The Personal MBA. John Kaufman says reading (and practicing) these 42 books should be as good as any MBA (and that an MBA is, perhaps excessively, expensive). Some of these books are worth a read in any case.
Master Yourself
- Mastery by George Leonard
- Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton
Manage Your Life and Work
- Getting Things Done by David Allen
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Learn the Fundamentals
- What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
- Profitable Growth Is Everyone’s Business by Ram Charan
Strategic Thinking
- On Competition by Michael Porter
- Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne
The Only Thing Constant is Change
- Seeing What’s Next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
- Re-imagine by Tom Peters
Masters of Management
- The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
- First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
The Finest Minds in Business
- The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett & Lawrence Cunningham
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger & Peter Kaufman
Dollars on the Books
- The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Finance for Nonfinancial Managers by Robert A. Cooke
- Essentials of Accounting, 8th edition by Robert Anthony, Leslie Pearlman
Numbers and Negotiations
- How to Read a Financial Report by John A. Tracy
- Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton
Operational Effectiveness
- The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt & Jeff Cox
- Lean Thinking by James Womack & Daniel Jones
Form and Function
- The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel
- The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
Project Management and Marketing
- The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun
- The Marketing Playbook by John Zagula & Richard Tong
Do Your Own Thing
- The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
- The Bootstrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin
Speak Your Mind
- On Writing Well by William Zinsser
- Flawless Consulting by Peter Block
The Delicate Art of Human Relations
- How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Sell, Sell, Sell!
- The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
Economics and Worldviews
- Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
- The Economist
Businesses, Past and Present
- American Business, 1920-2000 by Thomas McCraw, John Franklin, A. S. Eisenstadt
- Brand New by Nancy F. Koehn
Rules and Morals
- Law 101 by Jay M. Feinman
- A Primer on Business Ethics by Tibor Machan & James Chesher
Analyze This
- The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch
- Principles of Statistics by M.G. Bulmer
Voices of Experience
- The Little Book of Business Wisdom by Peter Krass (Editor)
- Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management by Bill Swanson