Top Picks

Though a lot of leaders talk about this stuff, in Everybody Matters you'll see what happens when you actually do it.

I'm a huge fan of his & learn A LOT from him. Marquet presents his ideas in a superbly practical way — perfect for implementing.

One of my favorite non-fiction books of all time.

I read your book Finite and Infinite Games many many years ago and it so profoundly influenced my view and changed my view of the world.

The book I say every human being should read.

I would say for sure The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. First time I read it I cried. Looks like a children's book, but it's a book about life.

One of my favorite books of all time.

I love so many books. ...like Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

The book that saved me was 'Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah' by Richard Bach.

The Prophet by Kalhil Gibran just might be my favorite book. ... During the Winters of my life it has consoled me. Amid the Summers of my journey it has inspired me.

He was a good servant of the Lord and proponent of Sovereign Grace in a time when such doctrines were rarely heard. I personally would recommend The Sovereignty of God.

R. C. Sproul's teaching on the holiness of God brought me face-to-face with the awful splendor of God's majestic holiness in a new and fresh way.

In an age when so many preachers seem so unsure of what preaching is, in Martyn Lloyd-Jones we find a minister that leaves no doubt.

I have had this book for a long time and have read off and on from these prayers... There is no better place to begin than this collection of prayers.

I didn't know it was possible to have that many thoughts about God. It is inexhaustible.

This is one of the most important books I’ve ever read.

One of the most important books I've ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.

A grandmother from New Jersey uses genetics, ethnography, and child psychology to refute the dogma that parents shape their children's personalities. A turning point in the history of psychology.

This 21st-century statement of the ideals of the Enlightenment offers fresh insight on a vast number of topics, including the workings of human cognition, the ways of science, and the drivers of progress. A major inspiration for 'Enlightenment Now.'

Perhaps the best display of expository scientific prose of the twentieth century. It gave me the idea to try my hand at the genre in 'The Language Instinct,' and had a strong influence on my own writing.

I refer to it all the time hoping to get people to read it.

If you only read one book on culture, read this one.

I would go so far as to say this is the most important book written in a 100 years on justification.

C.S. Lewis was very important to my development in college.

When people ask me how often I have read The Lord of the Rings, the answer is, I actually never stop. I'm always in it.

And then the other was a play called the Cost of Living, which is a beautiful play.

I bought a Joan Didion book... She's so beautiful. It's a tiny little book. She had a recent anthology about the American West.

I also read Homer's The Odyssey while I was here, because I felt like going on some kind of adventure. I loved it... So that was a massive joy, reading that.

Donna Tartt definitely has my heart... I believe it to be her best work. It's so good. And I would die to see that as a movie.

I'm also a huge Sartre fan... It seems to be about a dude who thinks way too much about everything. So it's incredibly relatable.

It's about the transformative power of a relationship and a friendship across the generations to heal a heart... the descriptions of the nature in the summertime in England are just fantastic.

You will love this book because it takes place in the 50s in England... I highly recommend it.

A really great compilation of different writings... I think is a great gift too. I recommend it and I'm really enjoying it myself.

I love historical fiction... and it's based on the story of Estée Lauder. And how she grew up in New York, how she started her business making cosmetics in a sink... It's a beautiful book, I highly recommend it.

If you want a quick read and a fabulous read... I read it in one day. The stakes are high for all of these people that are involved.

Pick up the f***ing book, don't be a peasant. This is how I know how to make money... I did millions of dollars in sales.

If you haven't read this, literally a G book that has revolutionized companies and has revolutionized individuals at some of the highest levels in society.

I would recommend on a daily basis that people read... a book by an ancient samurai known as Miyamoto Musashi.

Ray Dalio is talking about what's happening around the world and how to prepare for the demise of America.

This book resonates a lot with me... it gives you an understanding as to where you are in business and where you are in your career.

Obviously Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time.

I'm a huge fan of Brandon Sanderson's books... The Stormlight Archive is incredible.

And Lady of the Lake, because all its events are unbelievable. There is real magic in it.

My favorite books? The Last Wish, because it hooked me, broke my heart, put it together, and then broke it again.

These Days is an intimate celebration of sisterhood and a moving tribute to childhoods cut short by war.

A luminous literary debut following two dreamers, one intercultural family, and the diasporic pursuit of home.

A gripping literary puzzle that unwinds the private lives of ten women as they confront tragedy in a small Massachusetts town.

Incredible because it's a history lesson about the Northern Migration but also a deeply moving, funny, epic story of America.

