JIM COLLINS

RECOMMENDED READING For a selection of just the very best of Jim's list, read here. For Jim's picks of the best business books of all time, check out The Classics.

BOOKS ARE LISTED ALPHABETICALLY BY AUTHOR.

A

Aaker, David A., Building Strong Brands
Aaker, David A., Managing Brand Equity
Abbey, Edward, The Monkey Wrench Gang
Abrashoff, Captain D. Michael, It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy
Aczel, Amir D., Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market, and Just About Everything Else
Adams, Ansel, Ansel Adams: An Autobiography
Akerlof, George A., Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism
Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy
Ambrose, Stephen E., Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany
Ambrose, Stephen E., Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944
Ambrose, Stephen E., The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45
Ambrose, Stephen E., To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian
Ambrose, Stephen E., D-Day June 6, 1944
Ambrose, Stephen E., Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
Anderson, Chris, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
Aristotle, Ethics

B

Barrett, William, Irrational Man: A Study In Existential Philosophy
Berendt, John, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Berlin, Isaiah, The Hedgehog and the Fox
Berlin, Leslie, The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley
Bernstein, Peter L., Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
Birch, David, Job Creation in America: How Our Smallest Companies Put the Most People to Work
Bishop, Matthew, Michael Green, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World
Bissinger, H.G., Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream
Boorstin, Daniel J., Cleopatra’s Nose
Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The Colonial Experience
Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The Democratic Experience
Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The National Experience
Boorstin, Daniel J., The Discoverers
Bortz II M.D., Walter M., We Live Too Short and Die Too Long: How to Achieve and Enjoy Your Natural 100-Year-Plus Life Span
Bowen, Catherine Drinker, John Adams and the American Revolution (Harry Truman’s favorite book)
Bowen, Catherine Drinker, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787
Brande, Dorothea, Becoming A Writer
Breashears, David, High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places
Brown, Daniel James, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Bryson, Bill, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Buffett, Warren E., and Lawrence A. Cunningham, The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
Burke, James, The Day the Universe Changed
Burns, Ken, The Civil War (PBS Video Series)
Burrough, Bryan and John Helyar, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
Byrne, David, How Music Works

C

Campbell, Joseph, The Power of Myth
Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Camus, Albert, The Plague
Card, Orson Scott, Ender's Game
Caro, Robert A., Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Caro, Robert A., The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Caro, Robert A., Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Caro, Robert A., The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Catmull, Ed, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Cheney, Theodore A. Rees, Getting the Words Right: How to Revise, Edit and Rewrite
Chernow, Ron, Alexander Hamilton
Chernow, Ron, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Christensen, Clayton M., The Innovator's Dilemma
Churchill, Winston S., Closing the Ring: The Second World War Volume V
Churchill, Winston S., My Early Life: 1874-1904
Churchill, Winston S., The Gathering Storm: The Second World War Volumes I-VI
Churchill, Winston S., The Grand Alliance: The Second World War Volume III
Churchill, Winston S., The Hinge of Fate: The Second World War Volume IV
Churchill, Winston S., Their Finest Hour: The Second World War Volume II
Churchill, Winston S., Triumph and Tragedy: The Second World War Volume VI
Cialdini Ph.D., Robert B., Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Clavell, James, Shōgun
Connell, Evan S., Son of the Morning Star: Custer and The Little Bighorn
Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness in conjunction with the movie Apocalypse Now
Conrad, Joseph, Lord Jim
Conroy, Pat, Beach Music
Conroy, Pat, My Losing Season: A Memoir
Conroy, Pat, The Prince of Tides
Conroy, Pat, The Lords of Discipline
Cosgrove M.D., Toby, The Cleveland Clinic Way: Lessons in Excellence from One of the World's Leading Health Care Organizations
Covey, Stephen R., The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Crile, George, Charlie Wilson's War
Cronkite, Walter, A Reporter’s Life
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Currey, Mason, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

