Sarah Guo

Sarah Guo

startup investor, founder @w_conviction. before, partner @greylockVC. expecting more from computers, loves software (3.0)

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10+ Book Recommendations by Sarah Guo

  • No One Succeeds Alone

    Robert Reffkin

    The inspirational story of Compass CEO Robert Reffkin--born black and raised Jewish--and the vital lessons he learned to help him overcome life's daunting obstacles.

    How can anyone read Robert Reffkin’s story and not root for him to win? https://t.co/Dg6yiYPqSa

  • Factfulness

    Hans Rosling

    “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells thestory of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readershow to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.

    https://t.co/aF9eBzgETR Useful reset in terms of understanding macro consumption, progress, and scale of population trends. @HansRosling’s commitment to a fact-based worldview is inspirational — may we aspire to such optimistic and pragmatic truthseeking https://t.co/37fBghJDuQ

  • The world-renowned economist offers "dourly irreverent analyses of financial debacle from the tulip craze of the seventeenth century to the recent plague of junk bonds."--The Atlantic.

    https://t.co/5n628Rwecs

  • The Innovator's Dilemma

    Clayton M. Christensen

    The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen. His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller--one of the most influential business books of all time--innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right--yet still lose market leadership. Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation. Sharp, cogent, and provocative--and consistently noted as one of the most valuable business ideas of all time--The Innovator’s Dilemma is the book no manager, leader, or entrepreneur should be without.

    7/n innovators dilemma - just read the book. Worth twice!

  • The Power Broker

    Robert A. Caro

    Moses is pictured as idealist reformer and political manipulator as his rise to power and eventual domination of New York State politics is documented

    Ok @kevinakwok you finally got me https://t.co/bstLdNYLQW

  • Fun and timely debate w/@JohnTChambers at #wsjcio about how enterprises need to take an aggressive new approach to innovation. Leaders at companies big and small should also read his new book: https://t.co/f623AwvpcJ https://t.co/ykU6fCHfWF

  • Matilda

    Roald Dahl

    Matilda applies her untapped mental powers to rid the school of the evil, child-hating headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and restore her nice teacher, Miss Honey, to financial security.

    My favorite book growing up 📚 https://t.co/yZXJZIbyfx

  • NurtureShock

    Po Bronson

    One of the most influential books about children ever published, NurtureShock offers a revolutionary new perspective on children that upends a library's worth of conventional wisdom. With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, the authors demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science have been overlooked. Nothing like a parenting manual, NurtureShock gets to the core of how we grow, learn and live. Released in hardcover in September 2009, NurtureShock remained on the New York Times best seller list for three months, and was one of Amazon's best selling books for 2009. The book has become a worldwide phenomenon with editions published around the world - in fifteen languages, to date. In addition to Bronson and Merryman's writings on praise -- first made famous in New York magazine -- there are nine more equally groundbreaking chapters. Among the topics covered: Why the most brutal person in a child's life is often a sibling, and how a single aspect of their preschool-aged play can determine their relationship as adults. When is it too soon - or too late - to teach a child about race? Children in diverse schools are less likely to have a cross-racial friendship, not more - so is school diversity backfiring? Millions of families are fighting to get their kids into private schools and advanced programs as early as possible. But schools are missing the best kids, 73% of the time - the new neuroscience explains why. Why are kids - even those from the best of homes - still aggressive and cruel? The answer is found in a rethinking of parental conflict, discipline, television's unexpected influence, and social dominance. Parents are desperate to jump-start infants' language skills. Recently, scientists have discovered a series of natural techniques that are astonishing in their efficacy - it's not baby videos, sign language, or even the richness of language exposure. It's nothing you've heard before.

    @neil_conway Happiest Baby on the Block = most useful. Most interesting: https://t.co/mB9R4uiU0Z

  • An investigation of how the digital revolution is fundamentally changing our concept of work, and what it means for our future economy.

