The top books I'm told everyone should read!

When I interview a prospective candidate for a role, one of my closing questions is What Three Books Would you Recommend to the World? Here is that collated list from some of our incredible digital & business leadership network of CEO's, CMO's, CTO's, CDO's, CCO's & beyond.

When I get to know someone, I often ask for 3 books they'd recommend to the world. It's an open question and often fascinating, whilst also being great for personal inspiration.

Here are the books I've been recommended over the last 6 months (Jan - Jun 2024). 

Happy reading!

Business book recommendations:

• The Leaders Guide by Eric Ries
• The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
• Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
• The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato
• Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell
• Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? by Rob Goffee
• Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove
• The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
• HBR at 100 - The most influential and innovative articles from Harvard business review's First Century by
• Multipliers by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown
• The Interaction Field by Erich Joachimsthaler

 

Autobiography recommendations:

• Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
• Trillion Dollar Coach by Bill Campbel
• The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger
• Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins
• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter by Vladimir Bukovsky

 

Biography recommendations:

• Country of my skull by Antjie Krog
• The Complete Works by Dieter Rams
• The Everything Store by Brad Stone
• Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
• Racing Through The Dark by David Millar
• Principles by Ray Dalio
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

 

Non fiction recommendations:

• The Return of a King by William Dalrymple
• Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
• The origins of the second world war by AJP Taylor
• Obliquity by John Kay
• The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian
• Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• Go Like Hell by AJ Baime & Carroll Shelby
• The Silk Roads by Francopan
• Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
• Art of War by Sun Tzu
• Le Rire (The Laugh) by Henri Bergson
• The Histories by Herodotus
• The Death of Consensus: 100 years of British Political Nightmares by Phil Tinline

 

Self improvement recommendations:

• The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
• Raising girls by Steve Biddulph
• Raising boys by Steve Biddulph
• The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar
• Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense by Rory Sutherland
• The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters
• The Second Mountain by David Brooks
• The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
• Factfulness by Hans Rosling
• The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer
• What got you here won't get you there by Marshal Goldsmith
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• 48 laws of power by Robert Greene
• The Matter with Things by Iain McGilchrist
• Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life by Samuel Smiles
• Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra
• What should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson
• Getting There by Gillian Zoe Segal
• Made to stick by Chip and Dan Heath
• The Power of Bad by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister
• Breath by James Nestor
• Influence by Robert Cialdini
• How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
• The 4 Disciples of Execution by Chris McChesney
• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
• Me, Myself and Us by Brian R Little
• Braving the Wilderness by Brenee Brown
• Quit by Annie Duke
• Grit by Angela Duckworth
• The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• No Bad Kids by Janet Lansbury
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Daily Stoic :366 Meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

 

Fiction recommendations:

• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh
• Lincoln by Gore Vidal
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Great Gasby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Cruel Sea by Nicolas Monsarrat
• Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
• Circe and Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
• The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
• The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
• David Coperfield by Charles Dickens
• La vie Devant Soi by Romain Gary
• The Stranger by Albert Camus
• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
• The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
• Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
• Charlie & The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• L'aveuglement (Blindness) by Jose Saramago
• Le Cafe Suspendu by Amanda Stehrs
• The Women by Kristin Hannah
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• Le Petit Prince by Antoine de St-Exupery
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• e by Matt Beaumont
• The Burnout by Sophie Kinsella
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• The best time we ever had by Claudia Lombardo

 

If you have an executive leadership search need and want to understand what sets Princedale apart, happy to talk.

Ru Jupp MD & Founder Princedale

Get in touch