A collection of my favorite books and authors over the years

In the mid 1980s CBS Television and The Library of Congress produced a series of 30-second Public Service Announcements (PSA) called Read More About It. Placed at the end of selected television broadcasts, the PSAs served to inspire viewers to read a series of critiqued books from their local library. Today’s students including some of their parents were not even born when these PSAs were first broadcast.

For over 30 years I have held a special privilege of engaging students at The University of Chicago, Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin, The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and The Milwaukee Area Technical College. I recall enlightening conversations regarding books and authors students were reading outside of their assigned syllabus.

In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind
Louis Pasteur

Above all, I wish a mentor would have presented me with a selection of books revealing insights that would better prepare me for approaching challenges and opportunities in life.

For those reasons, a collection of noted books and authors that I have read is presented below. I certainly hope these books can serve as a guide for anyone navigating your life’s path in the world we live in today. A select few provide timeless lessons. However, some once highly regarded, are now obsolete.

Topics:

2008 Financial Crisis

9/11

Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture

Artificial Intelligence

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn

The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble

Hello World Being Human in the Age of Algorithms by Hannah Fry

Grokking Artificial Intelligence Algorithms

How Smart Machines Think by Sean Gerrish

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell

Artificial Intelligence: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

The Ten Equations That Rule the World by David Sumpter

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence by Erik Larson

GANs in Action by Jakub Langr and Vladimir Bok

Outnumbered: Exploring the Algorithms That Control Our Lives by David Sumpter

What Is ChatGPT Doing and Why Does It Work? by Stephen Wolfram

Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence by Vikram Mansharamani

Working with AI: Real Stories of Human-Machine Collaboration by Thomas H. Davenport, Steven M. Miller

All-in On AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence by Thomas H. Davenport

The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI by Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley

HBR's 10 Must Reads on AI, Analytics, and the New Machine Age

Machine Learning: The New AI by Ethem Alpaydin

Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

Artificial Intelligence in Practice: How 50 Successful Companies Used AI and Machine Learning to Solve Problems by Bernard Marr

Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Joseph E. Aoun

The Datapreneurs: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future by Bob Muglia and Steve Hamm

How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms by Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones

The AI Factor: How to Apply Artificial Intelligence and Use Big Data to Grow Your Business Exponentially by Asha Saxena

Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction by Tom Taulli

Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI by Eric Lamarre, Rodney Zemmel, Eric Lamarre

The AI Dilemma: 7 Principles for Responsible Technology by Juliette Powell

Trustworthy AI: A Business Guide for Navigating Trust and Ethics in AI by Beena Ammanath

Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We’re Thriving in a New World of Possibility by David Weinberger

Superhuman Innovation: Transforming Business with Artificial Intelligence by Chris Duffey

Strategy in the Digital Age: Mastering Digital Transformation by Michael Lenox

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on AI by Harvard Business Review

Enterprise Artificial Intelligence Transformation by Rashed Haq

The Deep Learning Revolution by Terrence Sejnowski

Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work by Ravin Jesuthasan, and John W. Boudreau

Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shaping Our Future by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson

The Future of Work: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

The New Automation Mindset: The Leadership Blueprint for the Era of AI-For-All by Vijay Tella

Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb

Power And Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb

Work without Jobs: How to Reboot Your Organization’s Work Operating System by Ravin Jesuthasan and John W. Boudreau

How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms by Gerd Gigerenzer

HBRs 10 Must Reads on Leading Digital Transformation by Harvard Business Review

Beyond Digital: How Great Leaders Transform Their Organizations and Shape the Future
by Paul Leinwand

The AI-Powered Workplace: How Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Messaging Platforms Are Defining the Future of Work by Ronald Ashri

The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation by Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, and Jonathan Copulsky

Not with a Bug, But with a Sticker: Attacks on Machine Learning Systems and What to Do about Them by Ram Shankar Siva Kumar and Hyrum Anderson

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter

HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2024: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

Leading with AI and Analytics: Build Your Data Science IQ to Drive Business Value by Eric Anderson and Florian Zettelmeyer

Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines by Joy Buolamwini

Future ready : the four pathways to capturing digital value by Stephanie Woerner, Peter Weill, and Ina Sebastian

AI and the Future of Education: Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Priten Shah

Grokking Machine Learning by Luis Serrano

Open Talent: Leveraging the Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges by John Winsor and Jin H. Paik

The Language of Deception: Weaponizing Next Generation AI by Justin Hutchens

Introduction to Generative AI by Numa Dhamani and Maggie Engler

Generative AI: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

Generative AI in Practice: 100+ Amazing Ways Generative Artificial Intelligence is Changing Business and Society by Bernard Marr

Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future by Vijay Govindarajan

AI and Machine Learning for On-Device Development: A Programmer's Guide by Laurence Moroney

AI at the Edge: Solving Real-World Problems with Embedded Machine Learning by Daniel Situnayake and Jenny Plunkett

AI and Machine Learning for Coders: A Programmer’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence by Laurence Moroney

Evolutionary Deep Learning: Genetic algorithms and neural networks by Micheal Lanham

The AI-Savvy Leader: Nine Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work by David De Cremer

Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education by Salman Khan

Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning by Jose Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson

Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning by J. Morris Chang, Di Zhuang, and G. Dumindu Samaraweera

Generative Artificial Intelligence_ What Everyone Needs to Know by Jerry Kaplan

The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li

Unsupervised: Navigating and Influencing a World Controlled by Powerful New Technologies by Daniel Doll-Steinberg and Stuart Leaf

The Innovation Ultimatum: Six Strategic Technologies That Will Reshape Every Business in the 2020s by Steve Brown

Learn AI-assisted Python Programming: With GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT by Leo Porter and Daniel Zingaro

