What To Read

Here are three ways I can help in figuring out what you should read next:

  1. Look through the selections below from The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.
  2. Check out My Favorite 50 Books of the Last Five Years post.
  3. Read my monthly What I Read posts

The Selections from The 100 Best Business Books of All Time

100BestBusinessBooks_3rdEd

YOU – Improving your life, your person and your strengths.

  • Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
  • Getting Things Done by David Allen
  • The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
  • How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  • Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive by Harvey B. Mackay
  • The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein
  • What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson
  • The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
  • Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss/Theodore Geisel
  • Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly

LEADERSHIP – Inspiration. Challenge. Courage. Change.

  • On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
  • Up The Organization by Robert Townsend
  • The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem
  • The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
  • Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree
  • The Radical Leap by Steve Farber
  • Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Tichy and Sherman
  • Leading Change by John P. Kotter
  • Questions of Character by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
  • The Story Factor by Annette Simmons
  • Lean In By Sheryl Sandberg

STRATEGY – Eight organizational blueprints from which to draft your own.

  • In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
  • Good to Great by Jim Collins
  • The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
  • Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove
  • Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
  • Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry
  • Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
  • Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad
  • Beyond The Core by Chris Zook

SALES AND MARKETING – Approaches and pitfalls in the ongoing process of creating customers.

  • Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
  • Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
  • A New Brand World by Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell
  • Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
  • Zag by Marty Neumeier
  • Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
  • Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
  • How to Become a Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox
  • Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
  • The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
  • Purple Cow by Seth Godin
  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffery Gitomer

RULES AND SCOREKEEPING – The all-important numbers behind the game.

  • Naked Economics by Charles Wheelman
  • Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
  • The Balanced Scorecard by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
  • What The CEO Wants You To Know by Ram Charan

MANAGEMENT – Guiding and directing the people around you.

  • The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
  • Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming
  • Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno
  • Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy
  • The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
  • The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack with Bo Burlingham
  • First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
  • Now, Discover Your Strengths by Buckingham and Clifton
  • The Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
  • Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono
  • The Team Handbook by Peter Scholtes, Brian Joiner, and Barbara Streibel

BIOGRAPHIES – Seven lives. Unlimited lessons.

  • Titan:The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
  • My Years with General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
  • The HP Way by David Packard
  • Personal History by Katharine Graham
  • Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon
  • Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John Huey
  • Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson
  • A Business and Its Beliefs by Thomas J. Watson Jr.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP – Seven guides to the passion and practicality necessary for any new venture.

  • The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
  • The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
  • The Republic of Tea ** by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, and Bill Rosenzweig
  • The Partnership Charter by David Gage
  • Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
  • Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
  • The Monk and the Riddle Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback
  • The Lean Start-up by Eric Ries

NARRATIVES – Six industry tales of both fortune and failure.

  • Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin
  • American Steel by Richard Preston
  • The Force by David Dorsey
  • The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
  • When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
  • Moneyball by Michael Lewis
  • The Lexus and The Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman

INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY – Insight into the process of developing new ideas.

  • Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie
  • The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman
  • Jump Start Your Business Brain by Doug Hall
  • A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger Von Oech
  • The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
  • The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
  • Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko

BIG IDEAS – The future of business books lies here.

  • The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy
  • Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
  • The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
  • Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  • To Engineer is Human by Henry Petroski
  • The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
  • Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
  • More Than You Know by Michael Mauboussin

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