My friend Emily is doing some really fun research, and I hope you can help me help her. Yesterday, she posted a great question:
What book(s) have you read that you would consider essential knowledge or to be an important, challenging perspective on a complex subject? #research
Isn’t that a boss question? What are yours? May I share them with Em? Here are mine…
On autism:
- Thinking In Pictures by Temple Grandin
- The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida (translated by David Mitchell),
and then on other complex subjects,
- Influence by Robert Cialdini
- 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam
- Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey
- Darkness Visible by William Styron
- Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
- The Ultimate Question 2.0 by Fred Reichheld
- Secret Formulas Of The Wizard Of Ads by Roy H. Williams
Books are my friends, my teachers, and my security blankets. How about you? What are your game-changers?
Two books that I have read multiple times recently that have rocked my world and challenged my perspective include:
Pendulum by Michael R. Drew and Roy H. Williams – talks about how society changes like clockwork every 40 years.
Drive by Daniel H. Pink – amazing advice on how to motivate your team
If you are a retailer, you have to read Why We Buy by Paco Underhill. It is the most fascinating look at shoppers’ habits and the interesting things that influence our purchases. Heck, anyone who is interested in how people make decisions should read this book.
As far as paradigm-shifting, look-at-the-world-differently kind of books go, the best I’ve ever read are the Wizard of Ads Trilogy by Roy H. Williams. Those three books changed my life.
Another author I like is Seth Godin. He has numerous books out. My personal favorite is Tribes but that is more of a cheerleader book for leaders rather than a deep, complex, perspective-changing book. Lynchpin better fits that description.
Those are my top eight books.
I’m saving the #9 slot for a book yet to be published. A friend of mine has a novel he is currently pushing to the publishers called The Man Who Wore Mismatched Socks about the leader of a visceral brewery in England shortly after the war. It is the story of how Gack&Bacon Ltd, a 400 year old brewery, withstood the onslaught of the corporate breweries of the day with their efficiencies of scale and sheer determination of dominance. The story line is based loosely on the teachings of Seth Godin. I have read multiple excerpts and stolen many ideas (and drank many beers).
Hi Tim
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko is a great book. It helps people understand how and why some people start out in poverty and become wealthy, while other people with the same education level, and the same set of circumstances become millionaires. Stanley and Danko did extensive research and their conclusions should be taught in every high school in America, they should be taught by every parent to every child here in the USA. But sadly such is not the case. 70% our our 315 million people live paycheck to paycheck in the richest land of opportunity the world has ever known.
OK, the three books I think of first and that, still to this day, I re-read every few years are:
1) A Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher
2) Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy, and I might even include Percy’s precursor to this book, his collection of essays titled, The Message in the Bottle
3) Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver
I make no recommendations of these books because just as many people will loathe them as love them, but I love them and they rocked my world.
Another book in the same category that I haven’t picked up in a long time, but which had a profound effect on my thinking is Blaise Pascal’s Pensées. Again, probably not for everyone, but it was definitely a game changer for me.
Of course, The Wizard of Ads trilogy falls into this list as well. Many of G.K. Chesterton’s works, along with Meditations on the Tarot by Anonymous.
I could go on with other books for category specific knowledge or wisdom, but these are the ones that rocked my world and changed my life outlook in general.
The Bible is essential. And, obviously apart from the Wizard of Ads trilogy, Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute, The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander, Atlas Shrugged and Peter Pan
I was blown away with a few books this past year alone.
Jonathan Haidt explains why we can see the same thing in different ways with The Righteous Mind, Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman really opens the door to behavioral economics and the decision sciences. Almost seems to be the foundation by which Dan Ariely, Dan Pink, Dan & Chip Heath and Heidi Grant Halvorson / Torry Higgins have built their towers.
Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda interrupts the busy mind to examine what’s important, what’s lasting. Hard to believe it was written in 1946. The crossover between East and West is provocative. No wonder why Steve Jobs was reported to have read this every year.
I concur with Phil that the Wizard of Ad’s trilogy and Seth Godin’s work, especially Lynch Pin are essential reads.