Books

‘Do you have any books?’

‘In Rome, I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library. By reading and re-reading them, I discovered that one hundred and fifty books, carefully chosen, give you, if not a complete summary of human knowledge, at least everything that is useful for a man to know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and re-reading these hundred and fifty volumes, so that when I was arrested I knew them more or less by heart. In prison, with a slight effort of memory, I recalled them entirely. So I can recite to you Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Strada, Jornadès, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli and Bossuet; I mention only the most important.’

Abbé Faria in The Count of Monte Cristo

Copywriting & Sales

Read in this order:

• Scientific Advertising, by Claude C. Hopkins
• Confessions of an Advertising Man, by David Ogilvy
• The Irresistible Offer, by Mark Joyner
• Cashvertising, by Drew E. Whitman
• Great Leads, by Michael Masterson & John Forde
• Breakthrough Advertising, by Eugene M. Schwartz
• The Ultimate Sales Letter, by Dan Kennedy
• The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Getting Your Shit Together, by John Carlton
• How to Go From Failure to Success in Selling, by Frank Bettger
• How To Become A Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients, by Jeffrey J. Fox
• Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini
• Brainfluence: 100 Ways To Persuade And Convince Consumers With Neuromarketing, by Roger Dooley
• SPIN-selling, by Neil Rackham

Fiction

• The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
• Alone in Berlin, by Hans Fallada
• Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk
• A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
• Terra Incognita, by Vladimir Nabokov
• How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, by Mohsin Hamid
• Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
• Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lehem
• Our Kind of Traitor, by John le Carré
• Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts
• A Week in December, by Sebastian Faulks
• Kingdom Come, by J G Ballard
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, by David Mitchell
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
• The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald
• The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
• White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga

Sport

• Andrea Pirlo: I think therefore I play, by Andrea Pirlo
• Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World, by Graham Hunter
• Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall
• It’s Not About The Bike, by Lance Armstrong
• Managing My Life: The Autobiography, by Sir Alex Ferguson
• Inverting the Pyramid: A History of Football Tactics, by Jonathan Wilson
• Morbo: The Story of Spanish Football, by Phil Ball
• Barça: A People’s Passion, by Jimmy Burns
• The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philisophy of Leadership, by Bill Walsh
• Psych, by Judd Biasiotto
• How Simple Can It Be?, by Raymond Verheijen
• Pep Confidential: The Inside Story of Pep Guardiola’s First Season at Bayern Munich, by Martí Peranau
• The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance,  by George Mumford
• The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, by Joe McGinniss
• Arsene Wenger: The Biography, by Xavier Rivoire
• Mourinho: Anatomy of a Winner, by Patrick Barclay
• Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography, by Guillem Balague
• Cantona: The Rebel Who Would Be King, by Phillipe Auclair
• Messi, by Guillem Balague
• How to Watch Football, by Ruud Gullit

Learning, Thinking, Psychology, Self-Improvement

• The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, by Josh Waitzkin
• Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, by Nassim Taleb
• The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande
• Awaken the Giant Within, by Tony Robbins
• The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
• Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window, by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
• High-Performance Habits, by Brendon Burchard
• Tribe of Mentors, by Tim Ferriss
• As a Man Thinketh, by James Allan
• The Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi
• Principles, by Ray Dalio

Philosophy

• Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
• Waking Up: A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion, by Sam Harris
• Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living
• Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
• The Architecture of Happiness, by Alain de Botton
• Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, by John Gray

Misc

• As the Future Catches You, by Juan Enriquez
• What The Dog Saw: and other adventures, by Malcolm Gladwell
• To a Mountain in Tibet, by Colin Thubron
• Page One: Inside the New York Times and the Future of Journalism (Participant Media Guide)
• Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson
• The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
• Food Rules, by Michael Pollan
• David & Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, by Malcolm Gladwell
• Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success, by Matthew Syed