While there are many courses and tutorials online, learning from a book is still one of the best ways to greatly improve your skills. Below I have selected top Silicon Valley books.
- Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley (2018)
- A People’s History of Silicon Valley (2018)
- 111 Places in Silicon Valley That You Must Not Miss (111 Places in …. That You Must Not Miss) (2019)
- Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Everyone Else Can Learn from the Innovation Capital of the World (2014)
- Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley (2019)
- The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans (2004)
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2020)
- The Prophet from Silicon Valley: The Complete Story of Sequential Circuits (2015)
- Chronicles of a Silicon Valley Pinhead CEO (2019)
- The Global Silicon Valley Handbook (2017)
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley (2018)
The instant New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback and featuring a new afterword from the author–the insider’s guide to the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, the inner workings of the tech world, and who really runs Silicon Valley“Incisive. The most fun business book I have read this year.
A People’s History of Silicon Valley (2018)
Literary Nonfiction. A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF SILICON VALLEY follows the history of the people exploited, displaced, and made obsolete by the tech industry, from the colonization of the Bay Area to the present day.
111 Places in Silicon Valley That You Must Not Miss (111 Places in …. That You Must Not Miss) (2019)
Silicon Valley has become the Mesopotamia of the Digital Age, built on cycles of innovation and disruption, monstrous ambition, and a steady supply of labor and capital. Yet for all that's known about companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook – and the personas behind those companies – the culture of Silicon Valley remains elusive and contradictory, even to many locals.
Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Everyone Else Can Learn from the Innovation Capital of the World (2014)
While the global economy languishes, one place just keeps growing despite failing banks, uncertain markets, and high unemployment: Silicon Valley. In the last two years, more than 100 incubators have popped up in the high-tech capital, and the number of angel investors has skyrocketed.
Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley (2019)
Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you’re a woman.For women in tech, Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops, where millions of dollars grow on trees. It’s a “Brotopia,” where men hold all the cards and make all the rules.
The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans (2004)
This sweeping history explores the growing Latino presence in the United States over the past two hundred years. It also debunks common myths about Silicon Valley, one of the world’s most influential but least-understood places.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2020)
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood.
The Prophet from Silicon Valley: The Complete Story of Sequential Circuits (2015)
One of the great American synthesizer companies, founded and led by San Francisco electronics and computer graduate, Dave Smith, Sequential Circuits Inc. paved the way for music of the future. Smith brought easy, affordable and powerful polyphonic synthesis to all levels of music production in the form of the ground-breaking Prophet-5 synthesizer. Released in 1978, the Prophet led the new wave movement into the next decade, creating a sonically exciting soundtrack to eighties culture.
Chronicles of a Silicon Valley Pinhead CEO (2019)
The story behind new leadership of a Silicon Valley start-up as it falls from grace.
The Global Silicon Valley Handbook (2017)
Silicon Valley has become synonymous with big ideas, start-ups, and inventing the future. But today, the magic of Silicon Valley has gone viral and global.
Best Silicon Valley Books that Should be on Your Bookshelf
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some silicon valley books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
Author(s): Margaret O’Mara
ID: 2387891, Publisher: Penguin Press, Year: 9 July 2019, Size: 26 Mb, Format: epub
Kings Of Crypto: One Startup’s Quest To Take Cryptocurrency Out Of Silicon Valley And Onto Wall Street
Author(s): Jeff John Roberts
ID: 2867660, Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, Year: 2021, Size: 7 Mb, Format: pdf
Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America
Author(s): Mary Beth Meehan, Fred Turner
ID: 3040102, Publisher: University of Chicago Press, Year: 2021, Size: 54 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not final. Some books are really chart-busters according to The New York Times, others are composed by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.