Tools of Titans

by Timothy Ferriss

  Hart, Mark: Mastery (Robert Greene), The Art of Learning (Josh Waitzkin), The 4-Hour Body (Tim Ferriss)

  Hof, Wim: Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach and Russell Munson), Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse), The Bhagavad Gita, The Bible

  Hoffman, Reid: Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values (Fred Kofman), Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)

  Holiday, Ryan: Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), The War of Art (Steven Pressfield), What Makes Sammy Run? (Budd Schulberg), Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (Ron Chernow), How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Sarah Bakewell), The Fish that Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King; Tough Jews (Rich Cohen), Edison: A Biography (Matthew Josephson), Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity (Brooks Simpson), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)

  Honnold, Alex: A People’s History of the United States (Howard Zinn), Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition (Charles Eisenstein)

  Jarvis, Chase: Steal Like an Artist; Show Your Work! (Austin Kleon), The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (Al Ries and Jack Trout), Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator (Ryan Holiday), The Rise of Superman (Steven Kotler), Daring Greatly (Brené Brown), Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out (Marc Eckō), Play It Away: A Workaholic’s Cure for Anxiety (Charlie Hoehn), Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook (Gary Vaynerchuk)

  John, Daymond: Think & Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill), Who Moved My Cheese? (Spencer Johnson), Blue Ocean Strategy (W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne), Invisible Selling Machine (Ryan Deiss), The Richest Man in Babylon (George S. Clason), Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (Jack Weatherford)

  Johnson, Bryan: A Good Man: Rediscovering My Father, Sargent Shriver (Mark Shriver), Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl), Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse), Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Alfred Lansing), Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)

  Junger, Sebastian: At Play in the Fields of the Lord (Peter Matthiessen), Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)

  Kagan, Noah: The Ultimate Sales Machine (Chet Holmes), Essentialism (Greg McKeown), Replay (Ken Grimwood), Who (Geoff Smart and Randy Street), Million Dollar Consulting (Alan Weiss), The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to Go from $0 to $100 Million (Mark Roberge), Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success (Shane Snow), SPIN Selling (Neil Rackham), Small Giants: Companies that Choose to Be Great Instead of Big (Bo Burlingham), Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Richard P. Feynman), Recession Proof Graduate (Charlie Hoehn), Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy), The Martian (Andy Weir)

  Kamkar, Samy: Influence (Robert Cialdini)

  Kaskade: Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath (Ted Koppel)

  Kass, Sam: Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari), The Art of Fielding (Chad Harbach), Plenty; Jerusalem; Plenty More (Yotam Ottolenghi), The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs (Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg), A History of World Agriculture (Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart)

  Kelly, Kevin: The Adventures of Johnny Bunko (Daniel Pink), So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Cal Newport), Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts), Future Shock (Alvin Toffler), Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (AnnaLee Saxenian), What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (John Markoff), The Qur’an, The Bible, The Essential Rumi; The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers (Yoel Hoffman), It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff (Peter Walsh)

  Koppelman, Brian: What Makes Sammy Run? (Budd Schulberg), The Artist’s Way Morning Pages Journal (Julia Cameron), The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)

  Libin, Phil: The Clock of the Long Now (Stewart Brand), The Alliance (Reid Hoffman), The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins), A Guide to the Good Life (William Irvine)

  MacAskill, Will: Reasons and Persons (Derek Parfit), Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (Mark Williams and Danny Penman), The Power of Persuasion (Robert Levine), Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Nick Bostrom)

  MacKenzie, Brian: Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu), Way of the Peaceful Warrior (Dan Millman)

  McCarthy, Nicholas: The Life and Loves of a He Devil: A Memoir (Graham Norton), I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone (Nina Simone)

  McChrystal, Stanley: Once an Eagle (Anton Myrer), The Road to Character (David Brooks)

  McCullough, Michael: The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha), Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (David Allen), The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (Stephen R. Covey), The Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande)

  McGonigal, Jane: Finite and Infinite Games (James Carse), Suffering Is Optional (Cheri Huber), The Willpower Instinct (Kelly McGonigal), The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia (Bernard Suits)

  Miller, BJ: Any picture book of Mark Rothko art.

