I’ve had the pleasure of reading some incredible books and articles over my lifetime, many of which have shaped how I show up as a creative crafter, a leader, and a person. Here are some that I’ve found particularly meaningful and would highly recommend:

Creativity

Books about designing, writing, and the creative practice

  1. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott

  2. Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon

  3. Flow, Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi

  4. Start Ugly: The Unexpected Path to Everyday Creativity, David DuChemin

  5. The Elements of Content Strategy, Erin Kissane

  6. Cultivating Content Design, Beth Dunn

Leadership

Books about leading teams and growing personally

  1. No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering, Thich Nhat Hanh

  2. The Art of Communicating, Thich Nhat Hanh

  3. Untamed, Glennon Doyle

  4. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, Mark Manson

  5. Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace, Gordon Mackenzie

  6. The Empathy Exams: Essays, Leslie Jamison

  7. Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, Kim Scott

  8. Leading Content Design, Rachel McConnell

  9. High Output Management, Andrew Grove

Technology

Books about the good, the bad, and the ugly of technology throughout past and present

  1. American Technological Sublime, David Nye

  2. Technological Visions: Hopes And Fears That Shape New Technologies, Marita Sturken

  3. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan

  4. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkle

  5. If/Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future, Jill Lepore

  6. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, Carolyn Marvin

  7. Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922, Susan Douglas

  8. By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, Paul Boyer

  9. Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity, Torin Monahan

  10. Persuasive Games, Ian Bogost

Cultural history and analysis

Books that help us understand the world around us

  1. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli

  2. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, David Riesman

  3. The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, Virginia Postrel

  4. Fear: The History of a Political Ideal, Corey Robin

  5. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Drew Faust

  6. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman

  7. The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, Jill Lepore

  8. The Irony of American History, Reinhold Niebuhr

  9. The Fall of Public Man, Richard Sennett

  10. The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics and Order of Freedom

  11. The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau

  12. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America, Gary Nash

  13. Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

  14. Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige

  15. Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture, George Lipsitz

  16. Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

  17. “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular,” Stuart Hall

  18. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, Jackson Lears

Fiction

Books that help us imagine new possibilities

  1. The Power, Naomi Alderman

  2. Black Buck, Mateo Askaripour

  3. Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir

  4. On Beauty, Zadie Smith

  5. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

  6. Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet

  7. Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson

  8. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, Neil Stephenson

  9. The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer

  10. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick

  11. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami

  12. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

  13. The Circle, Dave Eggers