Thought-Provoking Reads (Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s Thread)

Patrick O’Shaughnessy (@patrick_oshag) asked on X on October 4, 2026: “Anyone read anything thought provoking lately?” These are the books the replies named.

The books

27 books; ✓ marks the ones Kyle has read.

• 1Q84 — Haruki Murakami
• A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess
• A Fabulous Debt — Robin Wigglesworth
• Born of This Land — Chung Ju-yung
• Brave New World — Aldous Huxley ✓
• Chokepoints — Edward Fishman
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man — John Perkins
• Defenders of the West — Raymond Ibrahim
• Genesis (Schmidt, Kissinger, and Mundie) — Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger and Craig Mundie
• Impro — Keith Johnstone
• James Dyson — Against the Odds — James Dyson
• Loonshots — Safi Bahcall
• Lords of Finance — Liaquat Ahamed
• Medici Money — Tim Parks
• One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel García Márquez
• Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
• Range — David Epstein ✓
• Roll the Calls — Ari Emanuel
• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! — Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton
• The Commanding Heights — Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
• The Dispossessed — Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
• The Looming Tower — Lawrence Wright
• The Robber Barons — Matthew Josephson
• The Sovereign Individual — James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg
• The Time Machine — H.G. Wells ✓
• The Will of the Many — James Islington

Connections

• Anyone read anything thought provoking… (tweet) — the original post, archived.
• Book Lists — Master