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George Raveling's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books George Raveling recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of George Raveling's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph book cover1

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

Ryan Holiday

4.4
Preview Summary
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius

We are stuck, stymied, frustrated. But it needn’t be this way. There is a formula for success that’s been followed by the icons of history—from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart to Ulysses S. Grant to Steve Jobs—a formula that let them turn obstacles into opportunities. Faced with impossible si
James Altucher portraitMarvin Liao portraitAlok Kejriwal portrait Recommended by James Altucher, Marvin Liao, Alok Kejriwal, and 19 others.
James Altucher portrait
James Altucher

Founder/StockPickr

My life has been beset with obstacles. It takes practice (and pain) to surmount them and achieve success. This author’s book is a how-to guide for just that. [source]

Marvin Liao portrait
Marvin Liao

Partner/500 Startups

My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]

Tools of Titans book cover2

Tools of Titans

Timothy Ferriss

4.4
Preview Summary

The latest groundbreaking book from Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek.

From the author:

“For the last two years, I’ve interviewed nearly two hundred world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. The guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to l

Tony Robbins portraitDaniel Pink portraitJames Altucher portrait Recommended by Tony Robbins, Daniel Pink, James Altucher, and 26 others.
Tony Robbins portrait
Tony Robbins

Life Coach

Tim is a brilliant thinker. The way he approaches mastery is inspiring in many ways. His latest book is no exception. What I loved about Tools of Titans is that it distills key tactics, routines and habits of the ultra-successful in actionable ways that anyone can take advantage of. Highly recommended. Every chapter is a valuable lesson. [source]

James Altucher portrait
James Altucher

Founder/StockPickr

It only came out recently. I had so many questions about it that I flew to California and interviewed him about it for my podcast.It’s the collection of all the knowledge and wisdom he gained from the 100s of people he interviewed.I leave it out on my floor and read a page or two whenever I pass it.It’s already filled with 100s of my notes (see below). It’s maybe the one physical book I keep around. The rest, including my own books, I keep on my Kindle. [source]

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos book cover3

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Jordan B. Peterson

4.3
Preview Summary
What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research.

Humorous, surprising, and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awa
Jocko Willink portraitMarc Andreessen portraitJames Altucher portrait Recommended by Jocko Willink, Marc Andreessen, James Altucher, and 3 others.
George Raveling portrait
George Raveling

One where I happened to go in to Barnes and Noble the day the book arrives, and I go through it, and it passes my test. I get back to the hotel, and I start reading the book. Before I know it, it’s 2:00 a.m. [source]

Marc Andreessen portrait
Marc Andreessen

Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz

A bracing disassembly and reconstruction of a theory of individual progress in the modern world. Fascinating compare and contrast with The Courage To Be Disliked. [source]

James Altucher portrait
James Altucher

Founder/StockPickr

Just look at the table of contents: Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) Rule 8: Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie Rule 9: Assume the person you are listening to might know something you don’t Rule 10: Be precise in your speech Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street Read this book. [source]

Ego is the Enemy book cover4

Ego is the Enemy

Ryan Holiday

4.4
Preview Summary
As in the Obstacle is the way, Ryan holiday delivers practical and inspiring philosophy, this time exploring a powerful concept that runs back centuries, across borders and schools of thought: Ego. Ego is our biggest enemy. Early in our careers, it can prevent us from learning and developing our talents. When we taste success, ego can blind us to our own faults, alienate us from others and lead to
Charlamagne Tha God portraitRobert Greene portraitJason Fried portrait Recommended by Charlamagne Tha God, Robert Greene, Jason Fried, and 23 others.
George Raveling portrait
George Raveling

This is a book I want every athlete, aspiring leader, entrepreneur, thinker, and doer to read. Ryan Holiday is one of the most promising young writers of his generation. [source]

Charlamagne Tha God portrait
Charlamagne Tha God

Radio Presenter/The Breakfast Club

This is one of my favorite authors on the planet @ryanholiday one of his many books is titled “Ego Is The Enemy.” So if you want more from him on the subject of ego than what’s in this 60 second clip that’s the book… https://t.co/0QDe9V69KV [source]

Robert Greene portrait
Robert Greene

Author

Inspiring yet practical... teaches us how to manage and tame this beast within us so that we can focus on what really matters - producing the best work possible. [source]

Steve Jobs book cover5

Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson

4.4
Preview Summary
From the author of the bestselling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, this is the exclusive, New York Times bestselling biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveti
Bill Gates portraitElon Musk portraitBrian Chesky portrait Recommended by Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Brian Chesky, and 38 others.
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life book cover6

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Walter Isaacson

4.3
In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin’s life from Boston to Philadelp
Elon Musk portraitTimothy Ferriss portraitRyan Holiday portrait Recommended by Elon Musk, Timothy Ferriss, Ryan Holiday, and 6 others.
George Raveling portrait
George Raveling

I read this book and I am blown away and a little sad because I feel like, 'God damn, I went through all this education. No one ever taught me any of this stuff.' [source]