D

Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living
Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species
Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker (especially Chapter 3)
Deming, W. Edwards, Out of the Crisis
DePree, Max, Leadership Is an Art
Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Didion, Joan, The Year of Magical Thinking
Dillard, Annie, The Writing Life
Dixit, Avinash K. and Barry J. Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment
Douglas, John and Mark Olshaker, Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit
Drucker, Peter F., Managing for Results
Drucker, Peter F., Managing in a Time of Great Change
Drucker, Peter F., The Effective Executive
Drucker, Peter F., The End of Economic Man: A Study of the New Totalitarianism
Drucker, Peter F., The Practice of Management
Drury, Allen, Advise and Consent
Durant, Will, The Life of Greece: The Story of Civilization Volume II

E

Ebenstein, Lanny, Milton Friedman: A Biography
Ehrenfeld, Tom, The Startup Garden
Ellis, Joseph J., Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

F

Faulkner, William, Go Down, Moses (especially “The Bear”)
Faulkner, William, The Sound and the Fury
Feiler, Bruce, Abraham - A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths
Fisher, Roger and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby
Forster, E. M., A Passage to India
Fouts, Roger, Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees
Fox, Michael J., Lucky Man: A Memoir
Frank, Robert H., and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society
Frankl, Viktor E., Man’s Search for Meaning
Freedman, David A., Robert Pisani and Roger Purves, Statistics
Friedman, Milton, and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statemen
Friedman, Thomas L., The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
Friedman, Thomas L., From Beirut to Jerusalem

