Paul Graham's Reading List
The 5 books that shaped Paul Graham — essayist & y combinator co-founder.
Writer and investor whose essays on startups, programming, and thinking have shaped a generation of founders.
Influential Books
The Dream Machine
M. Mitchell Waldrop(2001)
Graham considers this the definitive history of personal computing — the story behind the story of Silicon Valley.
Microbe Hunters
Paul de Kruif(1926)
A childhood favorite that shaped Graham's belief that great discoveries come from obsessive curiosity.
A Writer's Journey
Christopher Vogler(1992)
Graham has referenced the hero's journey structure as a lens for understanding startup narratives.
On Writing Well
William Zinsser(1976)
The clarity of Graham's essays owes a debt to Zinsser's principles of simplicity and directness.
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Douglas R. Hofstadter(1979)
A book Graham has praised for making recursion and self-reference beautiful and accessible.