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Top Experts Always Recommend These 4 Books

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Ideas
By Eric Barker
Barker is the author of Barking Up The Wrong Tree

So far I’ve done interviews with 22 experts on various fields from happiness, to expertise, to influence and irrationality.

I’ve asked most of them which books they highly recommend.

Which ones got mentioned most often?

The Top Books Experts Recommend:

  • Robert Cialdini’s Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion (3 times)
  • Dan Pink’s To Sell is Human (2 times)
  • Adam Grant’s Give and Take (2 times)
  • Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow (2 times)

    • Books Experts Recommend – By Topic

    Leadership

    Gautam Mukunda, professor at Harvard Business School and author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter recommends:

  • Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
  • Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
  • Clayton Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?
  • Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness
  • Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
  • Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
  • Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower

    • Power

    Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor at Stanford MBA school and author of Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t recommends:

  • Robert Cialdini’s Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion

    • Networking

    Adam Grant, professor at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success recommends:

  • Liz Wiseman’s Multipliers
  • Dan Pink’s To Sell is Human
  • Susan Cain’s Quiet
  • Robert Cross’ The Hidden Power of Social Networks
  • Wayne Baker’s Achieving Success Through Social Capital

    • Marketing and Advertising

    Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, recommends:

  • Pratkanis and Aronson’s Age of Propaganda
  • Robert Cialdini’s Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion
  • Schwartz and Edelston’s Breakthrough Advertising
  • Claude Hopkins’ My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising

    • Expertise

    Cal Newport, professor at Georgetown and author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, recommends:

  • Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.
  • Geoff Colvin’s Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
  • David Shenk’s The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ
  • Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success
  • Stephen Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
  • Frans Johansson’s The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World

    • Happiness

    Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project recommends:

  • Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice
  • Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness
  • Jonathan Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis
  • John Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson

    • Human Behavior

    Michael Norton, professor at Harvard Business School and author of Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending recommends:

  • Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational
  • Danny Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow
  • Adam Grant’s Give and Take
  • The books of Malcolm Gladwell
  • Don Campbell’s Unobtrusive Measures

    • Influence and Persuasion

    Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, recommends:

  • Packard and Miller’s Hidden Persuaders
  • Daniel Pink’s To Sell is Human
  • Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment
  • Adam Grant’s Give and Take

    • Charisma

    Olivia Fox Cabane, author of The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism recommends:

  • Robert Cialdini’s Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion

    • Irrationality

    Dan Ariely, professor at Duke University and author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions recommends:

  • Chabris and Simon’s The Invisible Gorilla
  • Belsky and Gilovich’s Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes
  • Jonah Berger’s Contagious
  • Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge

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    This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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