Varun Khurana

I love to read, especially books outside of the mainstream. In the last year, I realized if everyone reads the same books, there’s no differentiated knowledge (unless reading for maximal enjoyment of course!)

Some of the books I've read recently in chronological order descending

• Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Tim Snyder

• Chip War: The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller

• How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs

• The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader's Tale of Spectacular Excess by Turney Duff

• Interception: The Secrets Of Modern Sports Betting by Ed Miller

• The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson

• Magic: The Life of Earvin “Magic” Johnson by Roland Lazenby

• When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach by Ashlee Vance

• Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power by Bradley Hope

• The Least of Us: True Tales of America by Sam Quinones

• The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean

• The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects by Andrew Chen

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

• G-Man (Pulitzer Prize Winner): J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

• The Joy of Costco: A Treasure Hunt from A to Z by David and Susan Schwarz

• Good Material by Dolly Alderton

• Billion Dollar Fantasy: The High-Stakes Game Between FanDuel and DraftKings that Upended Sports in America by Albert Chen

• Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live by Susan Morrison

• Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari

• Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir by Dolly Alderton

• DeFi and the Future of Finance by Ashwin Ramachandran (the homie!)

• The Golden Son: A Novel by Shipa Somaya Gowda (one of my favorite)

• Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul by Jamie Ducharme

• The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni

• Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

• Who Knew? by Barry Diller

• Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millenial Los Angeles by Kate Flannery

• Code Blue by Mike Magee

• Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone

• Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling by Jonathan Cohen

• Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao

• About Gartner: The Making of a Billion-Dollar IT Advisory Firm by Catherine Fredman and Gideon Gartner

• The Money Trap: Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble by Alok Sama (loved this)

• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

• The New Kings of New York: Renegades, Moguls, Gamblers and the Remaking of the World’s Most Famous Skyline by Adam Piore

• Girl Walks Out of a Bar: A Memoir by Lisa Smith

• Columbine by Dave Cullen

• How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir by Cat Marnell

• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries

• Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier by Marisa Meltzer

• Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux

• Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis

• The Qualified Sales Leader: Proven Lessons from a Five Time CRO by John McMahon

• Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO by Tony Hsieh

• Hacking Healthcare: Designing Human-Centered Technology for a Healthier Future by Shobha Dasari

• Jeffrey Gitomer's Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource: Including The 10.5 Commandments of Sales Success by Jeffrey Gitomer

• Relentless by Ti Grover

• Private Equity: A Memoir by Carrie Sun

• Bottle of Lies: Ranbaxy and the Dark Side of Indian Pharma by Katherine Eban

• Den of Thieves by James Stewart

• Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton

• Sweat Equity: Inside the New Economy of Mind and Body by Jason Kelly

• The Field Guide to Global Payments by Sophia Goldberg

• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis

• Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food by Carl Orsbourn

• I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

• The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson

• Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks by Chris Herring

• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine

• The Cult of We by Eliot Brown

• The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson

• My Body by Emily Ratajkowski

• The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr

• HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business by Richard Ruback

• Dot.con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era by John Cassidy

• The Cryptopians by Laura Shin

• The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman

• Retail Therapy: Why The Retail Industry Is Broken – And What Can Be Done To Fix It by Mark Plinkington

• Amazon Unbound by Brad Stone

• When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany by Adam Fergesson

• American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

• Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India by KS Komireddi

• Boys Among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution by Jonathan Abrams

• Billion Dollar Brand Club: How Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, and Other Disruptors Are Remaking What We Buy by Lawrence Ingrassia

• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone

• Tiger Woods by Armen Keteyian

• King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwartzman and Blackstone by David Carey

• DisneyWar by James Stewart

• The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger

• Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car by Lawrence D Burns

• Payments Systems in the U.S: Third Edition by Carol Coye Bensen

• The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World by Ruchir Sharma

• China's Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle by Dinny McMahon

• The Next Factory of the World by Irene Yuan Sun

• Open by Andre Agassi

• The Anatomy of a Swipe by Ahmed Siddiqui

• Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller

• Global Macro Trading: Profiting in a New World Economy by Greg Gilner

• Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy

• Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Weiner

• “Internet Plus” Pathways to the Transformation of China’s Property Sector by Xianling Yang 

• The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich by Daniel Ammann

• Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results by Michael Porter

• Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac

• Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos by Tom Petzinger

• Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency by James Andrew Miller

• Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry by Geoffrey Jones

• Electronic Value Exchange: Origins of the VISA Electronic Payment System (History of Computing) by David Stearns

• More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby

• Make Real Estate Great Again: Proptech, Real Estate, Construction Tech by Robin Rivaton

• Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley by Antonio Garcia Martinez

• Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter & Gamble by Davis Dyer

• Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President by Ron Suskind

• Competition Demystified: A Radically Simplified Approach to Business Strategy by Bruce Greenwald

• My Father's Business: The Small-Town Values That Built Dollar General into a Billion-Dollar Company by Cal Turner

• The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

• Insanely Simple: The Obsession that Drives Apple’s Success by Ken Seagall

• The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator by Randall Strauss

• The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick

• Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves by Adam Penenberg

• Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron

• Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't by Kevin Maney (I should revisit this, remember it being really good, no idea why!)

• How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen

• 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy by Hamilton Heimler (a frequent reference)

• Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com by Aaron Ross

• Master Switch by Tim Wu

• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

• The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government by David Talbot

• Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies by Bruce Greenwald

• Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

• High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil

• Modern Monopolies by Alex Moazed & Nicholas Johnson

• The Supply Chain Revolution: Innovative Sourcing and Logistics for a Fiercely Competitive World by Suman Sarkar

• The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T.R. Reid

• Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham

• Bad Blood by John Carreyou

• Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar

• King Icahn: Biography of a Renegade Capitalist by Mark Stevens

• Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday

• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover

• Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time by Howard Schultz

• The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change by Bharat Anand

• The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy by Bill Simmons

• Kissinger: A Biography by Walter Isaacson

• Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowksy (a long one, don't think I'll ever finish!)

• Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

• The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson

• The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World by Brad Stone