Keith J. Cunningham's
Reading List

T he books below are the best of the ones I have read over the last few years… some of them are classics. There are hundreds of less valuable, insightful or fluffy books I have read that did not make the cut. Read these books for some great advice and wisdom!... KJC

1. The Road Less Stupid – Advice from the Chairman of the Board- by Keith J. Cunningham, December 2017

2. The Ultimate Blueprint for an Insanely Successful Business - by Keith J. Cunningham, December 2011

3. Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters - by Richard Rumelt, July 2011

4. Who - by Geoff Smart and Randy Street, September 2008

5. The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists – by Richard Rumelt, May 2022

6. The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor - by Howard Marks, May 2011

7. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts - by Annie Duke, February 2018

8. The Obstacle is the Way - by Ryan Holiday, May 2014

9. The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management - by Peter Drucker, July 2008

10. The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results - by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, April 2013

11. The 5 Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy - by Michael E. Porter, March 2009

12. The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done - by Peter Drucker, January 2017

13. Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual - by Jocko Willink, January 2020

14. Talent Magnet: How to Attract and Keep the Best People - by Mark Miller, February 2018

15. Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - by Harry Beckwith, March 1997

16. The 5 Dysfunctions of Team - by Patrick M. Lencioni, April 2002

17. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life - by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, April 1998

18. How We Decide - by Jonah Lehrer, February 2009

19. Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts - by Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris, January 2007

20. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win - by Jocko Willink, January 2017

21. Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side - by Howard Marks, October 2018

22. Managing For Results - by Peter Drucker, October 2006

23. Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way - by Ram Charan and Dennis Carey, December 2013

24. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers - by Ben Horowitz, March 2014

25. Managing at the Speed of Change - by Daryl R. Conner, January 1993

26. Stacking the Deck: How to Lead Breakthrough Change Against Any Odds - by David S. Pottruck, October 2014

27. Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organization's Enduring Success - by Richard L. Hughes, February 2005

28. Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition - by Frederick Brooks Jr., January 1995

29. Debt: The First 5,000 Years - by David Graeber, October 2014

30. How Champions Think: In Sports and in Life - by Dr. Bob Rotella and Bob Cullen, May 2016

31. Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time - by Jeff Sutherland and J.J. Sutherland, September 2014

32. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less - by Greg McKeown, December 2020

33. Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family - by Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia, October 2015

34. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products - by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover, December 2013

35. Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be - by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter, May 2015

36. Warren Buffett's Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World's Greatest Investor - by Jeremy C. Miller, May 2017

37. The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life - by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, September 2002

38. Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business - by Gino Wickman, April 2012

39. Change the Culture, Change the Game: The Breakthrough Strategy for Energizing Your Organization and Creating Accountability for Results - by Roger Connors and Tom Smith, June 2011

40. Jobs to Be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation - by Stephen Wunker and Jessica Wattman, November 2016

41. The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level - by Gay Hendricks, May 2010

42. Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition - by Charles T. Munger and Peter D. Kaufman, January 2005

43. The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success - by William N. Thorndike, October 2012

44. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It - by Chris Voss, May 2016

45. Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose - by Rajendra Sisodia, Jagdish Sheth, January 2007

46. Results That Last: Hardwiring Behaviors That Will Take Your Company to the Top - by Quint Studer, October 2007

47. A Beautiful Constraint: How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It's Everyone's Business - by Adam Morgan and Mark Barden, January 2015

48. The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon - by Steve Anderson and Karen Anderson, September 2019

49. Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine - by Mike Michalowicz, February 2017

50. Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel - by Sam Zell, May 2017

51. The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts - by Rhiannon Beaubien and Shane Parrish, March 2020

52. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - by Robert Cialdini, December 2006

53. Thriving on Chaos - by Tom Peters, August 1991

54. Critical Path - by Buckminster Fuller, June 2002

55. Out of the Crisis - by W. Edwards Deming, October 2018

56. The Deming Management Method - by Mary Walton, 1988

57. How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices – by Annie Duke, October 2020

58. A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World's Greatest Management Teacher - by William Cohen, March 2009

59. Drucker on Leadership: New Lessons from the Father of Modern Management - by William Cohen, October 2009

60. The New Realities - by Peter Drucker, 2003

61. Innovation and Entrepreneurship - by Peter Drucker, May 2006

62. The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization - by Peter Drucker, April 2008

63. Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking - by Tim Hurson, September 2007

64. Mastery - by Robert Greene, October 2013

65. The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life - by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan, August 2011

