Morris Chang’s Autobiography

Why it’s on the list: The TSMC founder’s own account of building the most strategically important company in the world — and one of the few major business memoirs that has never had an English publisher.

Where I heard about it

• Tyler Cosgrove (@tylercosgrove) — on his list of 25 books he offered to send to Jared Kushner, October 2025. The recommendation is presumably to a translation, since no English edition has been published.

About this edition

The memoir comes in two volumes: the first (1998) covers his birth in mainland China through his years at Texas Instruments; the second (November 2024) covers General Instrument, the move to Taiwan, and the founding and building of the pure-play foundry that now makes most of the world’s advanced chips. Both volumes exist only in Chinese. The English-reading route in is unofficial: Brian Potter translated the work and published it, and Karina Bao has published a separate non-commercial chapter translation. The page count and publication details of the second volume were not verified for this card.

Connections

• Morris Chang — the author and subject.
• TSMC — the company the second volume is about.
• Semiconductors — the industry he reorganised with the pure-play foundry model.
• Taiwan — where he went to build it, and why the book matters strategically.