Kevin Kelly's Top Book Recommendations

Kevin Kelly

This book changed my mind. It has moved me from 'find your passion, so that you can be useful' to 'be useful so that you can find your passion.' That is a big flip, but it's more honest, and that is why I am giving each of my three young adult children a copy of this unorthodox guide. [source]

Reid Hoffman

CEO/LinkedIn

Entrepreneurial professionals must develop a competitive advantage by building valuable skills. This book offers advice based on research and reality--not meaningless platitudes-- on how to invest in yourself in order to stand out from the crowd. An important guide to starting up a remarkable career. [source]

Daniel Pink

Author

Do what you love and the money will follow' sounds like great advice -- until it's time to get a job and disillusionment quickly sets in. Cal Newport ably demonstrates how the quest for 'passion' can corrode job satisfaction. If all he accomplished with this book was to turn conventional wisdom on its head, that would be interesting enough. But he goes further -- offering advice and examples that will help you bypass the disillusionment and get right to work building skills that matter. [source]

Kevin Kelly

Probably the most amazing thing you haven’t read yet. [source]

Walter Isaacson

Author

Everybody, of course, should be familiar with this book, which is a way of being taught through both parables and tales of people and their values. [source]

A.J. Jacobs

One thing that really has stuck with me is that this book talks about that you should be grateful all the time. [source]

Kevin Kelly

This book curiously led me to Jesus. The author's stance of radical honesty prompted me to attempt the same. It started my spiritual awakening. [source]

Barack Obama

Former USA President

According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, this title is among his most influential forever favorites. [source]

Tim Cook

CEO/Apple

I have two books going right now: One is the Bobby Kennedy book “Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon,” by Larry Tye that just came out. The other is quite an old book. It’s a Gandhi book “Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth” that I got interested in because we went to the Gandhi museum when we were in India recently. I tend to like nonfiction and particularly reading about people and how they lived and how they fought, and what motivated them and their philosophy and so forth. [source]

Kevin Kelly

I am now a convert. Aaron sums up all the crazy ideas about how to create teams and companies that maximize their potential by decentralizing their power—a once idealist notion that is now possible and essential. For a book that might start a revolution, it's surprisingly practical and undogmatic. There’s no fluff—it's all meat, and real news. I could think of dozens of people I know who I now want to read and study it. [source]

Arianna Huffington

Founder/The Huffington Post

Human beings can’t thrive in a work culture that uses burnout and 'being always on' as proxies for dedication and success. In Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan shows us that, in fact, workplaces that empower people to take care of themselves are far more likely to deliver sustainable performance and happiness. [source]

Seth Godin

Author, Marketer, Entrepreneur

This is the management book of the year. Clear, powerful and urgent, it's a must read for anyone who cares about where they work and how they work. [source]

Kevin Kelly

Gave me a mathematical framework for my own spirituality. [source]

Andra Zaharia

While I was thinking of the best books to add to this short list, I realized that not even half of them are directly related to digital marketing. This is because I believe that the best marketers are people who understand human nature deeply and aim to bring out the best in it. Call me naive, but that’s how I see it. If I were to want to pursue a career in marketing, I’d read … Finite and Infinite Games. [source]

Ashley Hathaway

I’d say Finite & Infinite games was my favorite & quite impactful. They were all impactful, actually. I read my altMBA books on a beach in Kauai (highly recommended). It was odd though because I was by myself and it was just- total knowledge bombs all over the place. Reading the altMBA books in rapid succession like that took a few months to digest honestly. [source]

Kevin Kelly

Over the years, I kept finding myself returning to its insights, and each time I would arrive at them at a deeper level. [source]

Steve Jurvetson

Steve Jurvetson recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show". [source]

Seth Godin

Author, Marketer, Entrepreneur

In the last week, I discovered that at least two of my smart friends hadn't read Godel, Escher, Bach. They have now. You should too. [source]

Kevin Kelly

If you have to work with programmers, it’s essential to understand that programming has a culture. This book will help you understand what programmers do, how they do it, and why. It decodes the culture of code. [source]

Timothy Ferriss

Author & Entrepreneur

An outstanding author and long-form journalist. . . . I particularly enjoyed Thompson’s section on automation. [source]

Saron Yitbarek

Thompson has accomplished the nearly impossible task of portraying the coding world exactly as it is: messy, inspiring, naive, and—at times—shameful. Coders is a beautifully written and refreshingly fair portrayal of a young industry that’s accomplished so much and still has a lot to learn. [source]

Kevin Kelly

This book makes artificial intelligence easier to understand by recasting it as a new, cheap commodity--predictions. It's a brilliant move. I found the book incredibly useful. [source]

Lawrence Summers

Chief Economist/World Bank

AI may transform your life. And Prediction Machines will transform your understanding of AI. This is the best book yet on what may be the best technology that has come along. [source]

Dominic Barton

CEO/McKinsey

Prediction Machines achieves a feat as welcome as it is unique: a crisp, readable survey of where artificial intelligence is taking us separates hype from reality, while delivering a steady stream of fresh insights. It speaks in a language that top executives and policy makers will understand. Every leader needs to read this book. [source]

Kevin Kelly

This story of a singularity always stuck with me as something to prepare for. [source]

Adam Roberts

Childhood’s End is Clarke’s best book by a long way. Alien overlords land on Earth and impose – by force – a benign and workable utopia. That sounds like a whole story there, but that’s only the start of Clarke’s compact, evocative novel. [source]

Adam Roberts

Childhood’s End is Clarke’s best book by a long way. Alien overlords land on Earth and impose – by force – a benign and workable utopia. That sounds like a whole story there, but that’s only the start of Clarke’s compact, evocative novel. [source]

Kevin Kelly

The author was the one who introduced the term 'future shock' which was that people would actually have like a resistance or a reaction to the future. [source]

Andy Stern

I think Future Shock actually did foretell the future, because it talks about how in essence we're building a new civilisation in front of our eyes. How no group of people have ever been so shocked by the ever-changing realities that have completely altered media, lifestyles, culture and work. In some ways they were the canary that was singing about a future that they saw well before anyone quite appreciated it. Interestingly, people like Newt Gingrich have taken that understanding of fundamental – in some ways radical – change, and adapted it to a new set of ideas that aren't the way that would necessarily serve the interests of people. But to his credit, he created a suite of ideas and institutions that are understanding the change. I think that's a lesson for progressives – that we also need to find the new way forward, which requires new thinking, new ideas and a willingness to be transformational as opposed to traditional. [source]