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Mass Market Paperbound
704 pages
ISBN 9780451191151 Published Sept. 1996
New American Library
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Crowdsourced Entrepreneurial Reads
Posted Sept. 14, 2009 9:17 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog

A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson from avc.com kicked up interest in books that entreprenuers should read. Fred, in particular, made the point that "there is way more insight to be gained from stories than from business books." He suggested Kavalier and Clay, Atlas Shrugged, The Prince, and anything by Shakespeare.

At the end of his post, he asked for more suggestions. The post generated 191 comments and prompted the creation of a wiki.

I pulled all the books from the wiki over into this post and linked to the books. The [FW] tag denotes that it was endorsed by Mr. Wilson himself directly or in the comments of the original post.

• Atlas Shrugged [FW]
• The Prince [FW]
• All of Shakespeare's Histories & Tragedies [FW]
• Founders at Work
• Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Catch-22 [FW]
• The Gold Coast
• State of Fear
• Confessions of a Street Addict
• Selling the Wheel
• Plato's Republic
• The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
• Moby Dick [FW]
• The Art of War [FW]
• Exodus
• Taking on the World
• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• Garp [FW]
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull [FW]
• Rossi: MotoGenius
• The Puritan Gift
• The Fountainhead [FW]
• Pillars of the Earth
• The White Tiger
• The Monk and the Riddle
• Outrageous Optimism: Wisdom for the Entrepreneurial Journey
• The E-Myth Revisited
• Setting The Table [FW]
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Siddartha [FW]
• Confederacy of Dunces
• Dark Star Safari
• Project X - Nissin Cup Noodle
• The Red Horse
• St. Augustine's Confessions
• Mastery
• The Four Agreements (Miguel Ruiz)
• Tao Te Ching (Lau Tzu)
• The Sharper your knife, the less you cry (Kathleen Flinn)
• What Would Google Do? (Jeff Jarvis)
• Burn Rate (Michael Wolff)
• Startup (Jerry Kaplan)
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell)
• The Alchemist (Coelho)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
• The Wealth of Nations (Smith)
• Absalom, Absalom (Faulkner)
• The 33 Strategies of War
• The 48 Laws of Power
• Hide a dagger behind a smile
• Cold Calling For Chickens
• Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity (Flores)
• The Art Of Profitability
• The Innovator's Dilemma
• Crossing The Chasm
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20
• The Compassionate Samurai
• The Art of Learning
• The Selfish Gene
• Capital (Karl Marx)
• Mein Kampf
• The Singularity is Near
• How to Win Friends & Influence People
• Hope is not a Strategy
• The Four steps to the Epiphany
• The Principles of Product Development Flow - Second Generation Lean Product Development
• One Hen
• Blueprint To A Billion

• Moneyball
• The Places In Between
• Mavericks at work
• Blink
• The Tipping Point
• Outliers
• Freakonomics
• Behind Closed Doors (Secrets of great management)

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Best Business Books via U.S. News and World Report
Posted May 18, 2007 9:06 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog

U.S. News and World Report has a huge special report on the Best Business Books. Their opening says:

Hundreds of business books are published each year. Chances are at least one has the answers you're looking for. But how to find it? U.S. News spoke with 14 leaders from all walks of business life—from academics to entrepreneurs to corporate execs—about the five books they consider indispensable reading for managers.

When magazines do these lists we always create a summary so people can see the picks in one quick view. The commentary that each leader gives is always interesting, so make sure you click through on the author's name if you see something that interests you.

Good To Great made four appearances on the list and Collins is one of leaders providing reading recommendations. Porter's Competitive Strategy appears twice. Otherwise, the picks are unique. I personally like Jeff Pfeffer's picks and reasons the best.

Best Business Books

Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of Wired, author of The Long Tail)

• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2001)
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger (2000)

• Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World by Kevin Kelly (1995)

• Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology by George Gilder (1989)

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

Jack Brennan (CEO of Vanguard)

• Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company by Andrew S. Grove (1996)

• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins (2001)

• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael Porter (1980)

• Economics by Paul Samuelson (1948)

• Leadership Is an Art by Max DePree (1989)

Robert Bruner (Dean of Darden School of Business, University of Virginia)

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957)

• On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt (2005)

• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins (2001)

• Leading Change by John Kotter (1996)

• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker (1967)

Jim Buckmaster (CEO of craigslist)

• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)

• The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (2005)

• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (1988)

• The Discourses by Epictetus (second century B.C.)

• The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric Raymond (1999)

Jim Collins (author of Good to Great)

• In Love and War: The Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years by Jim and Sybil Stockdale (1984, out of print, ISBN 0870213083)

• The Second World War (six volumes) by Winston Churchill (1948–1953)

• Personal History by Katharine Graham (1997)

• Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers (1962)

• The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History by Stephen J. Gould (1980)

Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks)

• The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie (1889)

• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)

• The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton Christensen (1997)

• The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need by Andrew Tobias (1978)

• Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!) by Stephan Schiffman (1987)

Thomas Donaldson (professor at Wharton School of Business)

• The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (fifth century B.C.)

• Concept of the Corporation by Peter Drucker (1946)

• Modern Corporation and Private Property by Adolf Berle and Gardinar Means (1932)

• Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter (1942)

• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)

Carly Fiorina (former CEO of Hewlett-Packard)

• Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan (2002)

• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman (2005)

• Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise by Alfred Chandler (1962)

• Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age by Tom Peters (2003)

Jackie Fouse (CFO of Alcon)

• Blindness by José Saramago (1995)

• The Quest for Value by G. Bennett Stewart III (1991)

• Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald (2005)

• The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas Friedman (1999)

• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott (1994)

Robert Joss (dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business)

• The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (1981)

• The Practice of Management by Peter Drucker (1954)

• My Years With General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (1963)

• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jerry Porras and Jim Collins (1994)

• Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society by John Gardner (1964)

Jeffery Pfeffer (professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business)

• Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad (1994)

• The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor (1960)

• Influence: How and Why People Agree to Things by Robert Cialdini (1984)

• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (1946)

• Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets by Robert Kuttner (1997)

John W. Rogers Jr. (chairman and CEO of Ariel Capital Management)

• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro (1974)

• Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 by Taylor Branch (1988)

• Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein (1995)

• Succeeding Against the Odds by John H. Johnson with Lerone Bennett Jr. (1989, out of print, ISBN 1567430023)

• The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) by Robert A. Caro (1982)

Hector Ruiz (chairman and CEO of AMD)

• A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard (1899)

• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins (2001)

• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by C. K. Prahalad (2005)

• Dilbert by Scott Adams (ongoing)

Deborah Wright (CEO of Carver Bancorp)

• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins (2001)

• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael Porter (1980)

• I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother by Allison Pearson (2002)

• Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman (1953)

Note: I left a couple books off because the leaders were self-promoting themselves or others associated with them.

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