Jim Collins' Book Recommendations (Updated for 2026)

1

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert B. Cialdini

4.4

Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly

Recommended by Charles T. Munger, Dan Ariely, Jim Collins, and 40 others.

Charles T. Munger

Vice Chairman/Berkshire Hathaway

Robert Cialdini has had a greater impact on my thinking on this topic than any other scientist. [source]

Dan Ariely

Author

It covers a range of ways in which we end up doing things, and how we don’t understand why we’re doing them. [source]

Max Levchin

Co-founder/PayPal, CEO/Affirm, Investor

Max Levchin recommended this book as an answer to "What business books would you advise young entrepreneurs read?" [source]

2

A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton

John McPhee

4.2

When John McPhee met Bill Bradley, both were at the beginning of their careers. A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee's first book, is about Bradley when he was the best basketball player Princeton had ever seen. McPhee delineates for the reader the training and techniques that made Bradley the extraordinary athlete he was, and this part of the book is a blueprint of superlative basketball. But athleti

Recommended by Jim Collins, Daniel Pink, and Erik Torenberg.

Jim Collins

Author

About Bill Bradley. [source]

Erik Torenberg

@bencasnocha His book on Bradley is perhaps the best basketball related literature I’ve read, followed by Bradley’s own book. [source]

3

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

John Doerr

4.3

Preview Summary

Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth--and how it can help any organization thrive.

In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin h

Recommended by Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Walter Isaacson, and 6 others.

Jim Collins

Author

Measure What Matters deserves to be fully embraced by every person responsible for performance, in any walk of life. John Doerr makes Andy Grove a mentor to us all. If every team, leader, and individual applied OKRs with rigor and imagination, all sectors of society could see an exponential increase in productivity and innovation. [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

John explains how OKRs Objectives and Key Results work and shows how you can apply them in all sorts of situations. I’d recommend John’s book for anyone interested in becoming a better manager (and I’d say that even if I hadn’t been interviewed for a super-nice chapter about the Gates Foundation). [source]

Reid Hoffman

CEO/LinkedIn

Whether you're a seasoned CEO or a first-time entrepreneur, you'll find valuable lessons, tools, and inspiration in the pages of Measure What Matters. I'm glad John invested the time to share these ideas with the world. [source]

Cover unavailable

4

How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart

Robert Greenberg

4.4

From one of the most trusted names in continuing education-the knowledge you need to unlock "the most abstract and sublime of all the arts."

Whether you're listening in a concert hall or on your iPod, concert music has the power to move you. The right knowledge can deepen the ability of this music to edify, enlighten, and stir the soul. In How to Listen to Great Music, Professor Robert Greenberg,

Recommended by Jim Collins.

5

Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #2)

Robert A. Caro

4.5

With this, the second volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro enters into the central narrative of his magisterial biography - one of the richest, most intensive and revealing examinations ever undertaken of an American President.

Here we have Johnson's service in the Second World War and the foundation of his long-concealed fortunes- as well as the facts behind the myths he created abou

Recommended by Jim Collins and Van Jones.

Van Jones

I’m always fascinated by people from humble beginnings in our country who rise up to do great things, whether that’s Lyndon Johnson or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or even Jesse Jackson. It’s almost a common trope that you have kids who grow up in very humble, hard backgrounds, who in our country can rise to become tremendous champions. [source]

6

Love and War (North and South, #2)

John Jakes

4.4

The Hazards and the Mains -- the first fatal shot fired at Fort Sumter divided them irrevocably with loyalties more powerful than family ties. The young would clash on the bloody battlefields of Bull Run and Fredericksburg, while in intrigue-ridden Washington and Richmond strong-willed men and beautiful women would defend their principles with their lives...or satisfy illicit cravings with schemes

Recommended by Jim Collins.

Cover unavailable

7

The Second World War

Winston S. Churchill

4.4

The definitive, Nobel Prize–winning history of World War II, universally acknowledged as a magnificent historical reconstruction and an enduring work of literature

From Britain's darkest and finest hour to the great alliance and ultimate victory, the Second World War remains the most pivotal event of the twentieth century. Winston Churchill was not only the war's greatest leader, he was the free wo

Recommended by Jim Collins.

