The most recommended books about Silicon Valley

Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Careers is a cutting-edge, accessible resource tool for every woman. It provides information on what is needed to compete in a "man's world." According to the statistics, women still earn 70% of each dollar compared to a man's income, regardless of their education. At a glance, Dr. Patricia Mitchell introduces the reader to common mistakes that could cost one's career, and she highlights issues that need to be examined before a woman plunges into a career or seeks to increase her position within a company. This book is about empowerment and it has helped me – and still does.  

It is easier to say what the ‘new, new thing’ is not than to say what it is. It is not necessarily a new invention. It is not necessarily a new idea – most everything has been considered by someone, at some point. The author explains that the new, new thing is a notion, poised to be taken seriously in the marketplace. It is an item that is a tiny push away from general acceptance and when it gets that push, will change the world.

In 1921, Thorsted Veblen predicted that engineers would one day rule the U.S. economy. He argued that the economy was premised on technology and that engineers (in today’s terms, ‘computer science majors’) were the only ones who understood how technology worked. So, inevitably they would use their superior knowledge to seize power from the financiers, captains of industry, and other business elites.

New growth theory… show more.

What do Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and other Silicon Valley billionaires all have in common? Apart from being mega-rich, and at the forefront of the technological innovations that are shaping our lives, they all seem to want to escape.

Zuckerberg envisions a virtual reality metaverse where we can live our lives without ever leaving the house, Musk wants to emigrate to Mars, while other tech bros are investing in apocalypse-proof secret compounds. But why? It’s almost as if they don’t feel too optimistic about the world they’re helping to create. 

And here, as Rushkoff points out, is the irony: to fund these dreams, there must be ever greater and faster economic growth – at whatever the cost to the environment, working conditions, livelihoods, democracy, or our children’s mental health.

The myth that family can’t come first or that taking a break kills your career unfortunately is alive and well today.

Yet, this is flawed thinking and doesn’t reflect the true stories of successful women who have paused their careers and gone on to do great things. Lisen names the myth and reveals the stories of trailblazing women who have disrupted the traditional career paradigm to be successful at building a career and family.

Kai-Fu Lee, once himself an AI pioneer, wrote AI Superpowers to help non-technical readers understand how and why AI is changing our world, with an emphasis on how it’s reshaping work. Lee breaks down which types of jobs are most vs. least likely to be replaced by AI, and offers wisdom on which skills it makes sense for all of us to lean into given those shifts. He also offers clear-eyed predictions about the potential for AI innovations to reshape global politics. 

I enjoyed this book from page one. Lee’s prose is crisp and his points sharp. I appreciated his occasional meanderings into humanistic realms. This also feels like a personal book, given how much Lee himself has done to accelerate the AI revolution.

Changing careers from publishing to tech is a path not often traveled. Wiener made this jump from a world legendary for its light pay compensated by romanticism, to an industry best known for generous “perks that landed somewhere between the collegiate and the feudal.” Wiener’s experience makes for one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in years—she is a gifted writer and unafraid to call out the over-seriousness of the tech bro mentality as an ultimately “dreary” worldview. 

In addition to facilitating atomic espionage, Julius Rosenberg supervised several engineers who stole vital technical secrets dealing with radar, sonar, and aviation.  Usdin tells the fascinating story of two of them, Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, who defected to the Soviet Union after the Rosenbergs were arrested and helped build the Soviet Silicon Valley.

I love this book because it nails the essentials of entrepreneurship. The author is a serial entrepreneur, venture investor and philanthropist who has set up and scaled up enterprises in Silicon Valley and India. He presents a set of principles, values and strategies to help entrepreneurs gain a lasting advantage – as opposed to a temporary one. He writes in simple English without resorting to jargon. The fact that he delivers his wisdom in nuggets makes it engaging and useful for the reader. At a time when most of the world merely skims the surface of anything, Desh Deshpande advocates depth — a philosophy I follow, too.

I instantly fell in love with this book's MC, Rowena. She’s just so stinking relatable, and when her world starts to spiral into a dark hell, a la Black Mirror, she has to decide who she is going to believe in order to save herself and her baby girl.

The whole time I read this one, I wondered what I would do. Who would I believe if I were her? I love that feeling of being suspended in dread and the unknown as I read a thriller. This one delivered that for me.

I had begun to worry about my social media consumption when I came across this book.

As a science journalist, I had interviewed Lanier in the past. So I knew his work, and I knew he always had something profound to say about technology. You can tell that this is a personal book for him. Many times he refers to his children, and he worries about how social media impacts them.

He enumerates several reasons why social media is destroying our minds, our attention spans, our self-esteem, and our decency. Lanier has consulted with most of the major firms that have foisted social media on us, so he knows the players and he knows how much better the technology can be, if only its creators did not capitulate to greed.

I recommend pairing this book with a viewing of the documentaries, The Social Dilemma and Fake Famous. After seeing those… show more.