Recommended Reading

Here’s  a short, but growing list of books I recommend. Buying them via these links will earn you a sizable discount and I receive a small commission from Amazon.com that I donate back to charities like Family and Children’s Association, the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (LICADD) and other local organizations.

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferriss. In 700 pages, the best-selling author and hundreds of contributors give you thousands of action steps to make you healthy, wealthy and wise. It’s a business book, but more importantly it’s a lifestyle book that will make you better in all aspects of your life.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. This successful entrepreneur & inventor presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter Diamandis. A radical, how-to guide for using exponential technologies, moonshot thinking, and crowd-powered tools, this wonderful book unfolds in three parts. Part One focuses on the exponential technologies that are disrupting today’s Fortune 500 companies and enabling upstart entrepreneurs to go from “I’ve got an idea” to “I run a billion-dollar company” faster than ever before. The authors provide exceptional insight into the power of 3D printing, artificial intelligence, robotics, networks and sensors, and synthetic biology. Part Two draws on insights from billionaires such as Larry Page, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos, revealing their entrepreneurial secrets. Finally, Bold closes with a look at the best practices that allow anyone to leverage today’s hyper-connected crowd like never before. Here, the authors discuss how to design and use incentive competitions, launch million-dollar crowdfunding campaigns to tap into tens of billions of dollars of capital, and finally how to build communities—armies of exponentially enabled individuals willing and able to help today’s entrepreneurs make their boldest dreams come true.

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson. Since taking over TED in the early 2000s, this book’s author, Chris Anderson has shown how carefully crafted short talks can unlock empathy, stir excitement, spread knowledge, and promote a shared dream. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview. Done right, a talk is more powerful than anything in written form. This short book explains powerful public speaking and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula; no two talks should be the same. The goal is for you to give the speech that only you can give.
Chris Anderson has worked behind the scenes with all the TED speakers who have inspired us the most, and here he shares insights from such favorites as Sir Ken Robinson, Amy Cuddy, Bill Gates, Elizabeth Gilbert, Salman Khan, Dan Gilbert, Mary Roach, Matt Ridley, and dozens more — everything from how to craft your talk’s content to how you can be most effective on stage. This is the 21st-century’s new manual for truly effective communication and it is a must-read for anyone who strives to create impact with their ideas.