ashes of my shelf
Over the years, I've read a few thousand books. Some of which were about business. This list has 44 recommendations.
The Upside of Irrationality
Why can large bonuses make CEOs less productive? How can confusing directions actually help us? Why is revenge so important to us? Why is there such a big difference between what we think will make us happy and what really makes us happy? In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the […]
Zero to One
Zero to One by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, is a provocative manifesto on innovation and entrepreneurship. The central thesis is that doing something truly new—going from 0 to 1—is fundamentally more valuable than incremental improvement, or going from 1 to n. Thiel criticizes conformity in Silicon Valley and stresses the importance of […]
Insanely Simple
Ken Segall put the ‘i’ in iPad. Now he explains why simplicity is the secret of Apple’s success in Insanely Simple. To Steve Jobs, Simplicity wasn’t just a design principle. It was a religion and a weapon. The obsession with Simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It’s what helped Apple recover from […]
The Psychology of Money
Morgan Housel’s *The Psychology of Money* offers a profound yet accessible look into how people make financial decisions based not on logic or spreadsheets, but on personal history, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives. The book’s strength lies in its storytelling—short chapters illustrate big ideas using vivid anecdotes and real-world events. Housel emphasizes that doing […]
Influence
Robert Cialdini’s Influence is the foundational text on why humans comply—or resist—requests. Drawing on decades of laboratory studies, undercover fieldwork, and cross-cultural examples, Cialdini distills six universal principles of persuasion: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. Each principle is illustrated with memorable stories, from door-to-door sales tactics to cult recruitment. What […]
Cold Steel
Cold Steel is the gripping story of the world’s biggest and most hard-fought industry takeover of recent years, an epic corporate battle that would send shockwaves through the political corridors of Europe, excite the world’s financial markets, enrich thirty hedge funds and transform the global steel industry. In 2006, the two largest steel-producers went head […]