66. This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly - by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, August 2011
67. The Upside of Irrationality - by Dr. Dan Ariely, May 2011

68. Performance Management: Changing Behavior that Drives Organizational Effectiveness - by Aubrey C. Daniels and Jon S. Bailey, April 2014

69. Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs - by David Parmenter, January 2007

70. The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and Change SIMPLE - by Paul Z. Jackson and Mark McKergow, December 2006

71. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity - by David Allen and James Fallows, March 2015

72. A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas - by Warren Berger, September 2016

73. Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice - by Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, October 2016

74. The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability - by Roger Connors and Tom Smith, May 2010

75. The Halo Effect: …and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers - by Phil Rosenzweig, June 2014

76. Measure What Matters - by John Doerr, April 2018

77. Necessary Endings - by Henry Cloud, January 2011

78. Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen - by Donald Miller, October 2017

79. Principles: Life and Work - by Ray Dalio, September 2017

80. Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World - by George Gilder, June 2013

81. Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger - by Peter Bevelin, 2003

82. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us - by Seth Godin, October 2008

83. An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor - by Michael Smith, March 2010

84. Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion - by Pema Chodron, March 2018

85. The Talent Code - by Daniel Coyle, January 2009

86. Art of Leadership - by J. Donald Walters, September 2001

87. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't - by Simon Sinek, May 2017

88. Start with Why - by Simon Sinek, December 2011

89. Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics - by Charles Krauthammer, October 2013

90. Thinking, Fast and Slow - by Daniel Kahneman, April 2013

91. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder - by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, January 2014

92. The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary - by Mark Sanborn, April 2004

93. The Encore Effect: How to Achieve Remarkable Performance in Anything You Do - by Mark Sanborn, September 2008

94. The Black Swan - by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, January 2007

95. Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life - by Larry Winget, January 2004

96. What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful - by Marshall Goldsmith, January 2007

97. Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else - by Geoff Colvin, May 2010

98. Talent Is Never Enough: Discover the Choices That Will Take You Beyond Your Talent - by John C. Maxwell April 2007

99. The Secret of a Winning Culture - by John R. Childress and Larry E. Senn, November 1999

100. When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market - by John Yokoyama and Joseph Michelli PhD, August 2004

101. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - by Alfred Lansing, April 2015

102. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know - by Adam Grant, February 2021

103. Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal - by Oren Klaff, February 2011

104. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers - by Geoffrey Moore, July 1999

105. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - by Malcolm Gladwell, January 2002

106. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - by Malcolm Gladwell, April 2007

107. Memos to the President: A Guide through Macroeconomics for the Busy Policymaker - by Charles Schultze, June 1992

108. Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes - by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, February 2004

109. The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action - by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, January 2000

110. The Wisdom of Crowds - by James Surowiecki, August 2005

111. The Trimtab Factor - by Harold Willens, 1984

112. The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals - by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling, April 2016

113. Outliers - by Malcolm Gladwell, June 2011

114. How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In - by Jim Collins, May 2009

115. The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society - by Eric D. Beinhocker, September 2007

116. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives - by Leonard Mlodinow, May 2009

117. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk - by Peter L. Bernstein, August 1998

118. The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets - by William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst, August 2005

119. The Nine American Lifestyles: Who We are and where We're Going - by Arnold Mitchell, 1983

120. Managing Corporate Lifecycles - by Ichak Adizes, December 2014

121. The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel - by Benjamin Graham, February 2006

122. Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street - by John Brooks, August 2014

123. A Short History of Financial Euphoria - by John Kenneth Galbraith, January 1990

124. Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Greatest Investor - by Janet Lowe, August 2007

125. The Tao of Warren Buffett - by Mary Buffett, January 2009

126. Warren Buffett's Management Secrets: Proven Tools for Personal and Business Success - by Mary Buffett, and David Clark, December 2009

127. Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements: The Search for the Company with a Durable Competitive Advantage - by Mary Buffett and David Clark, October 2008

128. Memos from the Chairman - by Alan Greenberg, March 1996

129. The Warren Buffett Way - by Robert Hagstrom, September 2013

130. The Origin of Financial Crises: Central Banks, Credit Bubbles, and the Efficient Market Fallacy - by George Cooper, October 2008

131. Misleading Indicators: How to Reliably Measure Your Business - by Philip Green and George Gabor, February 2012

132. The Einstein of Money: The Life and Timeless Financial Wisdom of Benjamin Graham - by Joe Carlen, July 2012

133. 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done - by Peter Bregman, September 2011

134. Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver: Protect Your Financial Future - by Michael Maloney, August 2008

135. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs, (New Rules Social Media Series) - by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, October 2009

136. Reinventing the Wheel - The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers - by Chris Zane, March 2011

137. Outliers: The Story of Success - by Malcolm Gladwell, November 2008

138. Manias, Panics and Crashes - A History of Financial Crises - by Charles P. Kindleberger, Robert Aliber, and Robert Solow, October 2005

139. Oh the Places You'll Go - by Dr Seuss, April 1993

140. Reinvention: How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life - by Brian Tracy, January 2009

141. Where Have All the Leaders Gone? - by Lee Iacocca, April 2008

142. Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else - by John Gordon, May 2009

143. Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life - by Eugene O'Kelly, September 2007

144. Handbook for Revolutionaries - by Noel Tichy, 1993

145. The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It - by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister, December 2019

146. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles - by Steven Pressfield, January 2012

147. The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook and the Dance of Change - by Peter Senge, September 2000

148. Zag - by Marty Neumeier, September 2006

149. The Purple Cow - by Seth Godin, May 2003

150. Financial Intelligence - by Karen Berman, Joe Knight, and John Case, January 2006

151. Growing a Business - by Paul Hawken, October 1988

152. Little Red Book of Selling - by Jeffrey Gitomer, September 2004

153. Secrets of Closing the Sale - by Zig Ziglar, October 2004

154. The 100 Best Business Books of all Time - by Jack Covert, February 2009

155. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, July 2008

156. Relaxation Response - by M.D. Herbert Benson and Miriam Z. Klipper, February 2000

157. Thank God It's Monday - by Roxanne Emmerich, April 2009

158. With Winning in Mind - by Lanny R. Bassham, November 1996

159. Entrepreneur and Small Business Problem Solver - by William A. Cohen PhD, December 2005

160. The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance - by Josh Waitzkin, May 2008

161. The Infinite Game - by Simon Sinek, October 2019

162. Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Program - by Urban Meyer and Wayne Coffey, August 2017

163. Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor and Lead - by John Shook and Jim Womack, June 2008

164. Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street - by Fred Schwed, Peter Arno, December 2005

165. Paid to Think: A Leader's Toolkit for Redefining Your Future - by David Goldsmith, October 2013

166. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't - by Verne Harnish, October 2014

167. The Human Fabric: Unleashing the Power of Core Energy in Everyone - by Bijoy Goswami and David K. Wolpert, November 2004

168. Amaze Every Customer Every Time: 52 Tools for Delivering the Most Amazing Customer Service on the Planet - by Shep Hyken, September 2013

169. The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator - by Leigh Thompson, June 2014

170. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think - by Hans Rosling, April 2020

171. Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World - by Stanley Gen. McChrystal, Tantum Collins, May 2015

172. Getting More: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life - by Stuart Diamond, August 2012

173. The Fifth Risk - by Michael Lewis, December 2019

174. Power Score: Your Formula for Leadership Success - by Geoff Smart, Randy Street, June 2015

175. Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days - by Joey Coleman, April 2018

176. You 2: A High Velocity Formula for Multiplying Your Personal Effectiveness in Quantum Leaps - by Price Pritchett, February 2012

177. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds: All Volumes - Complete and Unabridged - by Charles Mackay, August 2020

178. 24 Assets: Create a digital, scalable, valuable and fun business that will thrive in a fast changing world - by Daniel Priestley, May 2017

179. The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind - by Jonah Berger, March 2020

180. The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds - by Michael Lewis, October 2017

181. 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything – by Mauro Guillen, August 2020

182. Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind – by Nancy Kline, June 2015

183. Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together – by William Isaacs, September 2019

184. Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail – by Ray Dalio, November 2021

185. Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self Control – by Ryan Holiday, September 2022

186. Process!: How Discipline and Consistency Will Set You and Your Business Free – by Mike Paton and Lisa Gonzalez, September 2022

187. It Takes What it Takes: How to Think Neutrally and Gain Control of Your Life – by Trevor Moawad, February 2020

188. Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace – by Gordon MacKenzie, April 1998

189. Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace – by Gordon MacKenzie, April 1998

190. How to Lead: Wisdom from the World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders and Game Changers – by David Rubenstein, September 2020

191. The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization – by Peter Zeihan, June 2022


"Our world suffers from terminal normality."
~ Keith J. Cunningham