The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

David Epstein's investigation into the nature-versus-nurture debate in human performance, examining elite athletes from Usain Bolt to Serena Williams to the great basketball and rowing dynasties. Reporting from Siberia to the Kenyan highlands, Epstein shows how genes, deliberate practice, and environmental luck each matter — and how much of what we call talent is a specific, often geographically clustered genetic arrangement.

Cuban's one-tweet recommendation — 'the groundbreaking book on sports, genetics and performance. A must read' — signals a founder reading habit that prizes empirical edge over romance. The book's relevance to building is about hiring and talent: understand what capability actually comes from the raw material (the person, the genetic) versus what comes from training and environment, so you don't, for example, reward the wrong kind of practice or bet on the system when the person was the star the whole time.