Recently, Barry told Wired about the books that have shaped him over the years. They broke down his syllabus in typical efficient-nerd fashion, by how long it would take to read. Predicting one could get through Robert Moses’s 1,300-odd page The Power Broker in 19 hours seems dubious unless you’re a speedreader.

Still, this list is nonetheless a fascinatingly mixed one, jumping from fiction (a surprising Steinbeck selection) to urban studies (Caro, the book that explains New York City) and environmentalism (Kolbert’s terrifying study of climate change and mankind-caused extinctions):

• The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
• Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–63, Taylor Branch
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro
• The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
• Andy Grove, The Life and Times of an American, Richard S. Tedlow
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kaheman
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert
• In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo