Best Business Books of All Time

What business books should I read? Below is our must-read list of the best business books of all time.

Perhaps you are a beginner just entering the business world or are looking for the best entrepreneur books. Or perhaps you are an experienced professional seeking the best management books. Or maybe, just maybe, you want to find the best books on how to run a small business.

Reading great business books is one of the most cost-effective methods to become a whip-smart business person. As business book editors, we read a lot of books — and this curated book list is to bring you the best choices.

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Top 10 Business Books of All Time

The first group of books we looked at is the top business books overall. You may have heard of some of these books because they are classics. These are some of the all-time most popular business books — must-read choices:

How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to Win Friends and Influence People is a classic for any professional person. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is about people and that’s the secret. Use the Dale Carnegie system to win friends, influence people, and connect with employees and team members in an authentic way.

This is Marketing

This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See is an Amazon bestseller by veteran marketer Seth Godin. You don’t have to be a professional marketer to realize that marketing is everywhere. Seth Godin addresses the colossal shift in marketing from pushing your message and your offer down the throats of unwilling customers, to focus your marketing efforts on “people like us”. Get this Seth Godin book on Amazon.

Deep Work

If you want to get the right things done, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport will show you how. Instead of multitasking. Deep Work shares research and a common-sense process that will inspire you to dig in and get stuff done. If you need to get and stay focused on achieving your goals, read Deep Work.

The Innovators Dilemma

In the age of disruption, you need a solid guide for figuring out how to pivot. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen. Christensen focuses on showing you how to listen to customers so that you know where to invest your resources.

First Break All the Rules

If you want to be the best founder you can be, you’ll have to break some rules. First, Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham is based on an extensive research study by the Gallup Organization.

Positioning

First published in 1989, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout is a classic marketing book. If you do nothing more in marketing, you should learn how to position your brand in the mind of your customer. Ries and Trout include dozens of real-world cases and insightful analyses. Positioning is required reading if you are looking for tips on breakthrough advertising.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz is considered an icon by many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers is based on Horowitz’s popular blog and provides strategies for navigating building and running a startup. Ben Horowitz shares his best advice on how to fire employees (even a friend), confront competitors, and maybe most importantly, how to cultivate a CEO mentality.

Influence

When it comes to influence and persuasion, the one name that comes up most often is Robert Cialdini. His groundbreaking book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a book that gives you greater insight into the psychology behind persuasion and marketing in a way that will help you grow personally and professionally, Robert Cialdini outlines the six principles of persuasion in a logical manner.

Good to Great

Ever wondered why some companies succeed and others don’t? Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins provides a compelling answer. First published in 2001, the primary lesson in Good to Great has remained relevant over the years — discipline. Even though some of the companies listed weren’t able to sustain their greatness, the insights by the author remain relevant.

Built to Last

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras is the result of a six-year research study about what qualities make visionary companies. The authors focused on 18 well known, well established, and healthy companies (‘visionaries’), and compared them to a counterpart in their niche or industry. Bet you didn’t know that the term “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” was coined by Jim Collins in Built to Last.

Best Business Books for Beginners

The books on the below list are ideal for a recent graduate, new manager, or a new entrepreneur. Many of these are on the list because they contain timeless lessons.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition by Steven Covey is just as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1989. You may think of this book as a self-improvement book, but at the heart of every successful entrepreneur is self-discipline and good habits. To gain the habits of highly effective people, get this book on Amazon or the Franklin Covey site.

Getting Things Done

The original Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen was published in 2001 and started a productivity movement that has changed how we work. Reprinted in 2015, the new version of Getting Things Done stays true to the key principles of staying relaxed and getting everything out of your head and into a system.

4-Hour Workweek

There’s a difference between being efficient and effective. The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated by Timothy Ferriss challenges the cultural norms of working life and our assumptions. The book helps you design a lifestyle to get away from the drudgery of mind-numbing work and build a life you love. Author Tim Ferriss has added an additional 100 pages to this updated 4-Hour Workweek, with case studies, tips and templates.

The New One Minute Manager

As engaging today as it was when first published in 1981, The New One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson is a parable of a young man looking for an effective manager — and more relevant than ever. With barely more than 100 pages, the book embodies the lesson it seeks to teach that short management moments yield big results.

