Book Recommendations

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite books that have helped me over the years.

Business

• The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business
• Principles: Life and Work
• Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness
• Little Green Book of Getting Your Way: How to Speak, Write, Present, Persuade, Influence, and Sell Your Point of View to Others
• Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
• The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials)
• Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm
• Remote: Office Not Required
• Rework
• The Thank You Economy

Management

Basics

• Managing For Dummies
• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
• The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
• Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

Advanced

• The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age
• Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results
• First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently

Leadership

Basics

• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
• The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Advanced

• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
• The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win

Product Development

• The Design of Everyday Things
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
• The Art of Agile Development
• From Concept to Consumer: How to Turn Ideas Into Money

Programming

• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
• Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
• Design Patterns in Ruby
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
• Clean Architecture
• Building Scalable Web Sites
• Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja

DevOps

• Docker Deep Dive: Zero to Docker in a single book

Personal Finance

• The Way to Wealth
• Investing For Dummies
• The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning
• The Intelligent Asset Allocator: How to Build Your Portfolio to Maximize Returns and Minimize Risk
• The Intelligent Investor

Marketing

• All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World

Psychology

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
• The Gifts of Imperfection

Important reading for management & leadership

• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
• Thinking, Fast and Slow
• The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Philosophy

• The Art of War

Economics

• The Wealth of Nations

Biography

• Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Self-help

• The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• The Magic of Thinking Big
• The 4-Hour Workweek
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
• Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

Writing

• The Elements of Style
• The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well