My Five Favorite Books of 2023

I always enjoy discovering new books, so here I want to collect my five favorite non-fiction books that I read this year, in the hope that this can provide a pointer to someone interested in similar topics and ideas.

TLDR: 1. Lenin the Dictator by Victor Sebestyen, 2. The WEIRDest people in the World by Joseph Henrich, 3. Chip War by Chris Miller, 4. Brain Energy by Chris Palmer, 5. A World Without Email by Cal Newport.

1. Lenin the Dictator by Victor Sebestyen

I originally heard about this book in a podcast with Marc Andreessen, where he called it “perhaps the best book on the Soviet Union”.

It’s a detailed retelling of the story of how Lenin became who he was, providing a slow build-up to the October Revolution, one of the most important historical events of the past century.

There is the autobiographical: the traumatic event of his brother’s execution after failing to assassinate the Tsar, and the almost comical absurdity of the professional Russian revolutionaries spending decades in exile achieving little, bickering among themselves.

There is Lenin the man: a brilliant politician, but ruthless, constantly fighting, weirdly neurotic and provincially conservative yet utterly convinced of his importance and the validity of his ideas…