The Rational Optimist
Matt Ridley's case that trade and specialization, not intelligence, drove human progress
Ridley's claim is that prosperity comes from exchange between specialists rather than from any group getting smarter, and he runs the argument from prehistory to the present. Along the way he takes apart most standard accounts of decline. This is the popular-science end of his work. Readers usually meet it alongside Genome and The Red Queen. Critics say he applies the optimism unevenly, on climate in particular; supporters say the historical case for compounding trade holds either way.
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Naval RavikantRecommends
Angel investor · AngelList and the Naval podcast
Everything Matt Ridley has written gets his recommendation, he says, and he names this one alongside Genome, The Red Queen and Origins of Virtue. Ridley is where he goes for the evolution and progress material.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show transcript: Naval Ravikant
Aimed at the same thing
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Deep Work
The case that uninterrupted concentration is a rare and valuable skill
On record from 6 of 62 tracked people: 5 recommend it, 1 has discussed it - Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
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John Brooks's twelve New Yorker stories about Wall Street and 1960s corporate America
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On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it, 1 has discussed it - Book$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life
Penguin Press
Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2023 book on vision, work, failure and giving back
On record from 1 of 62 tracked people: 1 recommends it
Book entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.