    Themed bedtime reading https://t.co/QWqFPLWFxf

  • Fair Shot

    Chris Hughes

    Introduction -- How it happens -- The dismantling of the American dream -- Africa & back -- The precariat -- A guaranteed income for working people -- Worthwhile work -- Untethered idealism -- Everybody likes a tax credit -- What we owe one another -- Afterword

    Themed bedtime reading https://t.co/QWqFPLWFxf

  • Saving Capitalism

    Robert B. Reich

    From the author of "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations," his most important book to date--a myth-shattering breakdown of how the economic system that helped make America so strong is now failing us, and what it will take to fix it. Perhaps no one is better acquainted with the intersection of economics and politics than Robert B. Reich, and now he reveals how power and influence have created a new American oligarchy, a shrinking middle class, and the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in eighty years. He makes clear how centrally problematic our veneration of the "free market" is, and how it has masked the power of moneyed interests to tilt the market to their benefit. Reich exposes the falsehoods that have been bolstered by the corruption of our democracy by huge corporations and the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street: that all workers are paid what they're "worth," that a higher minimum wage equals fewer jobs, and that corporations must serve shareholders before employees. He shows that the critical choices ahead are not about the size of government but about who government is for: that we must choose not between a free market and "big" government but between a market organized for broadly based prosperity and one designed to deliver the most gains to the top. Ever the pragmatist, ever the optimist, Reich sees hope for reversing our slide toward inequality and diminished opportunity when we shore up the countervailing power of everyone else. Passionate yet practical, sweeping yet exactingly argued, Saving Capitalism is a revelatory indictment of our economic status quo and an empowering call to civic action.

    Themed bedtime reading https://t.co/QWqFPLWFxf

  • The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience this multiple award winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

    Agree. And it's the book that got me excited again about reading in Chinese :) Should trade notes about the weirdness of translation https://t.co/dGXzaLL97F

  • @mims This is worth reading on the topic https://t.co/3kUxPs9lmB

  • The Gene

    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    Prologue: Families -- "The missing science of heredity" 1865-1935 -- "In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts" 1930-1970 -- "The dreams of geneticists" 1970-2001 -- "The proper study of mankind is man" 1970-2005 -- Through the looking glass 2001-2015 -- Post-genome 2015- ... -- Epilogue: Bheda, Abheda

    .@DrSidMukherjee's "The Gene" is the first book in years where I excitedly read all the footnotes. 📚

  • Station Eleven

    Emily St. John Mandel

    An end-of-the-world novel that made me marvel in gratitude at the ease, safety, connectedness, technology of modern civilization. https://t.co/q452xbEp2B

  • The Red Web

    Andrei Soldatov

    5/ The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries https://t.co/evPOwPs4o7

  • In the new Russia, even dictatorship is a reality show. Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the glittering, surreal heart of twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship—far subtler than twentieth-century strains—that is rapidly rising to challenge the West. When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system. Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.

    4/ Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia https://t.co/xWDo699q8S

  • The New York Times bestselling author of Bringing Down the House and The Accidental Billionaires tells his most incredible story yet: A true drama of obscene wealth, crime, rivalry, and betrayal from deep inside the world of billionaire Russian oligarchs that Booklist called “one more example of just how talented a storyteller [Mezrich] is.” Meet two larger-than-life Russians: former mathematician Boris Berezovsky, who moved into more lucrative ventures as well as politics, becoming known as the Godfather of the Kremlin; and Roman Abramovich, a dashing young entrepreneur who built one of Russia’s largest oil companies from the ground up. After a chance meeting on a yacht in the Caribbean, the men became locked in a complex partnership, surfing the waves of privatization after the fall of the Soviet regime and amassing mega fortunes while also taking the reins of power in Russia. With Berezovsky serving as the younger entrepreneur’s krysha—literally, his roof, his protector—they battled their way through the “Wild East” of Russia until their relationship soured when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media. Dead bodies trailed Berezovsky as he escaped to London, where an associate died painfully of Polonium poisoning, creating an international furor. As Abramovich prospered, Berezovsky was found dead in a luxurious London town house, declared a suicide. With unprecedented, exclusive first-person sourcing, Mezrich takes us inside a world of unimaginable wealth, power, and corruption to uncover this exciting story, a true-life thriller epic for our time—“Wolf Hall on the Moskva” (Bookpage).

    3/ Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs... https://t.co/hsrt5czOcQ