The 50 Best Books of All Time
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OK, these are probably not the best books of all time but these mostly non-fiction titles were important to me when I read them over the last twenty years.
Education
- The Power of Their Ideas, Meier (Bible)
- The Students are Watching, Sizer
- Reinventing Public Education and It Takes a City, Hill
- Global Achievement Gap, Wagner
- The World is Open, Bonk
- Disrupting Class, Christensen, Horn and Johnson
- Mindset, Dweck
- Education Unbound, Hess
Business
- 5th Discipline, Senge (Didn’t like the field guides as much)
- In Search of Excellence, Peters and Waterman
- Competitive Strategy, Porter (Classic)
- Positioning, Ries and Trout
- The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christiansen
- The Age of Unreason, Handy
- Good to Great & Built to Last, Collins
- Managing, or anything by Drucker
Leadership & Biography
- Leadership is an Art, DePree (Still the best)
- The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner (The guidebook)
- A Force for Change, Kotrer
- Orbiting the Giant Hairball, MacKenzie (Fun runner up)
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey
- John Adams, McCullough (Read a Madison biography after that.)
- Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson
Globalization/Development
- Guns, Germs & Steel, Diamond
- Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen
- Which World, Hammond
- Culture Matters, Harrison & Huntington
- Fourth Turning & Millennials, Strauss/Howe
- The Lexus and the Olive Tree & Longitudes and Attitudes, Friedman
- The Post-American World, Zakaria
Poetry
- Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Macy and Barrows
- The Heart Aroused, Whyte (Good runner up with leadership application)
- Early Morning, Stafford (Touching biography makes Bill Stafford accessible)
- New and Collected Poems, Milosz
- Poems New and Collected, Szymborska (What is it about mid-century Poles?)
- The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence
- Teaching With Fire, Intrator and Scribner
Science
- Consilience, Wilson (Wow)
- Art & Physics, Shlain (Amazing parallels)
- Turning Point, Capra (Where Meg Wheatley got her start)
- The Clock of the Long Now, Brand
- Einstein’s Dreams, Lightman (Only fiction on the list; mind bending)
- For the Time Being, Dillard (Another mind bender/dual biography)
- The Blank Slate & Drive, Steven Pinker
- Elegant Universe, Greene (or A Brief History of Time, Hawkin)
- Tipping Point, Gladwell
Work
- Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi and Damon
- Flow, Csikszentmihalyi
- Care of the Soul, Moore
- The Reinvention of Work, Fox
Wow, I left so many great business and education books out. And no non-fiction!?! What books made a difference to you and your work?
Tom Vander Ark
Tom Vander Ark is the CEO of Getting Smart. He has written or co-authored more than 50 books and papers including Getting Smart, Smart Cities, Smart Parents, Better Together, The Power of Place and Difference Making. He served as a public school superintendent and the first Executive Director of Education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Briana
Oh, how I love these lists. :)
In no particular order, here are some of the ones I keep coming back to, which automatically makes them greats, right?
- Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
- Screwtape Letters, Lewis
- Orthodoxy, Chesterton
- Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
- City Boy, Herman Wouk
- Maggie Now, Betty Smith
- Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
- Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
- Eat the Rich, PJ O'Rourke
- In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
I love when an author can show, not tell, which is what a great novel is all about.
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Tom Vander Ark
Great additions, thanks!
Tom Vander Ark
Here's a few more from our friend Al Meyers:
-Team of Rivals (Goodwin) – this one I’m surprised didn’t make your list : )
-Linchpin (Seth Godin)
-The Strategy Paradox (Raynor) - pokes huge holes in Collins’ Good to Great Book
-Tribes (Seth Godin)
-How to Change The World (Bornstein)
-The Medici Effect (How diversity drives innovation)
-The Brain That Changes Itself (Doidge)
-There are probably a slew of books in the TED Book Library that make the cut. A few of the ones above were books I got from TED.
Bev DeVore
Anything written by John McPhee, Stephen Gould, Richard Feynman and Robert Frost.
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Tom Vander Ark
Thanks, good eclectic list.
George Rislov
I've read quite a few, but Guns, Germs & Steel, Diamond is one of my favorites. This was one of a handful of books that dramatically changed the teaching of World History by focusing on longer time periods and macrohistorical analysis.
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Tom Vander Ark
Thanks George. I gave a grant to a (now famous) high school principal that said about GG&S "It will be the only textbook in the place."
Tom Vander Ark
I read Michael Fullan's most recent book, Stratosphere. He's certainly one of the 3-4 most influential edu-writers of our time. The book is very short, very optimistic, and very much worth your time. I'll post a review next week.