Business Books

Recommended by Marketing Experts

The Actionable Marketing Guide asked several dozen marketing experts to list books they felt were must-reads for understanding the business landscape today (see our post: Top Business Books For Marketers.)  We’ve listed those books below in alphabetical order. (Titles are Amazon affiliate links.)

• 50 Ways to Yes, Dr. Robert Cialdini
• A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Daniel Pink
• Accidental Genius, Mark Levy
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Automate This, Steiner
• Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
• Daring Greatly, Brene Brown
• Disney Wars, James Stewart
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow
• Edward Tufte
• Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
• Ernest Hemingway
• Essays, Paul Graham
• Europe In The Twentieth Century, Dr. Paxton
• Fascinate, Sally Hogshead
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt
• Getting to 50 50, Strober & Meers
• Growing a Business, Paul Hawken
• Hope is Not a Strategy, Rick Page
• How Not To Be Wrong: The hidden math of everyday life, Jorden Ellenberg
• How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie
• Ignore Everybody, Hugh MacLeod
• Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions, Dr. Carmen Simon
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini.
• Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg
• Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain.
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, Seth Godin
• Made to Stick, Chip & Dan Heath
• Me Inc., Gene Simmons
• Million Dollar Consulting, Alan Weiss
• Moneyball, Michael Lewis
• No One Understands You and What to Do About It, Heidi Grant Halvorson
• Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham
• Oh, The Places You’ll Go!, Dr. Seuss
• On Writing, Stephen King
• Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art, by Paul Rand
• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout
• Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg
• Predictable Success, Les McKeown,
• Purple Cow, Seth Godin
• Radical Focus, Christina Wodtke
• Reality is Broken, Jane McGonnigal
• Reengineering the Corporation, Michael Hammer & James Champy
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki
• Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy
• Selfish, Scared & Stupid, Dan Gregory & Kieran Flanagan
• Share of Mind, Share of Heart: Marketing Tools of Engagement for Nonprofits, Sybil Stershic
• Smart Machines: IBM’s Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing, John E Kelly III & Steve Hamm
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• Snow White, Donald Barthelme
• Solution Selling, Michael Bosworth
• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, Jake Knapp
• Start with Why, Simon Sinek
• Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon
• Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
• Story Inc., Ed Catmull
• Strategy, H. Lidell Hart
• Stumbling Upon Happiness, Daniel Gilbert
• Switch, Chip & Dan Heath
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey
• The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron
• The Barefoot Spirit, Bonnie Harvey & Michael Houlihan
• The Boron Letters, Gary Halbert
• The Business of Belief, Thomas Asacker
• The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, Michael Bungay Stanier
• The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson
• The Education of a Value Investor, Guy Spier
• The Elements of Style, E.B. White (& William Strunk)
• The Enneagram Made Easy, Renee Baron and Elizabeth Wagele
• The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from America’s Greatest Writing Teacher, Don Murray
• The Fourth Part of the World, Toby Lester
• The Game, Neil Strauss
• The Go-Giver, Bob Burg
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz
• The Lean Startup, Eric Ries
• The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo
• The Mind Club, Daniel M. Wegner
• The ONE Thing, Gary Keller
• The Path, Michael Puett.
• The Power of Broke, Daymond John
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg.
• The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell
• The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune and Survival in the Age of Networks, Joshua Cooper Ramo
• The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership, Bill Walsh.
• The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle
• The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely
• Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
• Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
• Thrive, Ariana Huffington
• To Sell is Human, Daniel Pink
• Traction, Gino Wickman
• Uncontainable, Kip Tindell
• Unique Ability® 2.0: Discovery, Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, & Shannon Waller
• Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity, Neal Gabler
• Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creative Imaginative Fiction, Jeff Vandermeer
• You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader, Mark Sanborn