Elon Musk portrait
Elon Musk

Founder/SpaceX

I didn't read actually very many general business books, but I like biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. Actually, a lot of them aren't really business. … Isaacson's biography on Franklin is really good. Cause he was an entrepreneur and he sort of started from nothing, actually he was just like a run away kid, basically, and created his printing business and sort of his way of doing that, and then over time all of the science and politics. I'd say certain he's one of the few people I most admire. Franklin's pretty awesome. [source]

Brandon Stanton portrait
Brandon Stanton

The biography of Benjamin Franklin I read. [source]

Einstein: His Life and Universe book cover7

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Walter Isaacson

4.4
Einstein was a rebel and nonconformist from boyhood days, and these character traits drove both his life and his science. In this narrative, Walter Isaacson explains how his mind worked and the mysteries of the universe that he discovered.
Bill Gates portraitElon Musk portraitSam Altman portrait Recommended by Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and 5 others.
George Raveling portrait
George Raveling

Anybody who can write a book on Einstein and that an idiot like me can understand the physics was a miracle. [source]

Elon Musk portrait
Elon Musk

Founder/SpaceX

I didn't read actually very many general business books, but I like biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. Actually, a lot of them aren't really business. … I also feel it’s worth reading books on scientists and engineers. [source]

Uncle Tom's Cabin book cover8

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

4.2
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War," according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories o
Ezra Levant portraitGeorge Raveling portrait Recommended by Ezra Levant and George Raveling.
Ezra Levant portrait
Ezra Levant

Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of the best books I ever read. Abraham Lincoln said to its author, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war." It's alternatively heartbreaking and laugh out loud funny. But Greg Fergus thinks it's an instruction manual. https://t.co/K53AJsQnKK [source]

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements book cover9

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Eric Hoffer

4.4
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer -- the first and most famous of his books -- was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, T
Reid Hoffman portraitEric Weinstein portraitGeorge Raveling portrait Recommended by Reid Hoffman, Eric Weinstein, George Raveling, and 1 others.
Jessica Stern portrait
Jessica Stern

This is a brilliant book. Hoffer points out that zealots can be attracted to zealotry itself. Leaders of revolutionary movements go after people who are so dissatisfied with the status quo, and with themselves, that they are willing to put everything at risk, to create a new, better, purer world. The trick is to provide them with an identity as part of something bigger than themselves. One of the fascinating things Hoffer does is to look at how the Nazi and Communist Parties were recruiting from the same pool. [source]

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future book cover10

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

Joi Ito, Jeff Howe

4.0
This "brilliant and provocative" (Walter Isaacson) guide shares nine principles to adapt and survive the technological changes shaping our future from the director of the MIT Media Lab and a veteran Wired journalist.

The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate,
Seth Godin portraitGeorge Raveling portrait Recommended by Seth Godin and George Raveling.
Seth Godin portrait
Seth Godin

Author, Marketer, Entrepreneur

Joi Ito and Jeff Howe have a new book called Whiplash. Joi's the head of MIT's Media Lab and an extraordinary thinker. Jeff brings the ideas and the lessons of the Lab to life. This is a big think, well worth a deep dive. [source]

Blue Highways book cover11

Blue Highways

William Least Heat Moon

4.3
Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads.
William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; Ne
George Raveling portrait Recommended by George Raveling.
Kissinger: A Biography book cover12

Kissinger: A Biography

Walter Isaacson

4.2
The first full-length biography of Henry Kissinger, America's most powerful, dazzling, and controversial secretary of state, by the coauthor of the bestseller The Wise Men. Drawing on 150 interviews, including more than two dozen extensive sessions with Kissinger, Isaacson follows the man from his childhood to his present years as a globe-trotting business consultant. 16 pages of photos.
George Raveling portraitScott Belsky portrait Recommended by George Raveling and Scott Belsky.
Scott Belsky portrait
Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show". [source]

13

Life Is So Good

George Dawson, Richard Glaubman

4.4

What makes a happy person, a happy life? In this remarkable book, George Dawson, a 101-year-old man who learned to read when he was 98, reflects on the philosophy he learned from his father—a belief that "life is so good"—as he offers valuable lessons in living and a fresh, firsthand view of America during the twentieth century.

Born in 1898 in Marshall, Texas, the grandson of slaves, George Dawson
George Raveling portrait Recommended by George Raveling.
14

The Mind: Its Projections and Multiple Facets

Yogi Bhajan

4.2
George Raveling portrait Recommended by George Raveling.
15

Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality

Hector Macdonald

4.1
For fans of Nudge, Sway, and The Art of Thinking Clearly, a fascinating dive into the many ways in which "competing truths" shape our opinions, behaviors, and beliefs.

We like to think that there is a clear distinction between true and false. The reality is far murkier.

Hector Macdonald has spent much of his career exploring the ways that two completely true statements about the same thing can give
George Raveling portrait Recommended by George Raveling.