A glorious, pondering, heartbreaking, extremely funny, very special book.

It remains one of my top five recommended novels of all time... Historical fiction is a fantastic way to pass on the lessons of history, and The Winds of War is among the very best.

My most gifted book after Once an Eagle... Its premise is one that should frighten all Americans regardless of party affiliation.

It cemented me on my path into the SEAL Teams and also confirmed that I would one day do exactly what I'm doing now.

My favorite book as an adult... I must have read it 15 times. I read it every time I write a new book. I read it before I start the first draft... It gets me in that zone.

This is probably my most recommended book; it's also my most gifted book... It's a case study in leadership. I used to give this to my junior officers... The virtues extolled in this brilliant work are truly inspirational and its lessons will stay with the reader throughout their lives.

In understanding the theology unique to the New Testament no one has influenced me more than George Ladd.

The other works I have read in the order of their impact are Religious Affections...

This book has caused many things to fall into place for me.

Next to [Freedom of the Will] in shaping my thought would be his Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World.

The most influential book was Freedom of the Will which, so far as I know, has not been shown wrong.

An amazing book on copywriting and really how to understand human behavior and human drive.

One of the most surprising books on psychology, which is exactly why I love it.

I got to say The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson... It just blew my mind in social psychology.

One of my favorite books on understanding why we behave the way we do. Aronson, the co-author, guest-lectured at Stanford and his class was one of the most thought-provoking ones I ever took.

The grandfather of all persuasion books. Cialdini put his years as the world's foremost persuasion expert into this book. Impressively, this book is equally interesting to the ordinary reader as it is to persuasion experts.

Essential reading for the deep worker.

One of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

I recommend Edmund Morris’s biography of Theodore Roosevelt.

The concepts in this book are critical.

It shows how ordinary people can be convinced to do terrible things.

One of the most powerful books ever written.

This book is a manual for life.

The benchmark for leadership.

To read The Picture of Dorian Gray for the first time is overwhelming... it wakes up things inside you that you didn't know were in there fast asleep.

You will not read a more dazzling book this year than David Eagleman’s Sum. If you read it and aren't enchanted I will eat 40 hats.

Probably Right Ho, Jeeves. It is a book that provides solace for times of everything from flu to fractured fibulae.

There's plenty to choose from, but on balance I'd go for The Code of the Woosters. Written in 1938, the book has, as do almost all of them, a wonderful cast of characters running amok in the English countryside.

Best book I've read in a very, very long time! An incredible analysis of the success of all the organizations we see ruling our phones today.

I love, love, love this book... It's almost like a journal that takes you through different exercises whilst also explaining the Gita to you in very simple language.

If you want to dive into the original, do it because you can read it over and over again as life goes on and it will give you something different each time.

For me, it changed my life. I applied it to my life and even today I'm constantly refining my 'why'.

This is a book that I have given to people of all ages... every single person that has received it feels like they've received a gift in so many more ways than just the book.

He says that in any civilized society the government is going to have to intervene to prevent the division of labor from making people as 'stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to become.'

The most illuminating book on the topic... essential reading.

I think it's Orwell's greatest work, much more interesting than 1984 or Animal Farm.

There’s a marvelous literary portrayal of this in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor section... It describes Jesus coming back to earth... and the Grand Inquisitor... sentences him to death.

More perceptive than [Orwell's] 1984 and [Huxley's] Brave New World.

I learned about Sigmund Freud reading in that book by David Bakan about his Kabbalist worship and that is how I learned about what Frankism was.

I'm trying to purchase 'The Assault on Truth' and it appears to be sold out everywhere... Anyone purchased this recently?

That book Hollywood Babylon completely blew my mind.

I've told you to read Chaos a thousand times I'm gonna tell you a thousand more times. ... It's basically required summer reading.

It shows there's a direct cycle between how you were raised and how you raise your kids... It allows us to plot a recurring cycle in American history.

It is a book worth reading because what you'll see is... history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

I found it to be truly extraordinary. Every page is full of so many principles of distinction and insights—and I love how Ray incorporates his history and his life in such an elegant way.

I don't give a damn how rich you are financially or how abundant you are with your family or love. We all experience extreme stress in our life at some point. It's the ultimate equalizer... the ability to find meaning in the most difficult times, I think, is one of the most important skills of life, and there's probably not a greater example than that book.

It's the whole concept of understanding that your thoughts really, truly shape everything in your life that you feel and experience. I have read it more than a dozen times and often give the book as a gift because it's concise, easy to read, and profound.

