AIEIO Book Library

The books worth knowing, properly summarised

Most book summaries give you the blurb and a few bullet points. These do not. Every chapter is covered, the frameworks are drawn out in full, the criticism is included, and each one comes with a free audio version you can listen to on the way to work.

Atomic Habits

James Clear · 2018

Small changes, repeated consistently, compound into remarkable results - and the way to make them stick is design, not willpower. The plateau of latent potential, systems over goals, identity-based habits, the four laws with every tool inside them, all twenty chapters, and which parts the research actually supports.

~22 min read22 min audio20 chapters

Mindset

Carol S. Dweck · 2006 / updated 2016

People believe ability is either fixed or growable, and which belief they hold shapes how they meet challenge, effort, failure and criticism. The praise experiments, the false growth mindset correction Dweck had to issue herself, and a straight account of what the twelve-thousand-student trial actually found.

~22 min read22 min audioPsychology

Blue Ocean Strategy

W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne · 2005 / expanded 2015

Stop fighting for share of an existing market and create one nobody is contesting. Covers value innovation, the strategy canvas, the ERRC grid, the six paths, the three tiers of noncustomers, and all eleven chapters of the expanded edition.

~25 min read28 min audio11 chapters

Psycho-Cybernetics

Maxwell Maltz · 1960

A plastic surgeon works out that he has been operating on the wrong thing. Covers the self-image, the goal-striving mechanism, the Theatre of the Mind, the SUCCESS and FAILURE frameworks, where the 21-day rule really came from, and all fifteen chapters.

~25 min read29 min audio15 chapters

Never Split the Difference

Chris Voss & Tahl Raz · 2016

The FBI's lead kidnapping negotiator on why the polite, rational model is wrong. Covers tactical empathy, mirroring, labelling, the accusation audit, calibrated questions, the Ackerman model, the Black Swan, and all ten chapters.

~25 min read29 min audio10 chapters

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Friedrich Nietzsche · 1883-1885

A man comes down from a mountain to announce that God is dead, and nobody wants to hear it. Covers the Last Man, the Ubermensch, the three metamorphoses, will to power, eternal recurrence, every chapter across all four parts, and the Nazi appropriation.

~30 min read29 min audio80 chapters

On the Genealogy of Morals

Friedrich Nietzsche · 1887

The most systematic book he wrote, and the best place to start with him. Three essays on ressentiment and the slave revolt, guilt as inherited debt, bad conscience, the ascetic priest, and why science is not the opponent of the ascetic ideal but its latest form.

~25 min read24 min audio3 essays

Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzsche · 1886

Where Nietzsche stops chanting and starts arguing. The will to truth put in the dock, philosophy accused of being an involuntary memoir, herd morality, master and slave morality, and all nine parts - plus a straight account of the worst pages in the book.

~25 min read23 min audio9 parts

The Birth of Tragedy

Friedrich Nietzsche · 1872

His first book, and the one that ended his academic career. The Apollonian and Dionysian, the wisdom of Silenus, why the Greeks built their gods over an abyss, and how Socrates killed tragedy - with the savage self-criticism he added fourteen years later.

~22 min read21 min audio25 sections

The 48 Laws of Power

Robert Greene · 1998

One of the most requested books in American prison libraries, and one of the most frequently banned. Every one of the 48 laws explained in a line, the eight principles underneath them, why the laws contradict each other - and why it works far better as a detection manual than an instruction manual.

~25 min read24 min audio48 laws

Influence

Robert B. Cialdini · 1984 / expanded 2021

Three years undercover in sales training rooms, and the standard reference on persuasion ever since. All seven principles - reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity and unity - with the defence against each, and an honest account of which studies survived the replication crisis.

~25 min read24 min audio7 principles

Nudge

Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein · 2008 / Final Edition 2021

People do not always choose what is good for them, and how a choice is presented shapes what they pick - so present it better. Choice architecture, defaults, Save More Tomorrow, sludge, the organ-donation recommendation the authors retracted, and a straight account of which nudge effects survived the replication crisis.

~23 min read23 min audio6 tools

Mindsight

Daniel J. Siegel · 2010

A psychiatrist argues there is a perceptual capacity most of us were never trained in, aimed at the mind rather than the world. Covers the triangle of well-being, the river of chaos and rigidity, the hand model of the brain, implicit memory, earned secure attachment, the nine domains of integration and the Wheel of Awareness.

~25 min read27 min audio9 domains

The Laws of Human Nature

Robert Greene · 2018

Twenty years after the 48 Laws, and a substantially different book by the same author. All 18 laws explained, the narcissism spectrum, reading character by pattern, the shadow, how to detect envy - and a moral position his earlier book refused to take.

~25 min read24 min audio18 laws

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Mark Manson · 2016

A blog post that became one of the best-selling books of its decade by arguing the opposite of every other self-help book. The backwards law, choosing your struggle, the values test, fault versus responsibility, all nine chapters - and a straight answer on how much of it is actually new.

~22 min read22 min audio9 chapters

Head Strong

Dave Asprey · 2017

The argument that how well you think is limited right now by how much energy your brain cells can produce - and that it is fixable in a fortnight. The whole protocol, a diagram of exactly where the established biology ends and the extrapolation begins, and the medical causes of brain fog to rule out before you buy anything.

~19 min read19 min audioHealth

Super Human

Dave Asprey · 2019

A biohacker who has spent over a million dollars on his own body argues that ageing is a set of addressable failures, not an inevitability. The Four Killers, the Seven Pillars of Ageing and the whole protocol from sleep to stem cells - with every part sorted by how good the evidence actually is and what it costs you.

~24 min read24 min audioHealth

What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School

Mark H. McCormack · 1984

He shook hands with Arnold Palmer in 1960 and built IMG out of it, without ever attending business school. All three parts covered - reading people, selling and negotiating, running a business - plus what has dated, what still holds, and the famous Harvard goal-setting study that never happened.

~22 min read22 min audio3 parts

More summaries coming

Strategy, psychology, philosophy and more

The library grows as we work through the shelf. If there is a book you would like covered to this depth, tell us when you get in touch and we will put it in the queue.

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