  Moynihan, Brendan: Money Game (Adam Smith), Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920–1938 (John Brooks), The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (Gustave Le Bon)

  Mullenweg, Matt: The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work (Scott Berkun), How Proust Can Change Your Life (Alain de Botton), A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Rebecca Solnit), The Effective Executive; Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Peter Drucker), Words that Work (Frank Luntz), Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (George Lakoff), History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami), The Magus (John Fowles), The Everything Store (Brad Stone), The Halo Effect: . . . and the Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers (Phil Rosenzweig), Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott), On Writing Well (William Zinsser), Ernest Hemingway on Writing (Larry W. Phillips), The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz), Zero to One (Peter Thiel), The Art of the Start 2.0 (Guy Kawasaki), the works of Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Neistat, Casey: It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be (Paul Arden), The Second World War (John Keegan), The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Malcolm X and Alex Haley)

  Nemer, Jason: The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran), Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu)

  Norton, Edward: Wind, Sand and Stars (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry), Buddhism Without Beliefs (Stephen Batchelor), Shōgun (James Clavell), The Search for Modern China; The Death of Woman Wang (Jonathan Spence), “The Catastrophe of Success” (essay by Tennessee Williams), The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

  Novak, B.J.: The Oxford Book of Aphorisms (John Gross), Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (Mason Currey), Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ’N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (Peter Biskind), The Big Book of New American Humor; The Big Book of Jewish Humor (William Novak and Moshe Waldoks)

  Ohanian, Alexis: Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days (Jessica Livingston), Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture (David Kushner)

  Palmer, Amanda: Dropping Ashes on the Buddha: The Teachings of Zen Master Seung Sahn; Only Don’t Know: Selected Teaching Letters of Zen Master Seung Sahn (Seung Sahn), A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)

  Paul, Caroline: The Things They Carried (Tim O’Brien), The Dog Stars (Peter Heller)

  Polanco, Martin: The Journey Home (Radhanath Swami), Ibogaine Explained (Peter Frank), Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad (James Oroc)

  Poliquin, Charles: The ONE Thing (Gary Keller and Jay Papasan), 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute (Richard Wiseman), The Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande), Bad Science (Ben Goldacre), Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned about Life in School—But Didn’t (Peter McWilliams)

  Popova, Mar
ia: Still Writing (Dani Shapiro), On the Shortness of Life (Seneca), The Republic (Plato), On the Move: A Life (Oliver Sacks), The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837–1861 (Henry David Thoreau), A Rap on Race (Margaret Mead and James Baldwin), On Science, Necessity and the Love of God: Essays (Simone Weil), Stumbling on Happiness (Daniel Gilbert), Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (Edward Abbey), Gathering Moss (Robin Wall Kimmerer), The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert (Richard Betts)

  Potts, Rolf: Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman), Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer (Roy Peter Clark), To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction (Phillip Lopate), Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (Syd Field), Story (Robert McKee), Alien vs. Predator (Michael Robbins), The Best American Poetry (David Lehman), the works of poets Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Stuart Dischell

  Randall, Lisa: I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)

  Ravikant, Naval: Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti (Jiddu Krishnamurti), Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari), Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson), Poor Charlie’s Almanac: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (Charles T. Munger), Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse), The Rational Optimist (Matt Ridley), V for Vendetta (Alan Moore), Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges), Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti (Jiddu Krishnamurti), Illusions (Richard Bach), Striking Thoughts (Bruce Lee), Influence (Robert Cialdini), Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!; What Do You Care What Other People Think?; Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (Richard P. Feynman), Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It; Live Your Truth (Kamal Ravikant), Distress (Greg Egan), The Boys (Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson), Genome; The Red Queen; The Origins of Virtue; The Evolution of Everything (Matt Ridley), The Essential Writings (Mahatma Gandhi), The Tao of Philosophy (Alan Watts), The Bed of Procrustes (Nassim Nicholas Taleb), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson), The Power of Myth (Joseph Campbell), Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu), Falling into Grace (Adyashanti), God’s Debris (Scott Adams), The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes), Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (Daniel M. Ingram), The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg), The Lessons of History (Will Durant and Ariel Durant), Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart (Gordon Livingston), The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran), The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (Salvador Dalí), Watchmen (Alan Moore)

  Reece, Gabby: Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

  Richman, Jessica: The Complete Short Stories (Ernest Hemingway)

  Robbins, Tony: As a Man Thinketh (James Allen), Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl), The Fourth Turning; Generations (William Strauss), Slow Sex (Nicole Daedone), Mindset (Carol Dweck)

  Rodriguez, Robert: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Simon Sinek)

  Rogen, Seth: Watchmen (Alan Moore), Preacher (Garth Ennis), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), The Art of Dramatic Writing (Lajos Egri), The Conquest of Happiness (Bertrand Russell)

  Rose, Kevin: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation (Thich Nhat Hanh), The Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki)

  Rowe, Mike: The Deep Blue Good-by; Pale Gray for Guilt, Bright Orange for the Shroud; The Lonely Silver Rain, Nightmare in Pink; A Tan and Sandy Silence; Cinnamon Skin (John D. MacDonald), At Home: A Short History of Private Life; The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (Bill Bryson), A Curious Discovery: An Entrepreneur’s Story (John Hendricks)

