Tony Fadell, the leader of the teams that created the iPod, iPhone, and Nest Learning Thermostat, shares over 30 years of Silicon Valley experience in this unorthodox guide to making things worth making. Build is a mentor in a box, offering personal stories, practical advice, and insights into some of the most impactful products and people of the 20th century.

With quick entries that build on each other, Tony charts his journey from product designer to leader, startup founder, executive, and mentor. He uses captivating examples, such as the process of building the very first iPod and iPhone, to help readers tackle problems they're currently facing, from securing startup funding to managing workplace challenges.

Through his experiences with mentors like Steve Jobs and Bill Campbell, Tony advocates for old-school, unorthodox advice. He emphasizes that while human nature doesn't change, what we create can. His guidance focuses on leading and managing effectively, not reinventing the wheel, to make things worth making.

If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets. The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.

Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business.

It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself. Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1.

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.

Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom.

What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want.

It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in an age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Cracking the Coding Interview is here to help you through the process of getting a top software developer job. The author, a software engineer herself, understands the challenges of being asked to create brilliant algorithms on the spot and write flawless code on a whiteboard. Having experienced these interviews from both sides of the table, she shares her knowledge in this deeply technical book.

The book includes 189 real programming interview questions, which reflect what is truly being asked at the top companies, ensuring that you can be as prepared as possible. It walks you through how to derive each solution, so you can learn how to get there yourself. It provides hints on how to solve each question, similar to what you would receive in a real interview, and outlines five proven strategies to tackle algorithm questions, helping you to solve problems you haven't seen before.

In addition to core computer science concepts, the book offers insight into the hiring practices of top companies like Google and Facebook, including how to prepare for the soft side of the interview and the behavioral questions. Whether you're an interviewer looking for great questions or a candidate preparing to ace your interviews, this book is an invaluable tool for success.

Microserfs is a novel by Douglas Coupland that takes readers into the world of overworked coders at Microsoft in the early 1990s. The story is narrated by Dan Underwood, a computer programmer who documents his life and the lives of his friends in the form of a Powerbook entry.

These six "microserfs" are code-crunching computer whizzes, spending upward of 16 hours a day "coding" and eating "flat" foods, such as Kraft singles, passed under doors. They live in constant anticipation of the great Bill's emails, fearing whether he might "flame" one of them.

Seizing a chance to become innovators instead of just cogs in the Microsoft machine, they strike out on their own to form a high-tech start-up named Oop! in Silicon Valley. Living together in a digital flophouse—"Our House of Wayward Mobility"—they strive to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the digital chaos.

Funny, illuminating, and ultimately touching, Microserfs is the story of one generation's strange and claustrophobic coming of age in a tech-driven world.