8

The Guns of August

Barbara Tuchman

4.4

"More dramatic than fiction...THE GUNS OF AUGUST is a magnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained....The product of painstaking and sophisticated research."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and

Recommended by Jim Collins, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Erik Martin, and 2 others.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

So beautifully written. But more importantly, for me, she was writing about battles and military stuff and things that you don’t imagine that sometimes a woman might be so adept at. [source]

Erik Martin

This book started my obsession with WWI, illustrating how drastically the world went from interrelated monarchies and cavalry charges to chemical warfare between modern nation states. If you want to see what disruption looks like, there's no greater period in human history. [source]

Matt Calkins

The best way to understand how the world resolves its conflicts and its tensions is by looking at how a conflict that has been studied thoroughly, like World War I, unfolded and resolved. Business is like this too. If anyone were to ever get to the heart of Coke vs. Pepsi, they would see a parade of mistakes in the same way World War I looks in retrospect—so many ways you could have done better. [source]

9

Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes

F. B. M. De Waal, Frans De Waal

4.5

The great apes, like humans, can recognize themselves in mirrors. They communicate by sound and gesture, form bands along what can only be called political lines, and sometimes engage in what is very clearly organized warfare. (Less frequently, too, they practice cannibalism.) In Chimpanzee Politics Frans de Waal, a longtime student of simian behavior, analyzes the behavior of a captive tribe of c

Recommended by Jim Collins and Yuval Noah Harari.

Yuval Noah Harari

Historian

It completely changed my view of chimpanzees and Homo sapiens alike. Probably the most funny science book I have ever read. A must-read for politicians of all species! [source]

10

The plague

Albert Camus, Stuart Gilbert

4.2

A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people.

Recommended by Jim Collins, Arthur Ammann, Jenny Davidson, and 1 others.

Arthur Ammann

It’s an amazing book, considering Camus probably never personally experienced a plague. In his novel, Camus captured everything that we were dealing with in the Aids epidemic without Aids existing at that time. Without his knowing what the consequences of the HIV plague were going to be, he seems to have gotten all the actors in there and the myriad of things that you wrestle with. [source]

Jenny Davidson

Albert Camus’s The Plague probably remains the best-known novel on the topic of epidemic disease. It tells the story of those involved in an epidemic in a North African setting. It is very interested in the details about how quarantines are enforced and the role not just of the government, but of individuals who band together into groups to manage the epidemic. [source]

Stephen Breyer

He talks about the plague. Well, the plague is that part of a human being which can be very evil. That germ, he says at the end, never dies, it simply goes into remission. It lurks. It lurks in the cupboards, it lurks in the hallways, it lurks in the filing cabinets. [source]

11

The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History

Stephen Jay Gould

4.3

With sales of well over one million copies in North America alone, the commercial success of Gould's books now matches their critical acclaim. The Panda's Thumb will introduce a new generation of readers to this unique writer, who has taken the art of the scientific essay to new heights.

Were dinosaurs really dumber than lizards? Why, after all, are roughly the same number of men and women born int

Recommended by Jim Collins.

12

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Sheryl Sandberg

4.2

Preview Summary

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is a massive cultural phenomenon and its title has become an instant catchphrase for empowering women. The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on the cover of Time magazine, and sparked ferocious deb

Recommended by Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, and 13 others.

Jim Collins

Author

Sheryl Sandberg has done a tremendous service with this work. It offers a vital and sharp message, for women and men. We need great leaders in key seats spread throughout all sectors of society, and we simply cannot afford to lose 50 percent of the smartest, most capable people from competing for those seats. Provocative, practical, and inspired! [source]

Mark Zuckerberg

Founder/Facebook

For the past five years, I've sat at a desk next to Sheryl and I've learned something from her almost every day. She has a remarkable intelligence that can cut through complex processes and find solutions to the hardest problems. Lean In combines Sheryl's ability to synthesize information with her understanding of how to get the best out of people. The book is smart and honest and funny. Her words will help all readers - especially men - to become better and more effective leaders. [source]

Oprah Winfrey

CEO/O Network

Honest and brave... The new manifesto for women in the workplace. [source]

13

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process

John McPhee

4.3

The long-awaited guide to writing long-form nonfiction by the legendary author and teacher

Draft No. 4 is an elucidation of the writer's craft by a master practitioner. In a series of playful but expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he's gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writer

Recommended by Jim Collins, Daniel Pink, and Catalina Penciu.

Jim Collins

Author

Describes to all of us who struggle with words the struggle of writing. [source]

Catalina Penciu

My current obsession is John McPhee. He's a creative nonfiction wizard, and as soon as I got my hands on Draft No. 4, where he explains quite vividly how he chooses the structure of his stories, I was hooked. He even mentions creating an entire article based on a spiral-like diagram structure, before even starting to actually write the piece. [source]

14

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

Brent Schlender

4.4

#1 New York Times Bestseller There have been many books—on a large and small scale—about Steve Jobs, one of the most famous CEOs in history. But this book is different from all the others.

Becoming Steve Jobs takes on and breaks down the existing myth and stereotypes about Steve Jobs. The conventional, one-dimensional view of Jobs is that he was half-genius, half-jerk from youth, an irascible and s

Recommended by Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, Jim Collins, and 4 others.

Jim Collins

Author

Gives a fresh perspective on Steve Jobs’ journey from inspiring but immature entrepreneur into an inspired and mature company-builder. [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Has me thinking of my old friend. A true visionary. [source]

Jack Dorsey

Co-Founder/Twitter

Square would not exist without the work and persistence of Steve Jobs. I am forever grateful. Amazing read. [source]