Jos van der Westhuizen

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Bookshelf

Last updated November 18, 2025

Books that I thoroughly enjoyed and/or shaped who I am today. For a full list of books I've read, check out my Goodreads profile.


Educated — Tara Westover
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character — Richard P. Feynman
Born a Crime — Trevor Noah
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike — Phil Knight
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers — Ben Horowitz
The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you — Rob Fitzpatrick
The Elements of Style — William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World — Cal Newport
How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
Sustainable Energy - without the hot air — David MacKay
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
The Mathematics of Games And Gambling — Edward Packel
The Pheonix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping Your Business Win — Gene Kim
No Rules Rule: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention — Reed Hastings
Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl
The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business — Clayton M. Christensen
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done — Peter Drucker
Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You — John Warrillow
Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival — Joe Simpson
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage — Alfred Lansing
Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned While Growing To 100 Million Users And Losing $78 Million — Cliff Lerner
Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed — Ben Rich
Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performance — Matthew Syed
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life — Marshall Rosenberg
Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy — Alex Moazed
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering — Frederick P. Brooks
Chess Story — Stefan Zweig
How To Build A Car — Adrian Newey
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture — David Kushner
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire — James Wallace
Greenlights — Matthew McConaughey
Atomic Habits — James Clear
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time — Jeff Sutherland
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't — Jim Collins
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams — Matthew Walker
23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism — Ha-Joon Chang
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in an Ancient Wisdom — Jonathan Haidt
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future — Peter Thiel
Rich Dad Poor Dad — Robert Kiyosaki
Hyperion — Dan Simmons
Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
I am Pilgrim — Terry Hayes
Persuader — Lee Child
Worth Dying For — Lee Child
Cradle — Will Wight
Foundation — Isaac Asimov
1984 — George Orwell
Spud — John van de Ruit
Hatchet — Gary Paulsen