princesse héritière d'Autriche-Hongrie, by Princess Stéphanie of Belgium. This was part of European royalty rabbit hole last year. It started with the Netflix series Die Kaiserin (The Empress), about Empress Elizabeth ("Sisi"), who was the Empress of Austria-Hungary from 1854-1898. Then, that led me to watching a two part German series: "The Crown Prince", about her son and Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary who died in a suicide pact with his mistress. It also merged with my fifth year of learning French: I can now read simple books in French, albeit a little slowly. This book ("I should have become Empress") is the memoirs of the wife of Rudolf, Princess Stéphanie of Belgium and the Crown Princess of Austria-Hungary. The first part of the book described her life as the daughter of Leopold II of Belgium, and a member of the Royal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the same house as present King Charles II of England (renamed to Windsor now to pacify the anti-German sentiment in the first World War). The narrative turned from melancholy to tragedy and the realization that the world that she had been raised for was slowly disappearing around her.
Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity by James S Valliant and CW Fahy. This is a controversial book. It advances a provocative thesis: early Christianity’s public shape was decisively molded under the Flavian dynasty (Vespasian, Titus, Domitian), aligning Christian symbols and narratives with Roman imperial propaganda to pacify and unify a volatile post–Jewish War world. The authors lean heavily on numismatics—imperial coinage motifs like the dolphin-and-anchor, victory palms, and personified virtues—arguing these migrate into early Christian iconography visible in catacombs and later ecclesiastical art, signaling a deliberate convergence. They argue that as the imperial cult sacralized emperors and empire, Christianity synthesized comparable themes—peace after conquest, submission to authorities, a universal mission—recasting them in a theologically acceptable register that served order as much as faith. Whether or not one accepts every linkage, the book’s core contribution is reframing Christian emergence as a political-theological settlement: a faith whose surviving public form was shaped, in part, by Rome’s need for stability and a universalizing narrative that could sanctify it.
The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher. I got this book recommended by my friend's high schooler daughter who was researching languages and working on a conlanging project. This is probably the most fascinating book I read this year. The book describes how languages evolve, with examples. He also explains how ancient languages look more complex and structured than later ones: how languages lose their strict structure and complexity through usage and change. The chapter on metaphors was fascinating, where he describes how metaphors become the standard way to describe abstract things. For example, the English word "decide" derives from a Latin verb (decidere) that means "to cut off". Turns out that is true in German (entscheiden), Greek (diaireo), Swahili, Basque, Indonesian, Ancient Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Chinese have the same pattern. Reading this book reminded me how a recent study says that teenage girls have led language innovation for centuries.
The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz. A classmate recommended this book to me when we were discussing scenario planning for an uncertain world. The book teaches scenario planning as a disciplined way to make better decisions under deep uncertainty. The method starts by surfacing the focal issue or decision—what you must choose or design for—so scenarios are built to inform an actual choice rather than abstract speculation. There are case examples (e.g., Shell, EPA, market entrants) that show how scenarios can reframe capital bets, policy positions, and innovation agendas by distinguishing what’s truly locked in from what remains malleable. Schwartz argues that scenario planning builds organizational resilience: it teaches teams to ask better questions, hold multiple futures in mind, and make choices that remain sound as the environment shifts. I ended up using this book in my staff book club at work.
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, by Philip E Tetlock and Dan Gardner. This was another book under the forecasting theme. The book distills the lessons from Good Judgement Project's forecasting tournaments: a small group of "superforecasters" that consistently outperform typical experts and prediction markets. The book combines elements of psychology, behavioral economics (e.g. Kahneman-Taversky's research), math, statistics (e.g. Laplace and Bayes'), military strategy, (Helmuth von Moltke and Carl von Clausewitz) and brain teasers by Enrico Fermi.
Demanding More: Why Diversity and Inclusion Don't Happen and What You Can Do About It, by Sheree Atchison. I read this book before extending an invitation to the author to speak at my leadership offsite last year. I felt that this was a different diversity book, where the author speaks through her personal experience as a woman in science and tech. Sheree talks about bringing DEI as an integral part of product making (to ensure that every customer's needs are represented) and organization building (job design, perf review and promotion process, pay equity audits, using middle management as leverage points). Atcheson integrates her own story with interviews and data, emphasizing that culture change comes from operational choices—what’s measured, who is sponsored, how decisions are made—not from slogans.
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This book was on my wishlist for many years. This was a slow read as the author went through the details of the lives and careers of the rivals before explaining how they worked in Lincoln's cabinet.
1001 Days: Memoirs of an Empress, Farah Pahlavi. I found this book at the reception of our local Persian restaurant and started reading it while waiting for my takeout order. This is the memoirs of the Farah, the second wife of Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. It was, like the memoirs of Crown Princess Stéphanie, a story of a world that does not exist anymore.
Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, by L. David Marquet. This book was recommended by a team member and I got the chance to incorporate ideas from this in a Senior Manager workshop for the team last year. This book is based on the author’s real-life experience as a U.S. Navy submarine captain. Marquet was sent to command the submarine USS Santa Fe, which was known for its poor morale, performance, and low retention. The turning point came when he gave an impossible order, and the crew tried to follow it without question. Marquet decided to switch to a "leader-leader" model—empowering every member of the crew to take responsibility, make decisions, and act as leaders in their own right. Over time, this bottom-up approach transformed the Santa Fe: performance, morale, and retention soared, and a remarkable number of officers went on to become submarine commanders themselves. The book has a lot of actionable principles and real-world examples illustrating how any organization can benefit from empowering people at every level.
Divan e Hafez - Farsi and English : Ghazalyat This is a selection of poems by Hafez, the 14th century Persian poet. The translations are good, but Hafez and Tagore's works remind us that deep poetry is best understood in the original language. Like Tagore's poems, Hafez's poem addresses both the divine and the lover:
Vasl-e-to kamal-e-heyrat aamad
Bas gharq-e-haal-o-vasl kaakhir
Ham bar sar haal-e-heyrat aamad"
The translation from the book: "Your love, a sapling of bewilderment has come; union with you, the pinnacle of amazement has come. Deeply immersed in the state of union, at last; still, atop the state of bewilderment, it has come to pass".
Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the Originals, by Heinrich Heine. This was to round up my poetry reading for the year. It is a great collection of Heinrich Heine's poems, but the collection didn't include my favorite: Nachtgedaken. There is almost a Mirza Ghalib-like quality in his poems (for example, from "Wenn ich an deinem Hause"):
„Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter,
Bekannt im deutschen Land;
Nennt man die besten Namen,
So wird auch der meine genannt.
Und was mir fehlt, du Kleine,
Fehlt manchem im deutschen Land;
Nennt man die schlimmsten Schmerzen,
Even the sadness: (from Die Lorelei):
Dass ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.“
The collection included "Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen".
My previous book lists:
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