"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
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Direct It
Leadership and Management
Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs
A collection of the best thinking from one of the most innovative management consulting firms in the world - The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy: Classic Concepts and New Perspectives
There is one simple question to ask if you want to build a high performing team. See the 2 minute video here.
Steve Jobs video interview that was a masterclass in both company and product management.
Bill Gross - The Single Biggest Reason Start Ups Succeed
The Best Ted Talk Ever - How Great Leaders Inspire Action | Simon Sinek
This book should be simply entitled "How to run a company"; Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing
Forget yourself and focus on the work. Be humble and persistent. Value discipline and results, not passion and confidence. Be lesser, do more. This message is crucial, but the opposite of almost every other book. I wish everyone would read this.
Measure What Matters - John Doerr
Extreme Leadership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win. The author, Jacko Willink, details the mindset and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult combat missions, Extreme Ownership demonstrates how to apply them to any team or organization, in any leadership environment. You may also enjoy the author's podcast.
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Build It
Architecture, Real Estate and Land Development
If you’re a beginner to the real estate development process, this book is for you - The Birth of Building
This is the book I have been saying I would write - Real Estate by the Numbers
New Urbanism Placemaking - VIE Magazine
Streetfight: A Handbook For Urban Revolution; An empowering road map for rethinking, reinvigorating, and redesigning our cities.
This is the "how not to" book about suburban sprawl and the urgent need to retrofit suburbia - Sprawl Repair Manual
A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development for Planners, Developers and Architects
Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel - Sam Zell
Real Estate Titans: 7 Key Lessons from the World's Top Real Estate Investors
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction - read this is you need to predict the future.
Nathaniel Kahn directs the documentary My Architect, with which he tries to understand his father, the legendary architect Louis Kahn: an important film for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between art and love. Nominated for an Oscar.
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Grow It
Start-up and Entrepreneurship
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail is the only business book that Apple’s Steve Jobs said “deeply influenced” him
How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight
The Startup Community Way by the founder of The Foundry Group
Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business (Techstars)
BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company - Jim Collins upgrades his classic with all new findings and insights.
Would your belief in something stand up to the question, “Wanna bet?” If you had to gamble significant money on that belief, would you still feel 100% about it? Or maybe more honestly 60%? This creates healthy skepticism encouraging you to seek the best information instead of just defending your belief. Now objective accuracy wins instead of argument. Two things determine how your life turns out: the quality of your decisions, and luck. Recognize the difference between the two in this book.
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Remember It
History
A concise survey of the culture and civilization of mankind, The Lessons of History is the result of a lifetime of research from Pulitzer Prize–winning historians Will and Ariel Durant.
A People's History of the United States - "You wanna read a real history book?" Matt Damon asks his therapist in the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. "Read Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. That book will knock you on your a--."
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - Not many people realize Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege
The Great Deluge - In the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline.
Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn
Arctic Dreams - Written in prose as memorably pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is a timeless mediation on the ability of the landscape to shape our dreams and to haunt our imaginations.
Boone: A Biography - reveals the complex character of a frontiersman whose heroic life was far stranger and more fascinating than the myths that surround him.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - this complex book attempts to describe the entire history of the human race.
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
Coming into the Country is an unforgettable account of Alaska and Alaskans.
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Do It
Self Improvement
Mo Gawdat, Chief Business Officer at Google realized that despite his incredible success, he was desperately unhappy. A lifelong learner, he attacked the problem as an engineer would: examining all the provable facts and scrupulously applying logic. Eventually, his countless hours of research and science proved successful, and he discovered the equation for permanent happiness which he describes in Solve for Happy
After having a nationally televised panic attack, news anchor Dan Harris wrote 10% Happier Revised Edition: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story
Dan's panic attack on Good Morning America
The Liars' Club: A Memoir - Oprah calls this book the best memoir of a generation
Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
Reboot: The Leadership and Art of Growing Up - Jerry Colonna
Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up
Listen to a coaching session with Jerry Colonna here
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a modern epic of a man's search for meaning that became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear - Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels” that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion
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Imagine It
Fiction
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines - In this remarkable work of fiction, astrophysicist Janna Levin reimagines the lives of two of the most important and influential minds of our time.
City of Thieves: A Novel - — a fantastic blend of comedy and tragedy that forces you to feel gratitude amidst any personal storm you might be facing... all while laughing out loud and embarrassing yourself on airplanes (as I just did).
Ender's Game (The Ender Quintet) - At one point, this was the only book listed on Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page
Dune - This sci fi classic is now a new movie
The Overstory - Pulitzer Prize winner - This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
Island - The final and best novel of Aldous Huxley
Poetry
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer - mentioned in Breaking Bad
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass is considered by many to be the greatest collection of poetry ever produced by an American.
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Avoid It
The Financial Crisis of 2007-2008
A History of the United States in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation
Firefighting: The Financial Crisis and Its Lessons - From the three primary architects of the American policy response to the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, a magnificent big-picture synthesis--from why it happened to where we are now.
Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises - by Timothy F. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and President Barack Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury,
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System - By former Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson -- who was at the very epicenter of the crashing financial markets -- provides a startling, first- person account of what really happened during this time of global financial crisis
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Create It
Science
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
Rude Science: Everything You Want to Know About the Science No One Ever Talks About
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. Inspired by the remarkable surviving letters of his daughter Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun, Dava Sobel has crafted a biography about the man Albert Einstein called "the father of modern physics-indeed of modern science altogether."
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Rejuvenate It
Leisure
The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival
Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer’s craft. In a series of playful, expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his career and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the most esteemed writers of recent decades.
Quarantine activities; our firm's favorite jigsaw puzzles - Wentworth
Travels with Charley in Search of America Paperback – by John Steinbeck
Justin Gaffrey instructional paint kit