Bookcase

Anyone that knows me knows that I love to read. Here’s a selection of my favorite reads from my bookcase!

Career

Executive Intelligence

  • The final word on what traits make for highly successful managers—and a detailed explanation of how to identify potential standout performers.

    Executive Intelligence is about the substance behind great leadership. Inspired by the work of Peter Drucker and Jim Collins, Justin Menkes set out to isolate the qualities that make for the 'right' people. Drawing on his background in psychology and bolstered by interviews with accomplished CEOs, Menkes paints the portrait of the ideal executive.

Career Warfare

  • The youngest CEO of John Hancock Financial Services shares his unique strategy for achieving business success, using funny stories to show readers how to make others take a chance for them, how to cultivate a great reputation, how to define and build character, and much, much more.

Business

Execution

  • Larry Bossidy is one of the world's most acclaimed CEOs, with a track record for delivering results. Ram Charan is a legendary adviser to senior executives and boards of directors, a man with unparalleled insight into why some companies are successful and others are not. Together they've pooled their knowledge and experience into one guide on how to close the gap between results promised and results delivered.


    The discipline of execution means understanding how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a "vision" and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Bossidy and Charan show the importance of being deeply and passionately engaged in an organization and why robust dialogues about people, strategy, and operations result in a business based on intellectual honesty and realism.

    Why? Startups—and the entrepreneurs who run them—are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.


    These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today.

The Goal

  • Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry - even to your bosses - but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days - Jonah - to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. The story of Alex's fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas, which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC), developed by Eli Goldratt.

The Four

  • Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong. 

    For all that’s been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway. 

    Instead of buying the myths these compa­nies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions. How did the Four infiltrate our lives so completely that they’re almost impossible to avoid (or boycott)? Why does the stock market forgive them for sins that would destroy other firms? And as they race to become the world’s first trillion-dollar company, can anyone chal­lenge them?

Executive Warfare

  • From CEO-turned-bestselling-author David D Alessandro comes a humorous commentary on corporate life, as well as field guide of winning strategies based upon his insider s experience. Once managers achieve a level of success, it s common for the ascension up the corporate ladder to feel even more difficult. It seems the higher they climb, the more bosses they have. According to D Alessandro, corporate warriors need to know who the key players are, and how to strategically manage them, while deftly protecting their flanks. This book shows them how to master these maneuvers with D Alessandro s hard-won insights, outspoken ideas, unsparing anecdotes, and surefire tactics. If business is war, this is the key&to victory

Start Ups

The Startup of You

  • In this invaluable book, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Ben Casnocha show how to accelerate your career in today’s competitive world. The key is to manage your career as if it were a startup business: a living, breathing, growing startup of you.

    Why? Startups—and the entrepreneurs who run them—are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.

    These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today.background in psychology and bolstered by interviews with accomplished CEOs, Menkes paints the portrait of the ideal executive.

Zero to One

  • Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything Peter Thiel has learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX. The single most powerful pattern Thiel has noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. Ask not, what would Mark do? Ask: What valuable company is nobody building?

Habits

Atomic Habits

  • No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving - every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.


    If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.


    The discipline of execution means understanding how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a "vision" and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Bossidy and Charan show the importance of being deeply and passionately engaged in an organization and why robust dialogues about people, strategy, and operations result in a business based on intellectual honesty and realism.

    Why? Startups—and the entrepreneurs who run them—are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.


    These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today.

Indistractable

  • What would be possible if you followed through on your best intentions? What could you accomplish if you could stay focused? What if you had the power to become "indistractable?" 

    International bestselling author, former Stanford lecturer, and behavioral design expert, Nir Eyal, wrote Silicon Valley's handbook for making technology habit-forming. Five years after publishing Hooked, Eyal reveals distraction's Achilles' heel in his groundbreaking new book. 

Social Science

Tipping Point

  • From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

    Why? Startups—and the entrepreneurs who run them—are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.

    These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today.background in psychology and bolstered by interviews with accomplished CEOs, Menkes paints the portrait of the ideal executive.

Outliers

  • In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?


    His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. 

Just for Fun

The Hunt for Red October

  • A deadly serious game of hide-and-seek is on. The entire Soviet Atlantic Fleet is ordered to hunt down the submarine and destroy her at all costs. The Americans are determined to find her first and get her safely to port in the intelligence coups of all time. But the Red October has a million square miles of ocean to hide in and a new silent propulsion system that is impossible to detect. Or is it?

    The discipline of execution means understanding how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a "vision" and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Bossidy and Charan show the importance of being deeply and passionately engaged in an organization and why robust dialogues about people, strategy, and operations result in a business based on intellectual honesty and realism.

    Why? Startups—and the entrepreneurs who run them—are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.


    These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today.

State of Fear

  • This is Michael Crichton's most wide-ranging thriller. State of Fear takes the reader from the glaciers of Iceland to the volcanoes of Antarctica, from the Arizona desert to the deadly jungles of the Solomon Islands, from the streets of Paris to the beaches of Los Angeles. The novel races forward, taking the reader on a rollercoaster thrill ride, all the while keeping the brain in high gear. Gripping and thought-provoking, State of Fear is Michael Crichton at his very best.

Patriot Games

  • As an American in London on vacation with his family, Jack Ryan never imagined his quick thinking would prevent an assassination attempt on Britain’s royal family and earn him the gratitude of an entire nation—and the scorn of an ultra-left-wing faction of the IRA. Irish terrorist Sean Miller and his followers in the Ulster Liberation Army intend to make sure Ryan pays for his interference in blood. But he’s not the only one they’re after...

The Endless Bummer

  • From the author of the blog I Don't Belong Here comes this hilarious diary-style essay about the fruitless quest for relaxation during a family vacation. The Endless Bummer follows the Hedenberg family as they spend five days at the beach; a trip punctuated by surf, sun, screaming kids, shoddy HVAC units, poor customer service, and some of worst specimens humanity has to offer.

You Can’t Stay Here

  • Feral children. Bathroom fornicators. Angry old men.
    These are the characters that populate the world of Amazon bestselling author Sam Hedenberg’s newest essay collection.

    In You Can’t Stay Here, Sam shares his signature wry observations of humanity while working as a bartender at a craft brewery. What started as a summer job to make some quick cash transformed into a five-year case study in what customers deem as appropriate behavior.

    This collection speaks to anyone who’s ever spent time in the service industry, where the customer is always right — even when they’re monumentally wrong.