G

Gardner, John W., On Leadership
Gardner, John W., Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society
Gates, Robert M., Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
Gergen, David, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton
Gerstner Jr., Louis V., Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise Through Dramatic Change
Gilbert, Daniel, Stumbling on Happiness
Gladwell, Malcolm, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference
Gleick, James, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
Gleick, James, Chaos: Making A New Science
Goldhill, David, Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think About Health Care Is Wrong
Goldratt, Eliyahu M., and Jeff Cox, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
Goleman, Daniel, Emotional Intelligence
Goodwin, Doris Kearns, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
Goodwin, Doris Kearns, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Goodwin, Doris Kearns, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Goodwin, Doris Kearns, Wait Till Next Year
Gould, Stephen Jay, Questioning the Millennium: A Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown
Gould, Stephen Jay, Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
Gould, Stephen Jay, Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History
Gould, Stephen Jay, Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History
Gould, Stephen Jay, Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
Gould, Stephen Jay, Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
Gould, Stephen Jay, The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History
Gould, Stephen Jay, The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
Gould, Stephen Jay, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
Graham, Katharine, Personal History
Grant, Ulysses S., Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Graves, Robert, I, Claudius
Great Courses -
Great Courses - A History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachev by Mark Steinberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Abraham Lincoln in His Own Words by David Zarefsky, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Alexander the Great and The Hellenistic Age by Jeremy McInerney, Ph.D.
Great Courses - America and the New Global Economy by Timothy Taylor, M.Econ.
Great Courses - America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Professor Edward T. O'Donnell, Ph.D.
Great Courses - American Civil War by Gary W. Gallagher, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Art Across the Ages by Ori Z. Soltes, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Art of Reading by Timothy Spurgin, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Bach and the High Baroque by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Behavioral Economics: When Psychology and Economics Collide by Scott Huettel, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity by David Christian, D.Phil.
Great Courses - Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality by Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries by Alan Charles Kors, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life by J. Rufus Fears, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Buddhism by Malcolm David Eckel, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft by Brooks Landon, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Chaos by Steven Strogatz, Ph.D.
Great Courses - China, India, and the United States: The Future of Economic Supremacy by Peter Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Churchill by J. Rufus Fears, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Civil Liberties and the Bill of Rights by John E. Finn, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Classical Archaeology of Ancient Greece and Rome by John R. Hale, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad by Mark W. Muesse, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Conquest of the Americas by Marshall C. Eakin, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Cycles of American Political Thought by Joseph F. Kobylka, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Dante's Divine Comedy by William R. Cook, Ph.D. & Ronald B. Herzman, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Early Christianity: The Experience of the Divine by Luke Timothy Johnson, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion by Bill Messenger, M.A.
Great Courses - Emperors of Rome by Garrett G. Fagan, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Energy and Climate: Science for Citizens in the Age of Global Warming by Richard Wolfson, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Europe and Western Civilization in the Modern Age by Thomas Childers, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Fall and Rise of China by Richard Baum, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation by Dennis Dalton, Ph.D.
Great Courses - From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity by Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D., M.Div.
Great Courses - From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History by Kenneth J. Hammond, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond by Scott P. Stevens, Ph.D.
Great Courses - God and Mankind: Comparative Religions by Robert Oden, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great American Bestsellers: The Books That Shaped America by Peter Conn, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Battles of the Ancient World by Garrett G. Fagan, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Ideas of Psychology by Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Masters: Brahms-His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Masters: Haydn-His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Masters: Mahler-His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Masters: Mozart-His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Masters: Shostakovich-His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Masters: Stravinsky-His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Masters: Tchaikovsky-His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition by Multiple Professors
Great Courses - Great Presidents by Allan J. Lichtman, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Heroes and Legends: The Most Influential Characters of Literature by Thomas A. Shippey, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Historical Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D., M.Div.
Great Courses - History of Ancient Egypt by Bob Brier, Ph.D.
Great Courses - History of Ancient Rome by Garrett G. Fagan, Ph.D.
Great Courses - History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts by Robert Bucholz, D.Phil.
Great Courses - History of Hitler's Empire by Thomas Childers, Ph.D.
Great Courses - History of Science: 1700-1900 by Frederick Gregory, Ph.D.
Great Courses - History of the Supreme Court by Peter Irons, Ph.D.,M.A., J.D.
Great Courses - History of the U.S. Economy in the 20th Century by Timothy Taylor, M.Econ.
Great Courses - History of the United States by Multiple Professors
Great Courses - How Ideas Spread by Jonah Berger, Ph.D.
Great Courses - How to Listen to and Understand Opera by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - How to Read and Understand Shakespeare by Marc C. Conner, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Iliad of Homer by Elizabeth Vandiver, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Is Anyone Really Normal? Perspectives on Abnormal Psychology by Drew Westen, Ph.D
Great Courses - Life and Work of Mark Twain by Stephen Railton, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Love and Vengeance: A Course on Human Emotion by Robert C. Solomon, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Machiavelli in Context by William R. Cook, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Masters of War: History's Greatest Strategic Thinkers by Andrew R. Wilson, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Meaning from Data: Statistics Made Clear by Michael Starbird, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Medical Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths: What We Think We Know May Be Hurting Us by Steven Novella, M.D.
Great Courses - Modern Economic Issues by Robert Whaples, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Modern Physics by Sean Carroll, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Neolithic Europe by Jeremy Adams, A.B., A.M., Ph.D.
Great Courses - Nietzsche and the Postmodern Condition by Rick Roderick, Ph.D.
Great Courses - No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life by Robert C. Solomon, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Odyssey of Homer by Elizabeth Vandiver, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Old Testament by Amy-Jill Levine, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Operas of Mozart by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Peoples and Cultures of the World by Edward Fischer, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Pompeii: Daily Life in an Ancient Roman City by Steven L. Tuck, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Privacy, Property, and Free Speech: Law and the Constitution by Jeffrey Rosen
Great Courses - Questions of Value by Patrick Grim, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism: A History of 20th-Century Russia by Gary Hamburg, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Patrick N. Allitt, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Robert E. Lee and His High Command by Gary W. Gallagher, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Rome and the Barbarians by Kenneth W. Harl, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Roots of Human Behavior by Barbara J. King, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How they Know It by Steven L. Goldman, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies by Peter Saccio, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Stress and Your Body by Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Symphonies of Beethoven by Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Great Courses -The Addictive Brain by Professor Thad Polk, Ph.D.
Great Courses - The Conservative Tradition by Patrick N. Allitt, Ph.D.
Great Courses - The Good King: The American Presidency Since the Depression by Bruce Kuklick, Ph.D.
Great Courses - The Great World Religions: Beliefs, Practices, and Histories by Multiple Professors
Great Courses - The Search For a Meaningful Past: Philosophies, Theories and Interpretations of Human History by Darren Staloff, Ph.D.
Great Courses - The Skeptic's Guide to American History by Mark A. Stoler, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Theories of Human Development by Malcolm W. Watson, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Thinking about Capitalism by Jerry Z. Muller, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Thinking about Cybersecurity: From Cyber Crime to Cyber Warfare by Paul Rosenzweig
Great Courses - Tocqueville and the American Experiment by William R. Cook, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Understanding Complexity by Scott E. Page, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Understanding Investments by Connel Fullenkamp, Ph.D.
Great Courses - United States and the Middle East: 1914 to 9/11 by Salim Yaqub, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Utopia and Terror in the 20th Century by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Ph.D.
Great Courses - What are the Chances? Probability Made Clear by Michael Starbird, Ph.D.
Great Courses - Why Evil Exists by Charles Mathewes, Ph.D.
Great Courses - World's Greatest Paintings by William Kloss, M.A.
Great Courses - Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques by James Hynes
Greenspan, Alan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
Grove, Andrew S., Only the Paranoid Survive: How To Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company

