Books to enrich understanding and inspire transformation

Professional mastery and transformation

The Elements of Style
William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White

If you need one succinct book on clear, engaging, and correct writing, this is it. Originally published in 1935, it is still highly regarded today as a classic style manual for producing excellent writing.

Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please: The Case for Plain Language in Business, Government, and Law
Joseph Kimble

Think bad writing won’t cost your business big bucks? This book will show you otherwise through an abundance of real-world examples. Expanded and updated from a successful first edition, this second edition adds further weight to the costs of bad writing and the benefits of good writing for businesses and professionals.

Business Model You
Timothy Clark, Alexander Osterwalder, and Yves Pigneur

In a world where career changes, multiple jobs, online presence, and solopreneurship are increasingly common, defining and refining yourself as your own brand and developing your own business-model are vital skills. This book provides engaging, practical resources for understanding your professional self and actualising your career vision.

The Personal MBA
Josh Kaufman

Want a solid grasp of the foundations of business but are not willing to sit through a two-year Masters of Business Administration degree (and pay thousands for it)? Here’s your book. Having a full range of business skills is a valuable investment. This book makes learning these easy and efficient.

Never Too Late to Be Great: The Power of Thinking Long
Tom Butler-Bowdon

In the world of rapid change and culture that craves instant success, Tom Butler-Bowden presents a solid case as to why it is even more worthwhile to think long-term when it comes to one’s own personal and professional goals. With an increasing average human lifespan and ample stories of how many successful people didn’t reach their peak until much later in their life, this book is a gem for those on the lifelong path to greatness.

Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create a Category of One
Category Pirates

Why would you imitate what everyone else is doing to get recognised as a writer? Your writer’s brand needs a unique edge. This book is about gaining that edge, becoming a ‘snow leopard’—a writer who applies their expertise, experience, and other qualities to forge their own category of writing, defined by a single person: you.

Trivium: The Classical Liberal Arts of Grammar, Logic, & Rhetoric
Gregory R. Beabout and Michael Hannis

The trivium is the foundation of classical writing. In this beautifully made book you will find a cornucopia of the time-tested elements of grammar, logic and rhetoric for effective, clear, and persuasive writing. This book is part of a series of equally engaging and accessible books on the foundational principles behind aspects of classical knowledge and art.

Personal mastery and transformation

Toward a Psychology of Being
Abraham H Maslow

While many psychologists were fixed on psychology as the study of human pathologies, Maslow explored human potential, self-actualisation, and peak experiences—what has become known as humanistic psychology. In such a light, this book presents Maslow’s study of peak experiences as a key to developing a state of being—of human wholeness, meaning, and living presence.

The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer
Steven Kotler

As human beings, we are sometimes capable of doing the seemingly impossible. But how do we reach this state of peak performance consistently? Steven Kotler guides the reader through this process of turning big dreams into accomplishments, backed by cutting-edge neuroscience and over twenty years of his own research.

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALS, and Maverick Scientists are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal

Combining world-changing advances in psychology, neurobiology, technology, and pharmacology, this book examines what human beings can actually achieve through the realisation of peak performance. This is next-level transformation, and it’s available to all.

Fire in the Crucible: Understanding the Process of Creative Genius
John Briggs

What do the most creative, brilliant individuals throughout history share in common? How do they think? How do they understand their own creative process? The common patterns and qualities of genius are made clear in this insightful work by Professor John Briggs.

Awaken your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity and Become Extraordinary
Ozan Varol

Rising above the clouds of thinking-like-everyone-else is an intelligent move. With common sense and creative wisdom on how to awaken your own genius, backed by a wide array of insightful stories and statistics, Ozan Varol presents a truly enjoyable read. It’s refreshing. Give it a go.

Man’s Search for Meaning
Victor Frankl

This hugely successful book about the value of meaning and purpose in life is the result of Victor Frankl’s experiences within a concentration camp during World War II. He discovered that those who determine their own attitude in response to experiences (however horrific) gain an inner victory that cannot be taken from them.

Dreamgates: Journey into Active Dreaming
Robert Moss

This is quite literally a practical guide on how to lucid dream—to dream consciously. It is not for everyone. But for those who feel drawn to this ancient practice, it provides no-nonsense descriptions and exercises on lucid dreaming, paleopsychology, imagination, creativity, healing, and beyond. It takes time to develop the exercises, which can greatly expand the possibilities for human understanding and individual development.

The Philosophers’ Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination
Patrick Harpur

Another brilliant work from Patrick Harpur, this one illuminating human imagination as understood across the ages—by ancient philosophy, modern psychology, Renaissance magicians, indigenous shamans, the alchemists, and poets. Like Harpur’s other works, this book highlights a missing thread in our conventional worldview, one that is so integral to what it means to be human.

Cultural mastery and transformation

The Auto-Biography of Goethe: Truth and Poetry: From my Own Life: Volume 1
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Auto-Biography of Goethe: Truth and Poetry: From my Own Life: Volume 2
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you want to understand the great eighteenth-century German polymath Goethe, it is best to read about his life in his own words. Not only is this two-part autobiography uplifting, broad-minded, and a wonderful window into the world at that time, it is also a touchstone to inspire present day polymaths. Highly recommended.

Leonardo’s Notebooks
Leonardo da Vinci

A collection of the most fascinating contents of da Vinci’s notebook, including designs, sketches, and musings. The work of Italy’s greatest polymath is made directly accessible through this book. It is a valuable addition to one’s study, or coffee table.

What Is Fiction For? Literary Humanism Restored
Bernard Harrison

Combining cognitive and literary studies, Bernard Harrison delivers a solid argument for the role of human experience at the core of how we understand language and literature. This book restores the study of literature as a discipline for understanding our humanness.

The Lord of the Rings (Special Edition, Hardcover Boxed Set)
J. R. R. Tolkien

What list of recommended books would be complete without Tolkien’s classic trilogy. Myth making (mythopoesis) is what the reader encounters in this epic tale of the Western imagination. You may have seen the films, but the books are better. Tolkien was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon and one of the greatest writers of the English language. You will find in his words manifold nuances of truly masterful writing, from which to learn, to emulate, and to take further through your own writing.

Wisdom of the Ancient Seers: Mantras of the Rig Veda
David Frawley

The intrinsic genius of the oldest yoga text in the world is here brought forth in vivid and enlivening poetic verse, including commentary that is deep, original, and timeless. This is one of Dr David Frawley’s greatest works. If you want to seriously understand the tradition at the roots of yoga practice, this is where to begin.

Dreaming with Open Eyes
Michael Tucker

An electrifying study of the shamanic worldview that shines through the works of selected avant garde artists of the twentieth century. This book has a powerful original vision that is hard to find in hundreds of other books on similar topics.

The Seed of Yggdrasill
Maria Kvilhaug

This book is the result of years of dedicated, honest, and insightful research into Norse mythology. Maria Kvilhaug’s understand of the poetic metaphors and thematic connections across many Scandinavian texts deserves a place on one’s bookshelf. This is a deeper blend of scholarship and spirituality and an unparalleled window into the Nordic mythos.