ybooks

Consensus

The books they agree on

Ranked by how many different people recommended each book in public. Distinct people is the honest unit — one person praising the same book four times is one opinion, four times. Two people is the floor for appearing here.

  1. Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond 5 people
  2. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Harold Abelson 5 people
  3. The Design of Everyday Things Donald A. Norman 5 people
  4. The Mythical Man-Month Frederick P. Brooks 5 people
  5. Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari 4 people
  6. The Beginning of Infinity David Deutsch 4 people
  7. Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman 4 people
  8. Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future Dan Wang 4 people
  9. Don't Make Me Think Steve Krug 4 people
  10. Influence Robert Cialdini 4 people
  11. Masters of Doom David Kushner 4 people
  12. The Algorithm Design Manual Steven S. Skiena 4 people
  13. The Intelligent Investor Benjamin Graham 4 people
  14. The Martian Andy Weir 4 people
  15. The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins 4 people
  16. Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman 4 people
  17. Zero to One Peter A. Thiel 4 people
  18. Antifragile Nassim Nicholas Taleb 3 people
  19. Atomic Habits James Clear 3 people
  20. Breakneck Dan Wang 3 people
  21. Creativity, Inc Ed Catmull 3 people
  22. Deep Work Cal Newport 3 people
  23. Dune Frank Herbert 3 people
  24. High Output Management Andrew S. Grove 3 people
  25. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert Cialdini 3 people
  26. Poor Charlie's Almanack Charles T. Munger 3 people
  27. REWORK Jason Fried 3 people
  28. Shoe Dog Phil Knight 3 people
  29. Skin in the Game Nassim Nicholas Taleb 3 people
  30. Stumbling on Happiness Daniel Gilbert 3 people
  31. Superintelligence Nick Bostrom 3 people
  32. The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz 3 people
  33. The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton Christensen 3 people
  34. The Little Schemer Friedman and Felleisen 3 people
  35. The Most Important Thing Howard Marks 3 people
  36. The No Asshole Rule Robert I. Sutton 3 people
  37. The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master Andrew Hunt and David Thomas 3 people
  38. The Psychology of Money Morgan Housel 3 people
  39. The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky 3 people
  40. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin 3 people
  41. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Yuval Noah Harari 2 people
  42. A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 2 people
  43. A History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell 2 people
  44. A Mathematician's Apology G. H. Hardy 2 people
  45. Abundance Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson 2 people
  46. Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life Rory Sutherland 2 people
  47. Algorithms Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne 2 people
  48. An Elegant Puzzle Will Larson 2 people
  49. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 2 people
  50. Awaken the Giant Within Tony Robbins 2 people
  51. Becoming a Technical Leader Gerald Weinberg 2 people
  52. Better Than Before Gretchen Rubin 2 people
  53. Business Adventures John Brooks 2 people
  54. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World Adam Tooze 2 people
  55. Crossing the Chasm Geoffrey Moore 2 people
  56. Designing Data-Intensive Applications Martin Kleppmann 2 people
  57. Enemy Of All Mankind Steven Johnson 2 people
  58. Ensorcelled Eliot Peper 2 people
  59. Factfulness Hans Rosling 2 people
  60. Finite and Infinite Games James P. Carse 2 people
  61. Foundation Isaac Asimov 2 people
  62. Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech Sally Smith Hughes 2 people
  63. Getting Things Done David Allen 2 people
  64. Grit Angela Duckworth 2 people
  65. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Scott Adams 2 people
  66. How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler Ryan North 2 people
  67. Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors Matt Parker 2 people
  68. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives Steven Levy 2 people
  69. Introduction to Algorithms Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein 2 people
  70. Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 2 people
  71. Lord of Light Roger Zelazny 2 people
  72. Margin of Safety Seth Klarman 2 people
  73. Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha Daniel M. Ingram 2 people
  74. Mindstorms Seymour Papert 2 people
  75. Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Steven Strogatz 2 people
  76. Nonviolent Communication Marshall B. Rosenberg 2 people
  77. Not the End of the World Hannah Ritchie 2 people
  78. Number Go Up Zeke Faux 2 people
  79. Obviously Awesome April Dunford 2 people
  80. On Writing Stephen King 2 people
  81. On Writing Well William Zinsser 2 people
  82. Only the Paranoid Survive Andrew S. Grove 2 people
  83. Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming Peter Norvig 2 people
  84. Peopleware Tom DeMarco 2 people
  85. Principles Ray Dalio 2 people
  86. Quiet Susan Cain 2 people
  87. Rocket Surgery Made Easy Steve Krug 2 people
  88. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Harari 2 people
  89. Seeing Like a State James C. Scott 2 people
  90. Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century Brad DeLong 2 people
  91. Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson 2 people
  92. Stories of Your Life and Others Ted Chiang 2 people
  93. Switch Chip Heath and Dan Heath 2 people
  94. The 5 Love Languages Gary Chapman 2 people
  95. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant Eric Jorgenson 2 people
  96. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering Richard Hamming 2 people
  97. The Black Company Glen Cook 2 people
  98. The Bomber Mafia Malcolm Gladwell 2 people
  99. The C Programming Language Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie 2 people
  100. The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World's Greatest Teams Sam Walker 2 people
  101. The Captive Mind Czeslaw Milosz 2 people
  102. The Code Breaker Walter Isaacson 2 people
  103. The Cold War: A New History John Lewis Gaddis 2 people
  104. The Effective Executive Peter Drucker 2 people
  105. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni 2 people
  106. The Founder's Dilemmas Noam Wasserman 2 people
  107. The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 2 people
  108. The Goal Eliyahu M. Goldratt & Jeff Cox 2 people
  109. The Happiness Hypothesis Jonathan Haidt 2 people
  110. The Iliad Homer 2 people
  111. The Inner Game of Tennis Timothy Gallwey 2 people
  112. The Kaiju Preservation Society John Scalzi 2 people
  113. The Lean Startup Eric Ries 2 people
  114. The Lessons of History Will Durant and Ariel Durant 2 people
  115. The Manager’s Path Camille Fournier 2 people
  116. The NVIDIA Way Tae Kim 2 people
  117. The Old Way Elizabeth Marshall Thomas 2 people
  118. The Paradox of Choice - Why More is Less Barry Schwartz 2 people
  119. The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life Paul Millerd 2 people
  120. The Phoenix Project Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford 2 people

Only books with two or more independent recommenders are listed. The rest — thousands of them — are on the feed and on each person’s page.

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.