H

Halberstam, David, Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made
Halberstam, David, The Education of a Coach
Halberstam, David, The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for An Olympic Gold Medal
Hamilton, Alexander, et al., The Federalist Papers
Hammett, Dashiell, The Maltese Falcon
Hansen, Morten, Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results
Hawken, Paul, Growing a Business
Hebrew Bible, The Book of Job
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and Walter Kaufmann (Translator), Hegel: Texts and Commentary
Heller, Joseph, Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest, The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway, Ernest, For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hemingway, Ernest, The Old Man and the Sea
Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha
Hillenbrand, Laura, Seabiscuit: An American Legend
Hillenbrand, Laura, Unbroken A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Hoffman, Edward, The Right to Be Human
Homer, Iliad
Hosseini, Khaled, The Kite Runner
Hugo, Victor, Les Misérables
Huntford, Roland, Last Place on Earth: Scott and Amundsen's Race to the South Pole

I

Isaacson, Walter, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Iverson, Ken, Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick

J

Jackson, Phil and Hugh Delehanty, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success
Jones, Quincy, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
Junger, Sebastian, War
Junger, Sebastian, The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

K

Kabat-Zinn Ph.D., Jon, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind
Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Kanigel, Robert, The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
Katzenbach, Jon R., and Douglas K. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization
Keneally, Thomas, Schindler’s List
Kennedy, John F., Profiles in Courage
Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
Kennedy, Robert F., Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Kidder, Tracy and Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction
Kidder, Tracy, Mountains Beyond Mountains
Kidder, Tracy, House
Kidder, Tracy, Old Friends
Kidder, Tracy, The Soul of a New Machine
Kierkegaard, Søren, The Sickness unto Death
Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling
King, Gilbert, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
King, Stephen, 11/22/63: A Novel
Kirkpatrick, Andy, Psychovertical
Kissinger, Henry, On China
Koestler, Arthur, Darkness at Noon
Kopp, Wendy, A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All
Kopp, Wendy, One Day, All Children...: The Unlikely Triumph Of Teach For America And What I Learned Along The Way
Kotter, John P., The General Managers
Krakauer, Jon, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
Krakauer, Jon, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
Kübler-Ross M.D., Elisabeth, On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and Their Own Families
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Kushner, Rabbi Harold S., When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Y

Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power

Z

Zimbardo, Philip G., and Michael R. Leippe, The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence
Zinsser, William, On Writing Well
Zukav, Gary, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics