Reading
It was challenging to reduce my book shelf down to the pages that have had significant influence on my life and work, but I’ve tried. The time and location for when and where I’ve read the books below is permanently etched in my brain. Books are interpretive tools, and I use them as such.
To see my full reading list, you can visit my Shelfari. However, the list below includes the books, categorized by genre, that I think about most often and reference most frequently.
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Philosophy
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.“
I am far from being a religious person, but this book is a bible for living regardless of what you believe in. It’s an account of self-actualization, that hits home for me on personal and cultural levels. This book has helped me find actual meaning in the progress I make professionally and personally.
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli
“Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.”
Machiavelli is an acquired taste. It was when I lived in Florence and studied Italian culture and European history that his brutal philosophy sunk in. He’s considerably ruthless with his ideology, but powerful when applied correctly. I traveled to his Villa in the valleys of Florence with this book in hand.
The 48 Laws of Power
Robert Greene
“The most important of these skills, and power’s crucial foundation, is the ability to master your emotions. An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings. Emotions cloud reason, and if you cannot see the situation clearly, you cannot prepare for and respond to it with any degree of control.”
I devoured this book with tabs, margin notes and reminders for further reading. The useful content is abundance, but nearly impossible to take it all in during one read. The book breaks down stories of power strategy throughout history, and pulls out explicit, applicable examples. This is a book about human nature and control. It’s usability is endless.
Rules for Radicals
Saul Alinsky
“Great dangers always accompany great opportunities. The possibility of destruction is always implicit in the act of creation. Thus the greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.”
Although this book is traditionally referred to as a community organizer’s handbook, I think it’s applicability is far spread. In the book, Alinsky covers detailed strategies for leading, persuading and organizing masses of people, which is as much of a leadership philosophy as it is an important life skill.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X
“When you recognize who your enemy is, he can no longer brainwash you, he can no longer pull wool over your eyes so that you never stop to see that you are living in pure hell on this earth, while he lives in pure heaven right on this same earth.”
Malcolm X rose from the bottom to help the have-nots take the power back that they felt was deserved. This book is about learning how to hustle, enabling a “by any means necessary” attitude, and more importantly, how to accomplish your goals with little resources besides your own intellectual capital.
Notable mentions: The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, The War of Art
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Entrepreneurship
The 4-Hour Work Week
Timothy Ferriss
“To live is to learn. I see no other option. This is why I’ve felt compelled to quit or be fired from jobs within the first six months or so. The learning curve flattens out and I get bored.”
Tim Ferriss could be the greatest self-promoter on the planet. Although the title can be deceiving, this book is about turning your passionate hobby into a career. I’ve seen many people waste away at jobs they hate because they feel it’s their only choice. Reading this made me realize it’s not.
“Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.”
When the challenge hits and the dip emerges, success is defined by hustle, determination and even quitting if necessary. Godin has a way of breaking down the process of struggle to where it makes perfect sense. If you aren’t going to be the best at what you do, then quit. It’s as simple as that.
“Wall Street makes its best producers into managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers and they go after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that producing gave them. They usually aren’t well suited to be managers. Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get muscled out because of the politics. The guys left behind are the most ruthless of the bunch. That’s why there are cycles on Wall Street–because the ruthless people are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure.”
A slice of my professional background was on Wall Street. This book is about finding your enjoyable craft and running with it, whether on Wall Street or elsewhere. Michael Lewis discusses how money can cloud the vision of what we’re actually after, which is important for any of us to ponder at times.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
“If, as a result of reading this book, you get only one thing—an increased tendency to think always in terms of the other person’s point of view, and see things from the person’s angle as well as your own.”
The title of this book is actually misleading. Reading Carnegie’s text won’t help you win friends or influence people. There aren’t real directions to accomplishing those tasks. This book will, however, add relative perspective and necessary empathy to every day life and business occurrences.
Founders at Work
Jessica Livingston
“I’m suddenly reminded that when I asked people if they were playing Russian roulette with a gun with a billion barrels, how much would they have to be paid to play one round? A lot of people were almost offended by the question and they’d say, “I wouldn’t do it at any price.” But, of course, we do that everyday. They drive to work in cars to earn money and they are taking risk all the time, but they don’t like to acknowledge that they are taking risks. They want to pretend everything is risk-free.”