Think and Grow Rich

If there were ever a classic, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill meets the definition. First published in 1937. Some people today question Hill’s abilities, but there’s a reason this book appears on so many lists of best business books for beginners. You can get this book on Amazon, but you can sometimes find it online for free.

Made to Stick

Why do some messages spread and others don’t? There are six traits that stand between a marketing message that falls flat and one that flies around the world in a viral wave. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath, outlines the anatomy of ideas that stick and explains ways to make ideas stickier. Understanding viral content will make you a better marketer.

Laws of Marketing

Some things work and others don’t and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason. In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, authors Al Ries and Jack Trout try to provide a sense of predictability by laying out 22 Laws of Marketing that you can use to create breakthrough advertising. Written in 2009, read this book for the big ideas like be first, be patient, be humble and not the specifics.

ReWork

Just because you learned it in school or you may have practiced it years ago, doesn’t mean it’s still true. Rework by Jason Fried is a book that shows you how to see your world for what it is and manage accordingly. Jason Fried shares advice like stop glamorizing the startup, the “hustle” and workaholic behaviors. Instead, use simplicity as a differentiator. The key message from this management book is that not every piece of advice works for everyone. Be clear-headed about your business.

Dare to Lead

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts by Bréne Brown is a New York Times best seller for a reason. Bréne Brown has made being vulnerable and authentic a strength in today’s working environment. Brown engages vulnerability as a strength by providing research, sharing personal narratives, as well as offering practical advice, tips, and tools.

The Psychology of Selling

There are a lot of selling systems out there.  But The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible by Brian Tracy is a classic.  You will get an easy outline of the sales process and fantastic techniques to improve yourself and your sales presentations to close more sales.

Best Management Books

Successful people know how to inspire everyone to take action. A great manager and a great leader know how to increase employee engagement and bring out the best in a team. The following list of management books will give you insights and new ideas on powerful decision making strategies and mindsets.

Start With Why

Great leaders inspire everyone. This job becomes much easier when you understand your why and can communicate it to your team. If you don’t have a burning desire or “why” established for your business, you’ll have a difficult time managing your team in a way that will help you reach your goals. In Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action, Simon Sinek breaks down how to rethink what you do each day in a different light.

Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by management experts W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne, was first published in 2014 . The new and expanded edition of Blue Ocean Strategy brings all of the original case studies and examples up to date. It adds new material that addresses a manager’s key challenges and trouble spots in putting blue ocean strategy into practice.

Essentialism

Feel busy but not productive? Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown is the book you should be reading. Think of essentialism as minimalism. The idea is to pare down your “stuff” to what really matters to create a better life. Do less, do it better. Think of Essentialism as a productivity technique for figuring out what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that isn’t.

Blink

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that analyzes the way people make decisions. Gladwell says that people use one of two strategies to come to a decision; a conscious strategy and an unconscious strategy in which a person’s brain reaches a conclusion in a matter of seconds. These conclusions are what we call hunches or instincts. It is the development and reliability of these types of decision making strategies that Malcolm Gladwell outlines in this book.

Leaders Eat Last

Leadership is more about helping people thrive and find meaning in their work than managing numbers. Unfortunately, many a manager seems to have lost sight of this fundamental truth. In Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, Simon Sinek explains where we’ve gone wrong and puts out an urgent call for real leaders to step forth to make a positive difference.

Upstream

Are you sick and tired of reacting to problems? Then Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath us a must-read if you’re ready to stop the madness and prevent those problems from robbing you of your time and sanity. Dan Heath outlines three barriers to upstream thinking; Problem Blindness, Lack of Ownership, and Tunneling.

Never Split the Difference

Perhaps the most important management skills are conflict resolution and negotiation. Top FBI negotiator, Chriss Voss uses his negotiating skills to secure business deals in his book, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. You’ll learn nine effective principles, counter-intuitive tactics, and strategies that you can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.

The Power of Habit

Is management a talent or a skill? This question is deftly answered by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. This book explores how habits are formed, what influences them, and how to create new habits. This isn’t just about personal habits. It’s about how to implement habits within an organization. This is a great book for understanding the social psychology and science behind habits.

Lean In

One way to see where you stand on management as a woman leader is to read Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. This book generated responses on all ends of the spectrum; both negative and positive.

Hooked

As a manager, you’ll most likely be involved in creating, developing and selling products. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal is a great book for a manager who wants to understand insights around the user journey. This book will teach you how to create a lasting engagement with the user instead of designing for a one-off experience.