I think the one that has had the biggest impact on me and the one that I’ve given the most number of people has been [The Better Angels of Our Nature] . And [The Better Angels of Our Nature] is a 700-page book on death. And it’s written by a brilliant Harvard professor who talks at great length about death rates and the human condition. And he spends a lot of time talking about what happened 200, 300, 400, 500 years ago. And when you finish the book, which takes a long time, you conclude that the world is in a much, much better place than it has been in the past, that a thousand years ago, the average man died in a war and the average woman died in pregnancy in their 20s, and that a child born today has a very high likelihood in almost all parts of the world to live to a natural old age. That’s an extraordinary statement. And that’s why the people who run around saying, “Oh, the world’s falling apart. We’ve never had it this bad.” That’s just not true. And the data says it’s not true.

There’s one book I’ve given the most in my life, which is a book called – well, there are several now that I think about it. There’s a book by Timothy Wilson called Strangers to Ourselves , which is one of the loveliest, most insightful books about social psychology that I ever read. And I give that a lot to people. And every time I meet, and really, I’m always meeting people who work in retail, particularly I always send them, particularly if they’re Jewish, I send them a book called The Merchant Princes . It’s a book about the great Jewish retail families of America. So in the 19th century, all of these people come over from Europe who have experience in the garment trade or retailing. And an extraordinary number of the early 20th century/late 19th century department stores pop up around America are founded by Jewish immigrants from Europe from, literally, you go to any town in America, the traditional department store is from one of those families. Well, a guy, and I’ve forgotten his name, wrote a book about those families, and it’s called The Merchant Princes , and it’s fantastic.

The people I most often give books to are children, and the book I love giving is Rivka Galchen’s Rat Rule 79. Technically a book written for children, but a book that will delight readers of all ages.

Well, there are two different ones. There’s Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, which invariably shows up on these lists of 100 books you should read before you die, which really had a big impact on me, and I’ve spoken about it at Sequoia founder events. I’ve given it to many people. I just think the book is amazing in terms of helping clarify what it is that motivates you and what drives you, “What is your purpose,” because we are not really driven by monetary rewards or pleasure by itself. So, that, to me, is a fantastic book. The other one is an annual series called America’s Best Science and Nature Writing , and it’s this collection of about two dozen articles from American publications, written for a lay audience across a range of topics. It could be, “What’s the latest insights from physics and astronomy,” to, “What’s happening in genetics,” “What’s happening with anthropology,” or things like that. I mean, it’s absolutely fascinating.