Applicable, scalable startup advice is rare to come by. However, this book is the closest thing you’ll find to it. It’s a collection of interviews with successful entrepreneurs, each with their own lesson that can be applied to any business. It would be first on my list for those interested in starting their own business.
Notable mentions: Buffett, Wikinomics, The Black Swan
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Literature
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s the matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.“
Gatsby was a man who strove for goals and constant improvement. The green light that he sought after everyday was his pure American Dream. This book helped me characterize my goals and develop the attitude I must hold to get there.
“Disaster is a natural part of my evolution,” Tyler whispered, “ toward tragedy and dissolution”…”I’m breaking m attachment to physical power and possessions,” Tyler whispered, “because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit”…The liberator who destroys my property,” Tyler said “is fighting to save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.“
Our society is saturated by consumerism and enthralled with advertising. Fight Club unleashed my anti-consumer, but also brought out my thoughts on self-improvement. This book preaches individuality in a world of conformity. Tyler Durden is a beautiful metaphor that we all have inside ourselves, but needs to be put to work. Personal freedom is only what you make it.
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
“I had all the characteristics of a human being–flesh, blood, skin, hair–but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning.”
American Psycho is a time piece of emotion and feeling. Patrick Bateman is an idea; a concept at best. Although American Psycho is one of the most disturbing books I’ve read in terms of violence and graphic description, it’s beautifully written. I read this book during my first summer living in New York, and it captured the personality of the city.
What Makes Sammy Run?
Budd Schulberg
“I had been waiting for justice to rise up and smite him in all its vengeance, secretly hoping to be around when Sammy got what was coming to him; only I had expected something conclusive and fatal and now I realized that what was coming to him was not a sudden pay-off but a process, a disease he had caught in the epidemic that swept over his birthplace like a plague; a cancer slowly eating him away, the symptoms developing and intensifying: success, loneliness, fear.”
A lively Hollywood tale that accounts a method to making your way to the top, which is to forcefully push everyone else out of the way. The true lesson in this book is that deceitful business maneuverings will result in a failed reign, mostly because it’s so easy to fall once you get to where you’re going.
The Rum Diary
Hunter S. Thompson
“Like most of the others, I was a seeker; a mover; a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles–a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other–that kept me going.”
This is my favorite coming of age tale. It documents Thompson’s drunk, drug-induced travels as a young, self-aware journalist. It describes vividly scenes that anyone growing up can relate to in finding themselves and their voice.
Notable mentions: On The Road, Old School, The Bonfire of the Vanities
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Psychology
The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell
“We are all, at heard, gradualists, our expectations set by the steady passage of time. But the world of the Tipping Point is a place where the unexpected become expected, where radical change is more than possibility. It is—contrary to all our expectations—a certainty.”
The Gladwell critique is that he simplifies complex systems into acceptable answers. Although I agree he has a way of convincing you there is only one answer to circumstantial equations, his analysis holds value. The Tipping Point equipped me with the mindset to break down, question and understand why things change. This is more than a book about marketing–it’s a guide on creating influence.
“Surveys of many cultures around the world consistently show that, in looking for a long-term partner, women prefer men who have, or have the potential of, wealth, status, stability and durability.”
The themes of this book are rooted to evolutionary psychology, but there is a crossover to philosophy and areas of biology as well. Simply put, this book will change the ways you look at any functional or dysfunctional relationship. It also provides explanation to our otherwise odd behavior towards the opposite sex.
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
“The genes are master programmers, and they are programming for their lives. They are judged according to the success of their programs in copying with all the hazards that life throws at their survivor machines.”
According to Dawkins, much of the selfish behavior we are all guilty for is attributed to our genes survival motive. Our bodies are simply a way for the genes to travel. This book will provide scientific, but understandable, explanations to our every day decision making.
“It is quite possible for people who have never met us and who have spent only twenty minutes thinking about us to come to a better understanding of who we are than people who have known us for years.”
My decision making tactics have been realigned since reading Blink. It’s not that I make my decisions faster, or in the blink of an eye, but I do give a heavier consideration to my first impression of something. Often, it’s more accurate that I would have imagined.
“Not only can logos have meaning, and not only can that meaning be manufactured—it can be manufactured by consumers.”
The consumer items we surround ourselves with have essentially become part of who we are, even if it’s unrealized. This book completely changed my mindset regarding advertising and many aspects of new media. But, it’s less about materialism, and more about self-definition. We really are what we buy.
Notable mentions: Outliers, The Game, The Art of Seduction
