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39 Books to Help You Make Decisions in Life

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Parrish is the entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street and the host of The Knowledge Project Podcast, where he focuses on turning timeless insights into action. His new book is Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results

At Re:Think Decision Making in February, I asked participants to offer up some books on decision making. (If you’d like to be one of the first to know when I open up registration for Re:Think Decision making 2016 in Austin, TX , join the list.)

The crowd at the event was, in the words of one participants, the finest crowd you’ll find at a public event. These people are paid to make decisions for a living and want to find every edge they can. So when I asked them what books on decision making they read and recommend, you can bet they had a lot to say.

Here’s the list:

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
By: Chip & Dan Heath

How to Measure Anything
By: Douglas Hubbard

How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody
By: Abby Covert

Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter
By: Cass Sunstein & Reid Hastie

The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation
By: Henri Lipmanowicz & Keith McCandless

Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers
By: Dave Gray, Sunni Brown & James Macanufo

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
By: Jonathan Haidt

Yes or No: The Guide to Better Decisions
By: Spencer Johnson

The Little Book of Talent
By: Daniel Coyle

The Worry Solution: Using Breakthrough Brain Science to Turn Stress and Anxiety into Confidence and Happiness
By: Martin Rossman

Shantaram: A Novel
By: Gregory David Roberts

The Art of Living
By: Epictetus

The Education of a Value Investor
By: Guy Spier

Devil Take the Hindmost: a History of Financial Speculation
By: Edward Chancellor

Click: The Art and Science of Getting from Impasse to Insight
By: Eve Grodnitzky

The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
By: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

The Back of the Napkin & How to Solve Problems and Sell Ideas
By: Dan Roan

Crossing to Safety
By: Wallace Stegner

Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less
By: Barry Schwartz

Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making
By: Gary Klein

The Social Animal
By: David Brooks

The Laws of Simplicity
By: John Maeda

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness
By: Richard H. Thaler

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
By: Edwin Lefevre & Roger Lowenstein

This Will Make You Smarter
By: John Brockman

A more Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas
By: Warren Berger

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice
By: Bill Browden

The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
By: Oliver Sacks

Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II
By: Geoffrey Parker

Seeking Wisdom
By: Peter Bevelin

Mastery
By: Rober Greene

Synchronicity: The Innes Path of Leadership
By: Joseph Jaworski

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business
By: Erin Meyer

Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen
By: Mark Buchanan

Family Fortunes
By: Bill Bonner

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
By: Robert Cialdini

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
By: Peter D. Kaufman & Charlie T. Munger

The Brain that Changes Itself
By: Norman Doidge

And there you have it — a list of books on decision making that should give you a great starting point.

This piece originally appeared on Farnam Street.

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