Jamil Hasan's favorite books to see the hidden financial structures shaping the world

The last time I reread a book was The Color Purple in college. This time, I revisited The Rise of Technosocialism.

I initially read it from a macroeconomic viewpoint. The second time was as a personal reflection. I saw my life differently after the second time. I was stuck between two black-and-white choices: go get a traditional job or accept entrepreneurial failure. 

The book revealed a third path, which is building in the gray zone. I can define my role in the growing digital economy without fitting into either conventional category. I now have a new perspective with new possibilities.

Rereading this book helped me see a flexible, innovative way forward beyond a traditional role and repeated setbacks. I am now embracing a more adaptable approach to my career.

This book changed how I think about money.

I used to think of non-cash (credit cards, PayPal, and crypto) as a vague construct that wasn’t real, unlike cash. Now I think of money as a system. I saw the difference between what I was taught about finance and how digital money moves. 

More importantly, this book forced me to think hard about resilience because my desmoid tumor, which I had fought for years and thought was gone, grew back. And I've spent years building a brand without getting paid. I wondered for four years what I was doing wrong. I now see navigating modern financial systems isn’t about knowledge but about resilience instead. I must adapt, be aware, and be resilient.

This book made me face my mindset around urgency and taking shortcuts.

I lost $10,000 in 2017 in crypto right after my father passed away, when I was in shock. I look back at how my emotions and the need to get rich quickly overrode logic. I now love the idea of getting rich quickly, not from likelihood or being practical, but from seeing it as humor. I saw how I can’t compress my learning curves without consequences. I learned a huge lesson in paying the $10K tuition for a lesson in security and diligence.

GRQ helped me reshape my perspective so I no longer look at that experience as a failure, but as a necessary step to building with clarity instead of chasing outcomes.

I didn’t read this book about a hacker who broke into the phone number system just for a fun read. I read it as a chance to try something similar with artificial intelligence to protect myself. I get tons of spam and phishing emails.

I get fifty robocalls a day. At first, I just ignored them. But then they became impossible to continuously ignore because some seemed so real. I needed a way to understand the current landscape and how this stuff spreads.

I became a lot more curious and looked beneath the surface. The book forced me to stop just looking at face value. I stopped watching systems and started learning them. I can now spot the fraud attempts. I also discovered how much I care about ethics, values, and morals.

Often over the past few years, as a self-published author, I have felt invisible. But this book showed me what being invisible really is.

For me, this book is not just about immigration or labor. I can see how everything keeps running while leaving out the people who sustain the system. I thought I was outside the traditional system because with Bitcoin, I thought I was part of a rebellion and a new global movement.

I thought there was “the system” and then there was Bitcoin. I didn't realize Bitcoin is a system too. And I didn't see that some people have no system, and maybe never will. I started to be grateful to be part of something where I count, or at least have a chance to count.