I love gardening, so The Comfort Of Crows sounds like a must read for me.

Secrets, betrayal and friendships on the edge — Society of Lies is the perfect mix of suspense and drama. Think Big Little Lies, but with even more twists.

A once-famous ballerina faces a final choice—to return to the world of Russian dance that nearly broke her, or to walk away forever—in this incandescent novel of redemption and love.

The book that had the biggest impact on my life was Wild by Cheryl Strayed. It’s the first book that I optioned to turn into a movie that I was producing and starring in... I love the themes of women versus nature.

Magnificent. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever. Gabrielle Hamilton packs more heart, soul, and pure power into one beautifully crafted page than I've accomplished in my entire writing career.

A masterpiece. Don't settle for seeing the film versions. One of the great heroines of all time and a magnificent book filled with great dialogue.

I think The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the absolute benchmark of pitch-perfect dialogue and atmosphere. You can smell the beer on these characters.

The first account of what it's REALLY like in a professional kitchen, and as true today as it was when it was written.

So, I'll bring Graham Greene's The Quiet American if I'm going to Vietnam. It's good to feel romantic about a destination before you arrive.

Dante is the most aggressive and polemical of the major Western writers... He is the only poet since Shakespeare who is adequately compared to him.

The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes... is to augment one's own growing inner self.

Shakespeare is the canon. He sets the standard and the limits of literature.

Her book 'The Face of War' is a great read. I remember her saying something like: politicians and generals are the same in every nation (personality-type wise) regardless of the type of political system.

This book is important because there are still a lot of misconceptions that Hitler improved Germany's economy... This idea is 100% false, and it is thoroughly torn apart in the book.

It's great. Also check out his other fantastic book... which details the attempts to get great intelligences together to try to formulate how to deal with these unbelievably powerful weapons.

Of all the books I read in 2023, two stood out that I would recommend to anyone... the other is From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks. Inside, Arthur does a fantastic job of showing the strengths and weaknesses of aging as a leader.

A must-read for leaders and parents. With our Gen Z workforce constantly expanding, this is an essential tool for you in helping the next generation build a healthier framework.

Of all the books I read in 2023, two stood out that I would recommend to anyone. Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality is one of them. This book is a must-read if you lead in a nonprofit or any service industry.

So many team members at Life.Church say this was the book that changed how they work. A must-read. How do you transform an organization on an 'okay' trajectory to achieve lasting success?

The principles in this book will change your life and leadership for the better. Atomic Habits was a worldwide bestseller in 2021 for good reason.

I put that book down at the end of it and felt profoundly moved. That's I've actually got that one by my bedside.

One of the great writers/critics on totalitarianism in the 20th century... A towering staggering achievement.

There are many, many reasons why Money is the Great English Novel of the 1980s.

P.G. Wodehouse is the author of the most imperishable double act in fictional history.

It formed part of the essential bookshelf of those intellectuals who repudiated their early illusions about the Soviet Union.

It is independent of time and place. It is not just about 20th-century totalitarianism.

We're going to have bit parts in a new movie called 'Geek Love' in the New Year. It's about the freakshow family who breed flipper children.

I think I like Burroughs best, and I'm into Bukowski and Beckett.

I've read Perfume, by Patrick Süskind, about ten times in my life and I can't stop reading it. It's like something that's just stationary in my pocket all the time, it just doesn't leave me.

Stolen Focus is one of the most underrated non-fiction books in the world.

If I had to describe Masters Of Scale in one word, it would be 'extraordinary.' It contains life-changing business advice.

I've been waiting years for someone to write this book... It is even better than I imagined.

The best book I've ever read on change.

My favorite books include Think and Grow Rich... [it teaches] the basics of positive thinking, using your mind to create your reality.

There are 2 versions, one published in 1925 by Vieux and one published in 1927. I suggest you read both versions.

Ask and it is Given and all the Abraham books are written by 'God' (the universal field) without ANY human filtering. Think about that and read those books!

Success is not determined by the size of your intelligence, but by the size of your thinking.

You'll have whiplash until the very end. The Wives will leave the most sure-footed reader uneasy until the last word is read.

I read this book back before E.L. James even wrote it... I loved it SO much.

God-Shaped Hole will change you as a reader, writer and human. It is rare books like this one that remind me why I fell in love with the written word.

One of my all-time favorite books.

I love anything by J.D. Salinger.

I love Jane Eyre.

