The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List
Mastering Business Through Self-Education
2007 Edition: Revised and Updated
by Josh Kaufman
Business schools don’t have a monopoly on worldly wisdom. If you're serious about learning advanced business principles, the Personal MBA can help. The Personal MBA recommended reading list is the tangible result of hundreds of hours of reading and research, and features only the very best books the business press has to offer. So skip the fancy diploma and $150,000 loan - you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books.
To learn more about the Personal MBA, read the manifesto.
Tip: you can click on the category name to read detailed descriptions of each book, or on the book title to jump directly to Amazon.com.
Quick Start
10 Days to Faster Reading by Abby Marks-Beale
StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
The Personality Code by Travis Bradberry
Personal Effectiveness
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
Ready for Anything by David Allen
The Simplicity Survival Handbook by Bill Jensen
The Dip by Seth Godin
Cut to the Chase by Stuart Levine
On Writing Well by William Zinsser
Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst
The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz
The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way by Jeffrey Gitomer
Applied Psychology
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Secrets of Consulting by Gerald M. Weinberg
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein
Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales
3-D Negotiation by David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius
Bargaining For Advantage by G. Richard Shell
Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
Commercialization
The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun
Product Design and Development by Karl Ulrich and Steven Eppinger
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt
Lean Thinking by James Womack and Daniel Jones
All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin
Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba
Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got by Jay Abraham
The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
Entrepreneurship
Bankable Business Plans by Edward Rogoff
The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
The Bootstrapper's Bible by Seth Godin
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas by Dan Kennedy
Getting Started in Consulting by Alan Weiss
Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter F. Drucker
Management
The Practice of Management by Peter F. Drucker
First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner & James Harter
Growing Great Employees by Erika Andersen
The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig
The Unwritten Laws of Business by W.J. King
Strategy
Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies by Nikos Mourkogiannis
Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
Seeing What's Next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
The Elegant Solution by Matthew E. May
Analysis
Essentials of Accounting (9th Edition) by Robert N. Anthony and Leslie K. Breitner
The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Finance by Robert A. Cooke
How to Read a Financial Report by John A. Tracy
Marketing Metrics by Paul W. Farris, Neil T. Bendle, Phillip E. Pfeifer, and David J. Reibstein
The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch
How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff
Business History
Money and Power: The History of Business by Howard Means
An Empire of Wealth by John Steele Gordon
Brand New by Nancy F. Koehn
Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
The Book of Business Wisdom by Peter Krass
The Book of Leadership Wisdom by Peter Krass
The Book of Management Wisdom by Peter Krass
The Book of Entrepreneurs' Wisdom by Peter Krass
The Book of Investing Wisdom by Peter Krass
Business Reference
Business: The Ultimate Resource from Basic Books
Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler
Finance for the Non-Financial Manager by Gene Siciliano
The Streetwise Small Business Book of Lists edited by Gene Marks
Law 101 by Jay M. Feinman
Principles of Statistics by M.G. Bulmer
The PMBA Motherlode: All of the Books, Better Price
For your convenience, I've created a way to order all of the books on the PMBA Recommended Reading list from Amazon.com quickly and at a discounted price. For more details, check out the PMBA Motherlode page by clicking on the box below:
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