Recommended Reading List

Last updated Fri, 13 August 2021

A list of the books I’ve read or re-read in the last few years, arranged in basically the order I read them, topmost recent. If I don’t enjoy a book, I don’t finish it, so each book on this list is recommended to some extent.

I’m constantly updating this list of books to help you discover the best books to read.

Best Entrepreneurship Books

1. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
2. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
3. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
4. The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime. by MJ DeMarco
5. Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
6. Before the Exit: Thought Experiments For Entrepreneurs by Dan Andrews

Best Finance Books

1. The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor by Howard Marks
2. Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by Seth Klarman
3. The Art of Profitability by Adrian Slywotzky
4. Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential by Greg Crabtree

Best Leadership Books

1. Dream Teams by Shane Snow
2. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
3. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
4. Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization by John Wooden
5. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
6. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
7. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
8. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni

Best Management Books

1. First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
2. The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management by Peter Drucker
3. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt

The Top Art and Creativity Books

1. Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone
2. Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod
3. The War of Art: Break Through Your Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
4. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life by Twyla Tharp

Best Artist Biographies

1. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
2. Just Kids by Patti Smith

Best Photography Books

1. Intimations of Paradise by Christopher Burkett
2. Resplendent Light by Christopher Burkett

More Art and Creativity Book Recommendations

1. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
2. The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner
3. Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews by Calvin Tomkins
   Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

2020

Seed to Harvest by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler by Octavia E. Butler

Kindred: The ground-breaking masterpiece by Octavia E. Butler

The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins

Essentialism by Greg Mckeown

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Influence by Robert Cialdini

Recursion by Blake Crouch ★

Hooked by Nir Eyal

The Poor Kid With Rich Dreams by Duku Fore

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Do I Make Myself Clear? by Harold Evans ★

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford ★

The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

The Mastermind by Evan Ratliff

2019

Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove ★

Radical Candor by Kim Malone Scott

The Art of Taking Action by Gregg Krech

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox ★

Shanzhai by Byung-Chul Han and Philippa Hurd

Rocket Men by Robert Kurson

Competing Against Luck by Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall, and David S. Duncan

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovksy

Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Greever

Org Design for Design Orgs by Peter Merholz and Kristin Skinner

Pandemic by A. G. Riddle

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman ★

The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb

Einstein by Walter Isaacson

Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle

Exhalation by Ted Chiang ★

Brave New Work by Aaron Dignan

Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Discussing Design by Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

2018

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn ★

How To Cook Your Life by Dōgen Zenji and Kōshō Uchiyama ★

Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

SPQR by Mary Beard

Good to Great by James C. Collins

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

1491 by Charles Mann

Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright ★

I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Dreaming the Beatles by Rob Sheffield