Author’s Note: This post was last updated June 20, 2023
I’m sitting here on a lounge chair looking out over beautiful Great Sacandaga Lake in Upstate New York. I love vacations like this – a few adventures on a boat with an equal balance (if not more) of relaxation. Much of my relaxation time is spent reading, a leisure activity I wish I had more time for.
“Braving the Wilderness” by Brene Brown was one of my 2018 vacation reads.I used to read a ton of books each year, but that was a product of using public transportation to get to work. While I’m happy that’s not the case anymore, my reading is usually limited to a few pages in bed before my eyes start to shut.
Over the last two years, I’ve read or re-read 50 different books — all physical hard copies, not digital versions. Many of these books — 22 to be exact — now make an appearance on my NYU graduate class’ syllabus as recommended reading. Outside of class, I’m also often asked for reading recommendations, which leads me to this post.
To put these three dozen books in ranked order would be extremely difficult. That’s why I’m simply listing them in the order of which they were read, and then marking those that I would recommend and those that have a place on my syllabus.
I’d also like for you to contribute. In the comments below, let me know, if you (hypothetically) taught a graduate-level class, what are the books that you would have on your syllabus?
Note: I’ve included Amazon affiliate links to all the books within this post.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
Recommend
Choose Yourself – James Altucher
Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built – Duncan Clark
Recommend + Syllabus
An American Original: Walt Disney – Bob Thomas
Recommend
When to Rob a Bank – Stephen Dubnar & Steven Levitt
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – Malcolm Gladwell
Growth Hacker Marketing – Ryan Holiday
The Conversion Code – Chris Smith
Recommend + Syllabus
The Cheat Code – Brian Wong
Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul – Howard Schultz
Recommend
The Secret – Rhonda Byrne
Together is Better: A Little Book of Inspiration – Simon Sinek
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown
Recommend
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
Recommend + Syllabus
The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz
Recommend
Spaceman – Mike Massimino
Recommend
Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh
Recommend + Syllabus
My Side of the Mountain – Jean Craighead George
The Upstarts – Brad Stone
Recommend
The First 90 Days – Michael D. Watkins
Recommend + Syllabus
Radical Candor – Kim Scott
The Wright Brothers – David McCullough
Recommend
The Anger Trap – Les Carter
Sam Walton: Made in America – Sam Walton
Recommend + Syllabus
The Last Good Heist – Tim White, Wayne Worcester & Randall Richard
Hillbilly Elegy – J.D. Vance
Recommend
Manuscript Found in Accra – Paulo Coelho
The 4-Hour Body – Tim Ferris
Tools of Titans – Tim Ferris
Crushing It! – Gary Vaynerchuck
The Creative Curve – Allan Gannett
Recommend
The Obstacle is the Way – Ryan Holiday
Recommend + Syllabus
Tuesdays with Morrie – Mitch Albom
Recommend
Your Money or Your Life – Vicki Robin
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – Neil deGrasse Tyson
Braving the Wilderness – Brene Brown
Recommend
Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence – Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb
Recommend
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini
Recommend + Syllabus
The Options Playbook – Brian Overby
Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
The Year Without Pants – Scott Berkun
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari
Recommend
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt – Michael Lewis
Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
Recommend
The Woman in the Window – A.J. Finn
Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn
Educated: A Memoir – Tara Westover
Dark Places – Gillian Flynn
Recommend
Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon – Robert Kursen
Recommend
The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead
Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike – Phil Knight
Recommend + Syllabus
Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
Recommend
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever – Michael Bungay Stanier
Recommend + Syllabus
Something in the Water – Catherine Steadman
Recommend
Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice & Fire – George R.R. Martin
All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
Nine Perfect Strangers – Liane Moriarty
Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell – Eric Schmidt
Recommend + Syllabus
Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style – Benjamin Dreyer
For the Good of the Game – Bud Selig
Recommend
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America – Erik Larson
Recommend
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers – Ben Horowitz
Recommend
The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You Hardcover – Julie Zhuo
Lying Next to Me – Gregg Olsen
Recommend
The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company – Bob Iger
Recommend + Syllabus
The Chemist – Stephanie Meyer
The Infinite Game – Simon Sinek
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future – Ashlee Vance
Master Your Next Move – Michael Watkins
The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty – Ethan Sherwood Strauss
The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini – Joe Posnanski
Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone – Satya Nadella
That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea – Marc Randolph
Recommend + Syllabus
The Giver – Lois Lowry
The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel
Recommend
Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession – Dave Jamieson
Recommend
The Body: A Guide for Occupants – Bill Bryson
The Product Book: How to Become a Great Product Manager – Product School
The Cap: How Larry Fleisher and David Stern Built the Modern NBA – Joshua Mendelsohn
The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency – Chris Whipple
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones – James Clear
Recommend
Turtles All the Way Down – John Green
Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire – Brad Stone
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World – Tom Wright & Bradley Hope
Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty – Jeff Pearlman
My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising – Claude Hopkins
The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies – Ben Fritz
You Gotta Have Balls – Brandon Steiner
Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports – Yaron Weitzman
The Millionaire Next Door – Thomas Stanley
The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman
Confidence Man – Maggie Haberman
Recommend
The Thursday Murder Club: The Man Who Died Twice – Richard Osman
The Midnight Library: A Novel – Matt Haig
Recommend
In Progress:
A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
Demon Copperhead: A Novel – Barbara Kingsolver
The Psychology of Selling & Advertising – Edward K. Strong
Recommend + Syllabus
Other Recommended Books Listed on My NYU Syllabus: These are books I read prior to starting this list but highly recommend
Art of War – Sun Tzu
Business Model Generation – Alexander Osterwalder & Yves PigneurRecommend + Syllabus
Freakanomics – Stephen Dubner & Steven Levitt
Hatching Twitter – Nick Bilton
Hooked – Nir Eyal
How to Win Friends & Influence People – Dale Carnegie
Leaders Eat Last – Simon Sinek
Man Searching for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
Start with Why – Simon Sinek
The 10x Rule – Grant Cardone
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon – Brad Stone
The Lean Startup – Eric Ries
The One Thing – Gary Keller
The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg