In Derek's defense, several of the books he listed do have specific, harder knowledge, such as "Predictably Irrational" (written for the lay person, but cites m

In Derek's defense, several of the books he listed do have specific, harder knowledge, such as "Predictably Irrational" (written for the lay person, but cites many high quality studies), "Stumbling on Happiness" (same, covers much good research), "The Innovator's Solution", which contains a lot of high quality thought about how industries change, Bernstein's "The Four Pillars of Investing" (again, backed by good financial theory), and "Fooled by Randomness" (less original than it proclaims, but its fundamental perspective of the outcome of chaotic processes is useful for people not familiar with stats). Yes, there are fluff books in there (Gladwell, Godin, etc) but you seem to be dismissing a lot of quality work just because you feel everyone should be reading hard theoretical material. However, I do agree that it's easy to read only books such as those on Sivers' list and ignore those on your list, which is a mistake. A mix is healthy.