Books That Helped Me Grow as an Engineer in 2017

Over the course of 2017, I read more than 75 books. That’s an average of more than one book per week. In my opinion, reading informative and thought-provoking books is well worth the investment in time and brain power.

In the list below, I’ve started with 5 of the books that most influenced me in 2017. Each of these books has directly benefited me in my professional life as a Consulting Electronic Engineer. I’ve then listed all the books that I read throughout the year, ordered by category.

Reading a variety of books allows me to enhance my business skills, stay abreast of the latest technologies and trends, indulge my passion for studying the history of my industry, and where necessary, switch off.

Many of my clients are start-ups or fast-moving SMEs. With that in mind, staying up to date with the latest technology trends is not a luxury for me – it is a necessity. I regularly speak to enthusiastic founders that aspire to build the next Apple, develop the next cryptocurrency or use wearable technology to improve our wellbeing. Drawing on the collective knowledge of the thought leaders in a variety of fields helps me to add value to the teams that I consult for and provide design services to.

I enjoy reading daily and with the advent of audio books, I can “read” almost anywhere nowadays. Audible must be the most consistently used app on my phone!

Are there any books that you think I would like? Please let me know in the comments.

My Top 5 Books of 2017

  1. How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of ‘Intangibles’ in Business
    Douglas W. Hubbard
    Don’t be deceived by the name – this is not just a business book. When the author says how to measure anything, he means it! I have used the lessons learned in this book to improve the quality of my PCB schematic reviews!
    My Top 5 Books of 2017: How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of 'Intangibles' in Business
  2. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
    Richard P. Rumelt
    My Top 5 Books of 2017: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
  3. Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent
    Stephen M. Key and Janice Kimball Key
    My Top 5 Books of 2017: Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent
  4. Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of the How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry
    Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler
    My Top 5 Books of 2017: Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of the How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry
  5. Accounting for the Numberphobic: A Survival Guide for Small Business Owners
    Dawn Fotopulos
    My Top 5 Books of 2017: Accounting for the Numberphobic: A Survival Guide for Small Business Owners

Biographies and Memoirs

Jenson Button: Life to the Limit
Jenson Button

Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World
Richard Rhodes

Leonardo Da Vinci
Walter Isaacson

My Share of the Task
General Stanley McChrystal

Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
Jon Lee Anderson

Galileo
J. L. Heilbron

The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age
Bettina Hoerlin and Gino Segre

Jonas Salk: A Life
Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs

Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World
Marc Raboy

Man of Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building of Britain
Julian Glover

Becoming Steve Jobs: How a Reckless Upstart Became a Visionary Leader
Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

The Spy Who Changed the World
Mike Rossiter

Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell

How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer
Adrian Newey

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State
Glenn Greenwald

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales
Oliver Sacks

Mathematics

A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics
David Stipp

Fermat’s Last Theorem: The Story of a Riddle that Confounded the World’s Greatest Minds for 358 Years
Simon Singh

The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets
Simon Singh

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Chaos: Making a New Science
James Gleick

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Leonard Mlodinow

Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak
Travis Sawchik

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner

Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction
Fred Piper and Sean Murphy

A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics: A Neuroscientist on How to Make Sense of a Complex World
Daniel Levitin

Business

Accounting for the Numberphobic: A Survival Guide for Small Business Owners
Dawn Fotopulos

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street
John Brooks

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
Richard P. Rumelt

Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent
Stephen M. Key and Janice Kimball Key

One Simple Idea, Revised and Expanded Edition: Turn Your Dreams into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work
Stephen M. Key

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sheryl Sandberg

How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of ‘Intangibles’ in Business
Douglas W. Hubbard

From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue
Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross

Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of the How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry
Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler

Surviving and Thriving in Uncertainty: Creating the Risk Intelligent Enterprise: Value Creation and Protection
Frederick Funston and Stephen Wagner

How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk
Douglas W. Hubbard and Richard Seiersen

Total Competition: Lessons in Strategy from Formula One
Ross Brawn and Adam Parr

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Most Exclusive School for Startups
Randall Stross

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World
Brad Stone

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets are Transforming the Economy – and How to Make Them Work for You
Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne and Sangeet Paul Choudary

Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World
Nicholas Shaxson

Originals: How Non-Conformists Change the World
Adam Grant

History

The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act
Clay Risen

Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA
Amy Shira Teitel

A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev
Vladimir Zubok

The End of the Cold War: 1985 – 1991
Robert Service

Command and Control
Eric Schlosser

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
Antony Beevor

The Romanovs: 1613-1918
Simon Sebag Montefiore

Replay: The History of Video Games
Richard Garriott and Tristan Donovan

Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer
Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

When Computing Got Personal: A History of the Desktop Computer
Matt Nicholson

Insanely Great: The Life and Time of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything
Steven Levy

The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission
Jim Bell

Infinity Beckoned: Adventuring Through the Inner Solar System, 1969-1989
Jay Gallentine

Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race
Margot Lee Shetterly

Atomic Awakening: A New Look At The History And Future Of Nuclear Power
James Mahaffey

Concorde: The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner
Jonathan Glancey

Science and Technology

Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
Cesar Hidalgo

Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
Steven Strogatz

The Technological Singularity
Murray Shanahan

Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault
John Dvorak

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
Gretchen Bakke

The Glass Cage: Automation and Us
Nicholas Carr

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane
Brett King

Thinking Machines: The Inside Story of Artificial Intelligence and Our Race to Build the Future
Luke Dormehl

The Book of Satoshi: The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto
Phil Champagne

The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice and Application of the Next Internet Technology
Vitalik Buterin and William Mougayar

Bitcoin: The Future Of Money?
Dominic Frisby

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few
James Surowiecki

The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality & Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything
Shel Israel and Robert Scoble

Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins
Garry Kasparov

The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power
Joseph Turow

The Fintech Book – the Financial Technology Handbook for Investors, Entrepreneurs and Visionaries
Janos Barberis and Susanne Chishti

Literature

War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen