Peter F. Drucker · ★★★★☆ · 288 pages · 1985

Reading Drucker is like reading the source that every other business author seems to go to. He has basically distilled Innovation and Entrepreneurship to a management science. The effective strategies to use and the different types of innovations that are possible. Not all of them have to be high tech and not all of them have to be based on new knowledge. They can be boring like coming up a mechanism for a farmer to pay for a tractor in installments also known as an installment plan. In the book Drucker uses multiple examples of innovation in both industry as well as governmental/nonprofits and recommends a practice which is basically akin to the Lean Startup/Toyota Method. Though it was first published in 1984 the book is great and should be read by anyone who is going to be an entrepreneur. I highly like his view that an entrepreneur is not a risk taker per se but who has managed the risk that they are going to be embarking upon.

Malcolm X · ★★★★☆ · 466 pages · 1965

Malcolm X can essentially be described as a constantly evolving man. He has hard ideas but time and again he seems to have changed them. He grew up in a segregated town his father being killed, then he went to Boston and Harlem and became a hustler, then to jail where he relearned to read and write, then became a Minister in the Nation of Islam and then after the break with the Nation went to a more peaceful Islam as practiced in the Middle East.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · ★★★★☆ · 168 pages · 2010

This book of aphorisms are a critique of modernity and economists. Don't know how to really explain it other than his work of Antifragile in aphorism form.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · ★★★★★ · 426 pages · 2012

Antifragile is a weird book to say the least because it seems to be a reverse of what is taught. Taleb shows that we as humans have created very fragile systems that don’t have fail safes built in such the whenever a chaotic Black Swan event occurs it completely destroys the system. Most of the book are example of the fragile and the antifragile equivalent.

Ed Catmull · ★★★★☆ · 368 pages · 2014

Ed Catmull describes how he and his team keep Pixar creative. It is in Pixar style very story based so it does at times drag on instead of getting to the point. It is dialogue heavy so it does take 2x the time it would talk to read a regular book on this topic but I think that's the point.

Jim Collins · 368 pages · 1994

Seth Godin · ★★★★☆ · 244 pages · 2010

Linchpin is Seth Godin's call to action of being an artist (i.e bringing humanity to what you do) in a world of mechanization. His thesis seems to be that we are in a world where mechanization or being a cog seems to be what the flow of the world is asking. We are individual pieces that are replaceable, we do as we are told, we follow the script given to us, and we don't deviate from the norm.

Oscar Wilde · ★★★★★ · 272 pages · 1890

Barbara Oakley · ★★★☆☆ · 336 pages · 2014

A Mind for Numbers is not just about math and science but about learning in general. It was a good read which I wish I had in college as I struggled to really comprehend Physics and Math equations. I really liked the first part about chunking ideas, diffused and focused mind, and the notion of transfer. But the latter part got a bit more wishy washy in terms of psychology and was a bit less interesting as it seemed to be focused more for college students.

Nir Eyal · ★★★★★ · 256 pages · 2013

I feel like this book took me into a mind trip in terms of understanding how companies sell us stuff by getting us addicted to certain actions triggers in our hunter gatherer brains. Eyal describes there are 3 kind of validations that we have: to the tribe, to the hunt and to the selves. The first is social validation for example things like "Likes" on Facebook, the second is our want to hunt for bargains (the word hunt literally takes on a new meaning there...) and our want to validate ourselves.

Sheryl Sandberg · ★★★★☆ · 240 pages · 2013

The content of the book is valid for any woman who is working in a professional setting. As a male it has given me thoughts on how to structure my interactions at the workplace. I have to acknowledge that many of the the unconscious biases Sandberg says men do are more apparent to me now that I have read the book. This includes my own. It has also given me a wider lenses to look at professionalism and women who lead family but want to work.

Austin Kleon · ★★★★☆ · 160 pages · 2012

Well read this in like 30 minutes but it has good advice in a more succinct format than War of Art. Just another way to think about producing creative endeavors if anyone needs a boost.

Ben Horowitz · ★★★★★ · 304 pages · 2014

This is the books for any CEO, executive or employee of a VC funded startup which is around 100 people or more. Horowitz describes most everything that can go wrong at a company that size and how to deal with the situations. These include hiring executives and potential pitfalls with their backgrounds, how to deal with promotions and training of employees, and all the role of a wartime CEO. A wartime CEO being one who has to deal with a sea of uncertainty in an environment where the company is not thriving. This is the main aspect of the book that I enjoyed since it seems that Opsware was a company that was constantly in wartime. Horowitz covers many of the bad things that I had experienced at companies that I have worked for so it is great to see insight on how to deal with some of those issues.

Peter F. Drucker · ★★★★☆ · 208 pages · 1966

The Effective Executive is the book I wish I had when I first got a job. A lot of knowledge work is self structured and not handed top down per se. But nobody teaches you how to structure your work or what to work on. The first part of this books gives a definite structure on how to achieve this though the latter half somewhat dragged a bit.

Jack Weatherford · ★★★★★ · 312 pages · 2004

Achievements of Genghis Khan and his kin.

William Zinsser · ★★★★☆ · 321 pages · 1976

Robert Coram · ★★★★☆ · 485 pages · 2002

Boyd was someone who was trying to shake up institutions that was tried to tradition and continuing existing modes of thinking: the armed forces. His theories are basically akin to the lean movement where a bunch of experiments are done quickly to take an enemy by surprise. In his system of OODA look the goal is to take the least-expected action instead of the most-effective action. To win before the battle ever starts by overwhelming the enemy by surprise.

Kazuo Ishiguro · ★★★★★ · 276 pages · 1989

A book about butler transitioning from his role before world war 2 to his role after world war 2. It covers the nature of work, taking pride and ensuring perfection in our work, how being too focused on work may lead to us being distant from our coworkers and family. That at the remains of the day it is not only that we serve but that we may not forget our other obligations.

Frederick Douglass · ★★★★★ · 72 pages · 1845

Fredrick Douglass’s account of his life as a slave is inspiring. But there were two underlying themes that I seem to gather from the book.

Peter Thiel · ★★★★★ · 223 pages · 2014

One of the best books I've read recently. Thiel covers the nature of startups but he covers it in the context of contemporary society. He states that companies no longer plan for the future and are beholden to very short term returns. Instead he recommends planning a company for the long haul and figuring out how to get there by starting with the smallest piece of a market which can be monopolized as profits and value are created from monopolistic enterprises. If you are beholden to competition then you can't plan for the long term because you are constantly fighting battles in the short term. It prevents long term thinking.