When I was a kid, I remember reading this book called Watership Down. That was one of the most grueling... stories I've ever read.

I also love One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I think one of the greatest reads I've ever experienced was Crime & Punishment by Dostoyevsky. I know that sounds highbrow, but to be completely honest it was a page turner for me.

Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep is one of my all-time favorite SF books. I'm in a re-read right now, and it is as delightful as I remember it being.

Weir's finest work to date... This is the one book I read last year that I am certain I can recommend to anyone, no matter who, and know they'll love it.

Going Postal is my favorite Pratchett right now. If you read him, don't start with the first book. Start with the books in the middle of his career... His later books are pure genius!

The Shadow Rising is the best book in the series. ... Reading fantasy is what got me into writing fantasy, and that's still what I prefer to read.

This was the book that changed it all for me and made me a fantasy reader. It's interesting, because this is a book that should not have worked for me... But I had a smart teacher who knew that I needed something more.

One of the first best-selling self-help books ever published... #5.

My top recommended books in order... #4.

My top recommended books in order... #3.

My number one recommended book.

I read that book and it fucked me up because the first chapter was like don't expand your brand too much because it can like a certain car brand right try to make so many different models and in that they lose their focal point.

The most powerful book I've read in the last ten years... There's a chapter called the 'Levels of Human Consciousness' and what the whole premise is that basically the power of frequency of your action is informed by the intention.

I read that book... it's about a gang member from Chicago who presented himself in a way he never got no cases... he infiltrated the CIA... used their agenda... against them... one of my underlying strategies.

When asked how he got the idea [to sell the Crenshaw mixtape for $100] he mentioned reading Contagious... One of the first stories is about a restaurant owner in Philly who charged a hundred dollars for a cheesesteak and people came from all over to buy it.

The one artist that I feel could be my brother is Franz Kafka.

The Art Spirit sort of became the art life, and I had this idea that you drink coffee, you smoke cigarettes, and you paint, and that's it... that sort of became my Bible, because that book made the rules for the art life.

This book gives insight as good as any book on the changes that have taken place over time in economics, politics, military customs and more—very insightful.

This book will ground you in the belief that whatever you believe you become. It's based on the idea that we are what we think.

This book will teach you to do just what the title promises: how to read a book for all it is worth so that you come out the best you can be at the end.

Written in parables, this is a classic on thrift, financial planning and personal wealth. Everyone needs to read this book.

This is arguably the best personal development and wealth building book of all time. It belongs on everyone's bookshelf.

Of all the people that have lived outside of the Scriptures, George Müller is my hero of heroes.

One of my favorite books, As A Man Thinketh, is tiny but will remarkably stretch your mind.

I fell in love with this book when I first read it, and I've been reading it for years. I carry a copy in my case all the time.

I've been reading Think and Grow Rich for the past 50+ years. I don't go anywhere without it and I've been reading the same copy since the 60s.

I closed this book feeling that it was the first book in economics that spoke directly to me.

This is a landmark book in social thought, in the same league as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.

Transformed how I share online.

This has kind of changed the way that I approach thinking about money... shifts focus from endless saving to joyful spending.

Essential for ditching hustle culture. Profound.

Completely changed my relationship with money.

Mad, went mad over them... I fell in love with the first one. It's like fantasy fiction romance... 'Romantasy'.

A light hearted and funny read that would make you relaxed and not demand any sort of heavy attention or deep reading.

It's my favorite book in the whole world. I've read that book like four times and I don't mind reading it one more time.

Murakami is very psychedelic, it's very therapeutic. When you read a Murakami book it takes you days to get out of that plot.

So you've got to have a mindset of a general, a warrior, a strategist... That's what you'll learn from this book.

When you read this book, you will look at hypomanic, manic, ADHD, bipolar, in a completely different way. All of us have somebody like that in our family.

I set it aside and then 6 months later read the book. And I said, 'Wait a minute, it's one of the best books I've ever read in my life.' I've recommended it over and over and over again, and I've read it so many different times.

If you want to build products that are important, that users care about, this teaches you different tactics for learning about users, either through user studies or by interviews.

It's a bit dark but it does cover a lot of useful territory on what building an organization is like.

For B2B, I recommend “Crossing the Chasm.”

For B2C, one of my favorite books is “The Lean Startup,” which takes a narrower view but it gives one specific tactic for innovating quickly.

The first is “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel, a very good book that gives an overview of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Fukuyama's ideas are often caricatured, mischaracterized, and misunderstood, but his basic point here still holds.

