Not necessarily In order, here are some of my favorite books. The links will take you to Amazon, where you can read the reviews:
Atlas Shrugged - By Ayn Rand. It’s kind of a cult book. The most difficult reading I’ve ever done, but I liked it a lot. I recently saw a list of the most influential books. This book placed at the top of the list, along with the Bible.
The Richest Man in Babylon - Yes, I know it is one of those dumb, fable books. But it will teach you how to make money and save it. It’s mostly common sense, but if you do what it says, you’ll keep more of your money.
Masters of the Enterprise - This is a recent book that gives a short biography of 25 of our greatest businesspeople. Some very interesting stories
Blind Man’s Bluff - A great book about the true stories of submarine espionage. It seems like it would have been terrifying to be in a submarine, but many people lived on these things for months and years at a time doing some crazy things. I especially liked the story about how they located some sunken submarines from sound images recorded thousands of miles away.
Car - The story of the 1996 Ford Taurus product design team. FoMoCo thought Mary Walton had done them a disservice with this book, but I was working at Ford as a consultant at about this time, and I think it is true to form. I liked the descriptions of the places the folks worked, because those are some of the places I worked. I’m very proud of the work we did at Ford, and I think it contributed to their being the strongest car company in the world in the late 1990’s. How far they’ve fallen to today…
Tuesdays with Morrie - I know you’ve already read it. If you haven’t it only takes an hour or two. I wish I could live like Morrie suggests, but I can’t right now.
How to Think like Leonardo DaVinci - If you can’t live like Morrie suggests, maybe you can think like Leonardo. An interesting book which mostly makes you feel inferior to one of the greatest minds of all time. I find that I do think like Leonardo in one or two ways.
A Civil War - Army vs Navy - About the Army/Navy football rivalry. The book goes into great detail about the lives of the players, and their schools.
Blur - The speed of change in the connected economy - Written by a couple of my co-workers a couple of years ago, it’s a good book about the changes that the connected economy will bring. One of the 50 things you should do is create your own web site - you’re looking at mine.
They all Laughed - My favorite book on invention. Tells some really funny stories about how products were invented. My favorite question from the book is “What year was the fax machine invented?”. It’s in there, and you’ll be amazed.
The Whiz Kids : The Founding Fathers of American Business-And the Legacy They Left Us - I looked it up on Amazon and find that it is out of print. It’s a book about several men that worked together in the Army Air Corps during WWII managing the flow of inventories and supplies, and how they turned that experience into business dominance in the 1950’s, 60s and 70s. I liked the book because the Whiz kids all went to work for Ford Motor Company as a group after the war, and pretty much led that company for about 30 years. I also liked their description of their first months at Ford, when they stayed in the Dearborn Inn, and strategized about how to impact the company. The descriptions of their meetings sounded like one of my consulting engagements, and I read the book while I was staying in the same hotel, working for Ford. It’s worth looking for a copy at the library.