Books I Read in 2020 & Recommend

The Coronavirus lockdown and travel restrictions gave me more time for bingeing on books this year:

• Leadership: Simon Sinek’s Start with Why (2009) explains that great leaders motivate with the WHY (a deep-rooted purpose) before defining the WHAT (the product or service) and the HOW (the process.) ☍ My Summary
• Conflict Management: Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers’ commendable I Think You’re Wrong (2019) proposes a framework for having productive conversations with those you love and yet disagree with. ☍ My Summary
• Self-Management: Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr’s The Power of Full Engagement (2003) is a persuasive reminder about pivoting to time-management to energy-management. ☍ My Summary
• Customer Service: Joseph Michelli’s The New Gold Standard (2008) describes how the Ritz-Carlton brand has programmed its organization to foster customer-centric behavior in employees at all levels. ☍ My Summary
• History & Leadership: Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2019) is a gripping testimony to the perils of hubris and a poignant monument to the untold misery it imposed upon swathes of people. ☍ My Summary
• History & Leadership: Captain Sully Sullenberger’s memoir Highest Duty (2009) as a supplement to Clint Eastwood’s Sully (2016,) the overrated drama about the US Airways Flight 1549 incident. Leading authentically starts with being in charge and understanding that your actions can make a difference. ☍ My Summary
• Self-Care: Susan Jeffers’s self-help classic Feel the Fear … and Do It Anyway (1987, 2006) is a powerful reminder to get on with the things you want to do. The momentum of positive emotions builds up as soon as you start taking action. ☍ My Summary
• Customer Service: Lee Cockerel’s The Customer Rules (2013) summarizes the many simple—but often overlooked—first principles of building a customer-oriented culture and delivering excellent customer service. ☍ My Summary
• Customer Service: Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness (2010) on how Zappos’s business model empowers employees, creates a sense of community, and fosters cult-like customer loyalty. Sadly, Hsieh died in an accident in November. ☍ My Summary
• History: Mark Binelli’s The Last Days of Detroit (2013) is an extensive chronicle of Detroit from the initial days of the French settlers to Henry Ford’s arrival in 1913, the racial unrest in 1967, and the present-day hipster arrivistes who’re trying to resurrect the city. ☍ My Summary
• Self-Care: Food historian Bee Wilson’s First Bite: How We Learn to Eat (2015) on why you eat what you eat and how you can be persuaded to eat better by changing your habits and removing barriers to change. ☍ My Summary
• History: Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s A Brief History of Humankind (2015) is a brilliant thesis on who we are and how we overcame the most extraordinary odds to dominate the world the way we do at present. ☍ My Summary
• Self-Care: Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön’s bestselling The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness (1991) is a poignant reminder that, whatever the circumstances of your life, you can become awake, more mindful, and bring your goodness to the world. ☍ My Summary
• History & Leadership: Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals (2005) is a fascinating account of how President Abraham Lincoln held the Union together through the Civil War, partially by bringing his political rivals into his cabinet and persuading them to work together. Complement with Steven Spielberg’s remarkable Lincoln (2012; Daniel Day-Lewis’s masterful portrayal of Lincoln.) ☍ My Summary
• Self-Management: Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog (2001) is a reminder that you must discover the one momentous task—the most dreaded task or the “frog”—that you need to do. ☍ My Summary
• Leadership: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002) on setting expectations, holding people accountable, and following through. ☍ My Summary
• Leadership: Mel Robbins’s The 5 Second Rule (2017) reminds you to take action before your brain can make excuses—or justifications—and gets in the way of acting on that idea. ☍ My Summary
• Inspiration: Oprah Winfrey’s The Path Made Clear (2019) is a fine-looking coffee table book with an assortment of think-positive sound bites. ☍ My Summary
• Leadership: Wall Street Journal reporters Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann’s Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric (2020) is a revealing, reasonable, and accessible narrative of how the once-prolific company was humbled by sheer misfortune and poor leadership. ☍ My Summary

See also my book recommendations from 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

My reading goals for 2021 are to be ruthless with the books that are not so good and to reread many books that have delighted me previously. The five books I reread every year are Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor, Phil Fisher’s Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive.

You may be interested in my article on how to process that pile of books you can’t seem to finish and my article on how to read faster and better.

I wish you enlightening reads in 2021. Recall the words of the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, who said, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”