I love big, sweeping history, and this account of the West's rise to global dominance is one of the best recent examples.

A brilliant mixture of political philosophy and sociology. The book explains why we embrace certain ideologies better than any other I've read.

Most 'idea books' are bloated essays; this one, from a Nobel Prize–winning economist, is worth reading all the way through.

A monumental achievement. Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor, draws on 5,000 years of historical evidence to explain in fascinating detail how violence has declined across human history.

What I loved most was the novel's deep understanding of adolescent depression and anxiety.

Wow this book really radically deepened my appreciation for and understanding of non-human animals.

The friendship between Sula and Nel transformed the way I thought about love and gender.

Stunning.

I am briefly attempting to become a booktokker just to tell you how much I love this book... This book made me feel that feeling more intensely than I've ever felt it before.

The book... stands as one of the foremost examples of compassion.

The world needs this book.

I've never felt so hopeful about what I don't know.

This is a book for these times... If a cheetah can be tamed, so can a woman.

My first quote-unquote psychology book... I remember reading it and thinking, 'I'm not alone!'

A prophetic warning about technology and human nature that feels eerily relevant today.

My favorite novel this year [2017].

Started reading Sohrab Ahmari's new book 'The Unbroken Thread' last night. Couldn't put it down, finished more than half in one sitting. Highly recommended.

There are maybe four or five things that kind of set me back on a path of reversion, and C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity was certainly one of them.

Run out there and get Poetic Diction... it's a great book... a theory of knowledge and a theory of language. I've been evangelical about recommending this book to people.

A powerful, evocative writer with a unique voice... It's a fucking brilliant chapter.

I gulped it down in a day or two, and have been waiting for the third one ever since.

He's bloody good, this Rothfuss guy... The Name of the Wind was an instant classic, an epic fantasy structured as an innkeeper telling his life story...

This is the original Game of Thrones. The Accursed Kings has it all. Iron kings and strangled queens, battles and betrayals, lies and lust, deception, family rivalries... and all of it straight from the pages of history.

I admire Tolkien greatly. His books had enormous influence on me... The battle of good and evil is a great subject for any book and certainly for a fantasy book.

There is a great book called Think and Grow Rich. The title is not Work Hard and Grow Rich.

If you want to know why the towers of American capitalism are crumbling, I recommend reading 'The Creature from Jekyll Island' by G. Edward Griffin.

I would like every one of my subscribers to click on to Amazon.com and buy a new book that has just been published entitled, 'The Dollar Crisis'... The book costs around twenty bucks and is worth ten times that amount.

One of the most moving books I have read in recent years. It investigates a father's suspended state of unexpected loss and grief with a gorgeously wry sense of humor. Captivating, poetic, and surprising.

I remember reading it on a train, and I had to pull my hoodie over my face because I was crying. It's a magnificent book... It stayed with me.

The book seemingly has little or no plot but the sheer towering beauty of its language, atmosphere and insight make it impossible to put down or to forget.

An absolutely stunning achievement and one of the most heartbreaking books I have ever read. Dark, fiercely funny, compassionate, and unashamedly Irish. Its depiction of a young boy's descent into isolation and madness in small town Ireland has never left me.

One of those books that you read as a young man and become intoxicated with, yet it is a book to be savored over the course of a life. It was written with great mischief and humor, but full of empathy for the outsider struggling to imagine a purpose in this world.

This masterwork identifies thirteen principles that every person should adopt if they are serious about achieving success.

I want you to get the book and really read it because I can't even tell you how much it helped me... This book along with my anniversary trip helped changed the whole way I think.

It is the most powerful book outside of the Bible that I have ever read in my life. The book is based on the law of attraction and how that principle once you master it can help you find wealth, happiness, better health, whatever you're looking for.

The first book I tell anybody to read is The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. That's the beginning. You've got to fix this. The difference between successful people and non-successful people is this: it's what happens in between the ears.

The Magic of Thinking Big was huge for me. It just taught me one simple principle: it don't cost no more energy to think big than it does to think small.

Simply excellent. A must read. Why did I wait so many years before I read this?

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how socialism inevitably leads to totalitarianism.

Are you a giver or a taker? In business, we often only give to get. But when you're generous with your money, time and talents, you'll help others succeed while you build character. You can't lose by helping others—you can only increase the winning.

Obstacles are no match for the Go-Getter. He does what it takes (short of theft) to finish a task most would have quit almost immediately. Perseverance is what separates the button-pushers from the go-getters.