Books Recommended by Lucas Morales
Read the interview: Lucas Morales
In Lucas Morales’s words:
Depending on your interest and goals, if you are like me and always looking for the trends in the big picture then I highly recommend being an active contrarian reader. Read what no one else is reading. Your goal is to think outside the box. To look at the world and ask “why hasn’t this been solved?” And that gives you a roadmap as to what opportunities may exist for your entrepreneurial efforts. So to that, here’s a snapshot, in no particular order, of what might help you push your intellectual boundaries:
- Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
- 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
- Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
- Who Gets What--And Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin E. Roth
- The Political Economy of Participatory Economics by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel
- The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism by Jeremy Rifkin
- Why America Misunderstands the World by Paul R. Pillar
- A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
- Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
In Lucas Morales’s words:
My favorite books are Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and the Silmarillion. In fact these book hold a special place in my memory. In highschool I was so into Tolkien that I delved into linguistics on my own time. I was obsessed with Quenya (Tolkien’s elvish language). I combined that obsession with my mediocre skills as a programmer, and made a sort of dictionary/translator program. This was actually my first venturing into entrepreneurship, because in my naivety I thought I might be able to sell my software to fellow enthusiasts (the first movie was just coming out at the time).
17 books recommended by Lucas Morales
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
I was introduced to the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt via Ian Shapiro’s Yale Open Courseware course The Moral Foundations of Political Science. This dramatically changed my outlook on the usual career path for graduates from… Read the full quote
I was introduced to the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt via Ian Shapiro’s Yale Open Courseware course The Moral Foundations of Political Science. This dramatically changed my outlook on the usual career path for graduates from my university that predominantly went into the defence industry. I am now perhaps overly conscious (maybe to a fault) that whatever I do purposefully aims to be a positive to society.
High Tech Startup: The Complete Handbook for Creating Successful New High Tech Companies
High Tech Startup: The Complete Handbook for Creating Successful New High Tech Companies by John L. Nesheim is a bit dated, but because of that, its very revealing as to how investment has changed over the years. I have always felt unease about the trend… Read the full quote
High Tech Startup: The Complete Handbook for Creating Successful New High Tech Companies by John L. Nesheim is a bit dated, but because of that, its very revealing as to how investment has changed over the years. I have always felt unease about the trend of “unicorns”, and subscribe more to the approach of being a “cockroach”. This book helped me better understand how to strategize for being a cockroach.
Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything
by Becky Bond, Zack Exley
For my current venture into volunteer organization, Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything by Becky Bond and Zack Exley is a more recent example of something that validated my business idea. Many of the strategy ideas I guessed at, namely decentralized and… Read the full quote
For my current venture into volunteer organization, Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything by Becky Bond and Zack Exley is a more recent example of something that validated my business idea. Many of the strategy ideas I guessed at, namely decentralized and distributed organization techniques that form the basis of Zeall, emerged in this book by two of the top organizers of the 2016 Bernie Sanders Presidential Campaign.
Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist
by Randall Wray
I am currently reading Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist by Randall Wray. I am an enthusiast of Modern Money Theory and participate in a group interested in financial systems, the nature of money, and economic policy. I am… Read the full quote
I am currently reading Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist by Randall Wray. I am an enthusiast of Modern Money Theory and participate in a group interested in financial systems, the nature of money, and economic policy. I am hoping to get closer to the expert level of understanding that others in that group have so that I can contribute more to the discussion. I believe that if we want to make real change in the world, we need to be looking at the most fundamental aspects of our social lives, and there is nothing more fundamental in society than the point system we use to track IOUs between each other.
