This year I read 100+ books, mostly focused on business, startups, psychology, and biographies of historical leaders. Most of the books I read were great, some were barely worth my time, and a small number of them changed the way I think.
This year I read 100+ books, mostly focused on business, startups, psychology, and biographies of historical leaders. Most of the books I read were great, some were barely worth my time, and a small number of them changed the way I think.
I have a double standard when it comes to book recommendations. I will read anything recommended to me, assuming it's in an area of my interest and is credible. However, when I recommend books for other people to read, I will only pass along the books that change how I think and see the world. Unfortunately, there are a lot of genuinely great books I don't recommend. This list is made up of books that are worth your time and will likely impact you As much as they did me.
This book explores the relative comfort and sheltered life that most of us live in the modern world and its adverse impact on our bodies and minds. The comfort crisis is, more than anything, a call to break out of our comfort zones, push our limits and experience our humanity in a new way.
This book made so much sense to me and has inspired me to plan many wilderness adventures. I also discovered rucking in this book, which is now my favorite form of exercise. I see exercise as a big part of my all-around health, and this book has completely changed the way I think of my workouts and fitness goals. After reading this book, I found myself incorporating new forms of exercise into my workouts, like dragging logs through the woods, rucking up hills, and practicing archery during cardio breaks. My fitness goal became annual trips to push my limits, like summiting mountains and trekking through the wilderness. Having a new perspective and goal has helped make exercise fun again for me. I hope it inspires you in similar ways.
This book is a biography of Samuel Zemurray, the most influential man in shaping the global banana market. In 1891 he arrived in the United States as a penniless immigrant, and when he died 69 years later, he was one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men.
The Fish That Ate the Whale is an entertaining and mind-blowing biography about an incredibly influential businessman. The most interesting thing was seeing how the expansion of the global banana market Had such a profound impact on so many countries. Samuels Zemurray played a critical role in helping Israel get recognized as a nation. The influence that his business had on so many different countries' economies positioned him to be able to leverage global leaders to support Israel.
There is so much talked about in this book that I am confident whatever I say here will not do it justice, but I'm going to do my best. This book explores the geopolitical transition that the world is experiencing as the United States becomes more isolationist. He looks at the impact of the post World War II Bretton Woods agreement and how it fostered global trade. Subsequently allowing the populations of many nations and their economies to grow beyond what their natural resources and geography can sustain.
I learned so much in this book, and it honestly left me wondering how I had never known most of these things. For instance, the primary narrative we've heard about China over the last decade is that they are the future global superpower and there's very little we can do about it. Peter unpacks all the reasons that China is a failed state in the process of collapsing and lacks the critical natural resources to sustain its population. Based on his detailed explanation in this book, it becomes clear that there are no real challengers to the US's position as the defacto global superpower. Regardless of your political views and whether or not you agree with Peter, this book is worth reading, and the points he makes are worth considering. I still don't know what the future holds, but his explanations have changed the way I look at the world, global trade and our modern economy.
This book explores the future of the blockchain economy and the end of big data. Gilder explores how advertising and free Content have led to the rise of the top-down Internet, but its fatal flaw is security. Blockchain solves many of the problems that plague the current structure of the Internet. This book came out in 2018, so much of what's he predicted has already happened under the popular term Web3. Gilder is an economist and technologist, so his insights revolve around the intersection Of money, politics, and technology.
George Gilder has become one of my favorite thought leaders and authors. After reading Life After Google, I read all of his other books. It's common to read books that focus on technology or politics, or economics, but it's unusual to have an author that weaves all three of them together. The reality is that you cannot separate them, so to predict the future through the lens of only technology, for instance, will give you a very limited perspective. Life After Google is not the only time Gilder has predicted the future; he also wrote Life After Television, where he predicted the rise of the internet and the end of traditional television.
This book might get the most wisdom per word award. Naval is a tech entrepreneur and investor who has been extremely successful. The subtitle for the book is "a guide to wealth and happiness." I usually avoid books with words like wealth and happiness on the cover, but I am glad I made an exception for this one. If I were rewriting the subtitle, I would say "practical wisdom for building wealth and living a great life. "The keyword here is practical. Naval does a great job of simplifying concepts that often get over complicated. Even though his work focuses on the tech space, this book is really for anyone and shares fundamental principles that are translatable across industry and geography.
I spend a decent amount of time reading classic older business books because most business wisdom is timeless. It's easy to hyper-focus on current trends, business models, and innovations. The downside is that we can miss out on the bigger picture because we don't know how to translate the past and the present. This book is a must-read classic for anyone passionate about entrepreneurship.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship originally came out in 1985, making it ancient history by the rate of change we see in today's business world. What I found so unique about this book is its foundational look at the impact and importance of entrepreneurial activity. I knew that entrepreneurial activity was good for economies. Still, I didn't realize how critical entrepreneurs have been to the rise of the American economy. We need more innovative entrepreneurs to stimulate prolonged economic well-being and prosperity.
Drucker highlights in the book that entrepreneurs and innovators increase the productivity of existing resources, thereby creating net new value. Most businesses move resources around and benefit from arbitrage, but only innovation can create new value. America was a startup nation that became a global superpower in part because we created an environment that fostered entrepreneurship and innovation better than any other country in the world. Drucker was one of the original business management thought leaders, and anything he writes is worth reading; this book is my favorite of his.
I read a lot of books about venture capital and startup fundraising, so honestly, this book was a refreshing change to a very tired and old narrative. The venture capital world and the accelerators and incubators that serve it have perpetuated the misconception that venture capital investment is the only way to scale a high-potential startup. But that's not the case. In this book, Mullins does an incredible job of showing how most fast-growing companies grow without venture investors. Mullins shares five ways innovative entrepreneurs can grow their businesses through customer revenue without venture capital.
This book didn't make the list because of its literary style or groundbreaking research; this book made the list because it's so different from the vast majority of startup books. Many founders will lament that they can't build their business until they can find investment. This book helps to dispel that belief and shares stories and methods that scrappy entrepreneurs can use.
I think the title says it all. Play Bigger is all about category design. It unpacks how some of the biggest and most successful companies in recent history have created new types of businesses serving brand-new markets. Instead of trying to beat the established industry giants at their own games, today's fastest-growing startups are playing entirely different games. In this book, they look at companies like Amazon, salesforce, Uber, and IKEA and the new ways of doing business they have created. Often category design is about solving problems people didn't know they had.
Instead of disrupting an aging market or figuring out how to position your product in an existing market, Play Bigger focuses on looking at how businesses can create new markets. While most of Play Bigger focuses on tech startups, the concepts they explore can be applied to every industry. What I loved about this book is that it brought some order to the idea of creating new markets. There's a tension in the startup world between do we let the customers tell us what they want or do we pull Steve jobs and tell the customer what they should want. First-time entrepreneurs often oversimplify the idea of creating a new market, so Play Bigger helps unpack the process and factors behind it.
Thanks for checking on my list of favorite reads from 2022. If you have any books that you think I should read or want more book recommendations please let me know.
John Walt
CEO/Cofounder - StacDek
StacDek helps companies design strategies that drive growth.