  Rubin, Rick: Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu, translation by Stephen Mitchell), Wherever You Go, There You Are (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

  Sacca, Chris: Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived (Laurence Shames and Peter Barton), The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Whiskey Know-It-All; The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert (Richard Betts), How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: A Novel (Mohsin Hamid), I Seem to Be a Verb (R. Buckminster Fuller)

  Schwarzenegger, Arnold: The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History (Boris Johnson), Free to Choose (Milton Friedman), California (Kevin Starr)

  Sethi, Ramit: Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion (Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson), The Social Animal (Elliot Aronson), Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got (Jay Abraham), Mindless Eating (Brian Wansink), The Robert Collier Letter Book (Robert Collier), Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time (Keith Ferrazzi), What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School (Mark H. McCormack), Iacocca: An Autobiography (Lee Iacocca), The Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande)

  Shinoda, Mike: Becoming a Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity and Defy Comparison (Joe Calloway), The Tipping Point; Blink (Malcolm Gladwell), Learning Not to Drown (Anna Shinoda), The 4-Hour Workweek (Tim Ferriss)

  Silva, Jason: TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Erik Davis), The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance (Steven Kotler), The 4-Hour Workweek (Tim Ferriss)

  Sivers, Derek: A Geek in Japan: Discovering the Land of Manga, Anime, Zen, and the Tea Ceremony (Hector Garcia), Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny! (Tony Robbins), Stumbling on Happiness (Daniel Gilbert), Tricks of the Mind (Derren Brown), Show Your Work! (Austin Kleon), How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie), How to Talk to Anyone (Leil Lowndes), How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less (Nicholas Boothman), Power Schmoozing (Terri Mandell), Au Contraire: Figuring Out the French (Gilles Asselin and Ruth Mastron), Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman), A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (William Irvine), Seeking Wisdom (Peter Bevelin)

  Skenes, Joshua: Cocktail Techniques (Kazuo Uyeda)

  Sommer, Christopher: The Obstacle Is the Way (Ryan Holiday), the works of Robert Heinlein

  Spurlock, Morgan: The Living Gita: The Complete Bhagavad Gita—A Commentary for Modern Readers (Sri Swami Satchidananda)

  Starrett, Kelly: Deep Survival (Laurence Gonzales), The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance (David Epstein), The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. (Daniel Coyle), The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson), Dune (Frank Herbert), The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg), Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O’Dell)

  Strauss, Neil: On the Shortness of Life (Seneca), Ask the Dust (John Fante), Journey to the End of the Night Novel (Louis-Ferdinand Céline), The Painted Bird (Jerzy Kosinski), Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse), Maxims (François de La Rochefoucauld), Ulysses (James Joyce), StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath) (aside from Neil: Just for the coupon to take the online test), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez), Life Is Elsewhere (Milan Kundera)

  Stein, Joel: The Body Reset Diet (Harley Pasternak)

  Tan, Chade-Meng: What the Buddha Taught (Walpola Rahula), In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Bhikkhu Bodhi)

  Teller, Astro: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (Randall Munroe), Ready Player One: A Novel (Ernest Cline), The Gormenghast Novels (Mervyn Peake)

  Teller, Danielle: Oscar and Lucinda (Peter Carey), The Hours (Michael Cunningham)

  Thiel, Peter: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (René Girard)

  Tsatsouline, Pavel: Psych (Judd Biasiotto), Paradox of Choice (Barry Schwartz)

  von Ahn, Luis: Zero to One (Peter Thiel), The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz)

  Waitzkin, Josh: On the Road; The Dharma Bums (Jack Kerouac), Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig), Shantaram (Gregory David Roberts), For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old Man and the Sea; The Green Hills of Africa (Ernest Hemingway), Ernest Hemingway on Writing (Larry W. Phillips), Mindset (Carol Dweck),
Dreaming Yourself Awake: Lucid Dreaming and Tibetan Dream Yoga for Insight and Transformation (B. Alan Wallace and Brian Hodel), The Drama of the Gifted Child (Alice Miller), Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (Sebastian Junger), Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Angela Duckworth), Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise (Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool)

  Weinstein, Eric: Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life Before Nature (Erwin Chargaff), The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession (Chandler Burr)

  White, Shaun: Fifty Shades of Chicken: A Parody in a Cookbook (F.L. Fowler), Outliers: The Story of Success (Malcolm Gladwell), Open: An Autobiography (Andre Agassi)