The Human Cloud: How Today’s Changemakers Use Artificial Intelligence and the Freelance Economy to Transform Work by Matthew Mottola and Matthew Douglas Coatney

Managing Machine Learning Projects: From design to deployment by Simon Thompson

How AI Works: From Sorcery to Science by Ronald T. Kneusel

Understanding Large Language Models: Learning Their Underlying Concepts and Technologies by Thimira Amaratunga

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values by Brian Christian

Human + Machine, Updated and Expanded: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick

I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence by Brian Evergreen

AI for Good: Applications in Sustainability, Humanitarian Action, and Health by William B. Weeks and Juan M. Lavista Ferres

What To Do When Machines Do Everything: How to Get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots, and Big Data by Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig, and Ben Pring

Agents in the Long Game of AI: Computational Cognitive Modeling for Trustworthy, Hybrid AI by Marjorie Mcshane, Sergei Nirenburg, and Jesse English

Large Language Model-Based Solutions: How to Deliver Value with Cost-Effective Generative AI Applications by Shreyas Subramanian

Feature Engineering Bookcamp by Sinan Özdemir

Behavioral Science

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-László Barabási

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Dr. Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey.

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload by Cal Newport.

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman

The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

Conformity: The Power of Social Influences by Cass R. Sunstein

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu

HBR Guide to Critical Thinking by Harvard Business Review

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Bias

Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and For Good by Joan C. Williams

The Bias That Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking by Keith E. Stanovich

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir by Marie Yovanovitch

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow

Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence by Amy Zegart

Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships across Differences by Tiffany Jana

Big Data

97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts by Tobias Macey

Algorithms and Data Structures for Massive Datasets by Dzejla Medjedovic, and Emin Tahirovic

Grokking Data Structures by Marcello La Rocca

Blockchain

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government - Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg

Chernobyl

COVID-19

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History is a 2004 nonfiction book by John M. Barry

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

The New Normal in IT: How the Global Pandemic Changed Information Technology Forever by Gregory S. Smith

Cybersecurity

Click Here to Kill Everybody Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang

LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking

This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information by Andy Greenberg

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War Paperback by Fred Kaplan

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

Customer Data and Privacy: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review by Harvard Business Review, Timothy Morey, Andrew Burt, Christine Moorman, Thomas C. Redman

Cyber Crisis: Protecting Your Business from Real Threats in the Virtual World by Eric Cole

Digital Earth: Cyber threats, privacy and ethics in an age of paranoia by Sarah Katz

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It by Kashmir Hill

Cybersecurity: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet by Matthew Crain

Fighting Phishing: Everything You Can Do to Fight Social Engineering and Phishing by Roger Grimes

The DevSecOps Playbook: Deliver Continuous Security at Speed by Sean D. Mack

You’ll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches by Josephine Wolff

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology by Anu Bradford

The New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

Defensive Security Handbook 2nd Edition: Best Practices for Securing Infrastructure By William F. Reyor III and
Lee Brotherston.

Red Team: How to Succeed By Thinking Like the Enemy by Micah Zenko

Inside Cyber: How AI, 5G, IoT, and Quantum Computing Will Transform Privacy and Our Security by Chuck Brooks

Data Analytics

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson

Decision-Driven Analytics: Leveraging Human Intelligence to Unlock the Power of Data by Bart de Langhe and Stefano Puntoni

Dien Bien Phu

The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam by Christopher Goscha

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu by Jules Roy

Globalization

Innovation

How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway

Leadership Moments from NASA: Achieving the Impossible by Dr. Dave Williams and Elizabeth Howell

Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst by Robert I. Sutton PhD

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet by Michelle R. Weise

The Effective Hiring Manager by Mark Horstman

HBR's 10 Must Reads for New Managers by Harvard Business Review

Building Better Organizations: How to Fuel Growth and Lead in a Digital Era by Claudy Jules

Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos by Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez

Grokking Continuous Delivery By Christie Wilson

Reskilling America: Learning to Labor in the Twenty-First Century by Katherine S. Newman and Hella Winston

The Innovator’s Solution, with a New Foreword: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor

Insights

The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

In a Different Key: The Story of Autism by John Donvan, Caren Zucker

Invisible Walls: How to Create Deeper Connections Through the Purity of Experiences Kindle Edition by Stephanie Zorn-Kasprzak

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz

The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves by Eric R. Kandel

Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right by Thomas H. Davenport

The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread by Cailin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall

HBR Guide to Navigating the Toxic Workplace by Harvard Business Review

Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education by Justin Reich

Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work by Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock and Emily Field.

Makers

Mathematics

Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker

The Data Detective Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them)
by Tom Chivers, David Chivers

Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath, Karla Starr

The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data by David Spiegelhalter

Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World by Vaclav Smil

Objectives and Key Results (OKR)

OKRs for All: Making Objectives and Key Results Work for your Entire Organization by Vetri Vellore

The Opioid Crisis

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
by Patrick Radden Keefe

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy

Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic by Ben Westhoff

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts by Chris McGreal

The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup by Evan Hughes

Fentanyl Nation: Toxic Politics and America's Failed War on Drugs by Ryan Hampton

Presenting

Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations

Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within

Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions

The Vietnam War

The Origins of the Vietnam War by Fredrik Logevall

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot

A Tiger Among Us: A Story of Valor in Vietnam’s A Shau Valley by Bennie Adkins

Watergate

Not so random….

Ahead of the Curve by Philip Delves Broughton

The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

The Growth Mindset Workbook by Elaine Elliott-Moskwa

Authors:

Stories written by great authors crisscross our lives. Consider how these authors share lessons and ideas regarding society, economics, and globalization.