list of (most of) the books mentioned in this thread so far. I tried reading every comment but used chatGPT instead.

1. The Big Rich - Texas oil boom.

2. Barbarians at the Gate - Private equity origins.

3. Masters of Doom - John Carmack and Id Software.

4. Einstein by Walter Isaacson - Einstein's discoveries.

5. Houdini!!! - The escape artist and magician.

6. The Double Helix - DNA discovery.

7. Stress Test by Tim Geithner - Financial crisis.

8. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Concentration camp survival.

9. The Chariots of Apollo - NASA's space program.

10. Across the Airless Wilds by Earl Swift - Development of the moon buggy.

11. Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox - Apollo missions.

12. The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr - Food supply chains.

13. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry evolution.

14. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson - Ambitious wreck divers.

15. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - Manhattan Project.

16. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - Robert Oppenheimer.

17. Conquistador by Buddy Levy - Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs.

18. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - Water infrastructure in the American West.

19. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough - The invention of flight.

20. Walt Disney by Neal Gabler - Vision and innovation in entertainment.

21. Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant - Invention of radar.

22. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.

23. The Logic of Failure - Understanding and avoiding failure.

24. The Big Short by Michael Lewis - 2008 financial crisis.

25. The Box by Marc Levinson - Shipping container revolution.

26. Latitude by Nicholas Crane - Cartography innovations.

27. When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance - Space startups.

28. The Founders by Jimmy Soni - PayPal's early days.

29. The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester - Precision engineering.

30. The Little Engine That Could - Children's classic.

31. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - Success mechanics.

32. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Founding of Nike.

33. Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin - Building LIGO.

34. Freedom’s Forge - WWII industry mobilization.

35. Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes - Electrification by Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse.

36. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough - Panama Canal construction.

37. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog - Climbing a Himalayan peak.

38. Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Data General engineers.

39. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary - Development of Windows NT.

40. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - WWII survival.

41. The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder - Defining the meter.

42. The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll - Tracking a hacker.

43. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel - Srinivasa Ramanujan.

44. The Power Broker by Robert Caro - Robert Moses and New York infrastructure.

45. How Big Things Get Done - Large-scale project execution.

46. Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik - Xerox PARC.

47. Built by Roma Agrawal - Civil engineering insights.

48. The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara - Competitive gaming.

49. Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold - Low-temperature physics.

50. Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins - Apollo 11.