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his is the last post you’ll need to bookmark for book recommendations.

 

Below are 150+ (actually over 200) books that every man should have in his library.

We here at fiercegentlemans.com believe that every man should be well-read.

Abraham Lincoln famously read every book in the library, and finally had to resort to reading the encyclopedia.

Modern-day great Elon Musk did the same thing.

This author spent most of his home-school youth in the library, and now reads about a book a week.

There’s good evidence that reading makes you smarter.

Even if you read 1 book a week, the below list would take you 3 years to get through! Not to worry. At the end of this post, we’ve got a free speed-reading resource for you.

Let’s dive in:

INDEX

• The Mind (Self-improvement & Psychology)
• The Body (Nutrition, Health & Wellness)
• The Soul (Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality)
• On Men & Women
• Romance, Love & Relationships
• Biographies & Notable People
• Classics
• Poetry
• Business, Money, & Economics
• Martial Arts, War & Violence
• Nature, Adventure & Survival
• Fiction

The Mind

• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.
• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
• The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal
• Switch: How to Change When Change Is Hard by Dan & Chip Heath
• Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. An older book, but still packed with wisdom.
• Personal Power / Unlimited Power / Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins
• Think And Grow Rich by Napolean Hill
• Superbeings by John Randolph Price. An underappreciated class, deeply spiritual.
• The Six Pillars of Self Esteem by Nathaniel Branden
• Self-Renewal: The Individual & The Innovative Society by John W. Gardner
• Spiral Dynamics:Maste​ring Values, Leadership, and Change by Don Edward Beck, Christopher Cowan. This one is more heady & intellectual but still a useful framework for self growth.
• The Alchemist & Warriors of Light by Paul Cohelo
• Mastery by George Lenard. Why we should all think on 10-year time frames rather than a year at a time.
• Irreducible Mind: Towards a Psychology of the 21st Century by Michael Grosso, et all. This weighty tome actually takes a scientific and rational approach to parts of the mind that don’t (yet) have “empirical” evidence, such as ESP. Highly recommended for hardcore rational empiricists and anyone interested in psychology.
• The War Of Art by Stephen Pressfield. Why doing anything is hard, and what to do about it.
• Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
• Writing to Heal – A Guided Journal for Recovering from Trauma & Emotional Upheaval by James W. Pennebaker. I can’t even count how many times I’ve recommended this book.
• The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky. Dr. Lyubomirsky concludes that about 40% of happiness is genetic, but I disagree; I believe 100% of our internal happiness is up to us. Still a worthwhile read.
• Radical Honesty: How to Transform your Life By Telling the Truth by Brad Blanton
• How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Way of The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
• The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallway
• Bird by Bird / Help, Thanks, Wow! by Anne Lamonte. In the same vein of “how to do hard things” as Pressfield.
• Impro / Impro for Storytellers by Keith Johnstone. This book will help you most with, of all things, your social skills.
• Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman
• The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck
• Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw
• The Way of Zen – Alan Watts
• As a Man Thinketh – James Allen
• The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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The Body (Nutrition, Health, Wellness, Body Language)

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
• Real Food: What To Eat & Why by Nina Planck. Nina grew up on a farm, then started eating the Standard American Diet, got sick, and then started eating farm food again.
• Holy Cow & Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer’s Guide to Farm Friendly Food by Joel Salatin
• The UltraMind Solution: The Simple Way to Defeat Depression, Overcome Anxiety, and Sharpen Your Mind by Mark Hyman M.D.
• Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat by Deborah Krasner, Marcus Nilsson
• Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey
• Making a Good Brain Great by Dr. Dan Amen
• Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina
• Peoplewatching by Desmond Morris
• What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed Reading People by Joe Navarro

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The Soul (Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality)

• The Holy Bible by Various authors.
• The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an
• The Dhammapada
• The Sayings of Confucius by Confucius
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• Letters From a Stoic by Seneca
• On Liberty John Stuart Mill
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
• The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
• Madness at the Gates of the City: The Myth of American Innocence by Barry Spector. A deep, penetrating and insightful look at American culture and especially men’s place in it.
• Critical Path / Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth / Grunch of Giants by Richard Buckminster Fuller. Bucky is the unmatched genius of the 20th century. I recommend all his works heartily, including the fiendishly-difficult Synergetics. 
• Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
• Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn
• A Course in Miracles – the Foundation for Inner Peace
• The Disappearance of the Universe – Gary Renard – read this before you crack open A Course in Miracles.
• The Heart of Buddha’s Teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh
• The Zen Teachings of Boddhidarhma & The Diamond Sutra by Red Pine
• The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business & Your Life by Geshe Michael Roach. If you’re looking for an introduction to Buddhism, start with this book; then read Thich Nhat Hanh; then graduate to Red Pine.
• A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. Williamson is a student of A Course in Miracles but her work stands alone.
• Be Here Now & Journey of Awakening: A Meditator’s Guidebook by Ram Dass / Richard Alpert. If you want an easy introduction to meditation, read Journey of Awakening.
• The Power of Now & A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
• The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka by William Hart
• The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy (with illustrations) by Matthew Stewart
• Mindfullnes for Beginners – Jon Kabat-Zinn
• The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav

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On Men & Women

• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
• The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
• Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. These first 3 books are required reading for anyone who wants to understand women.
• Iron John by Robert Bly
• King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore
• Fire in the Belly – On Being a Man by Sam Keen. These next 3 books are required reading for anyone hoping to understand men.
• The King Within / The Warrior Within / The Lover Within / The Magician Within by Robert Moore. Deeper into the mature masculine archetypes.
• The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other by James Hollis
• Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding & Healing of Men by James Hollis
• No More Mister Nice Guy by Robert Glover. An absolute primer on improving your masculine behavior.
• The Way of Superior Man by David Deida. A deeper dive into the spiritual underpinnings of improving your masculine behavior. Hugely helpful for relationships as well.

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Romance, Love, Relationships & Sex

• The Relationship Cure by Robert Gottman
• Codependent No More by Melody Beattie
• Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
• Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow by Marnia Robinson
• Sex At Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, & What It Means For Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan, Cecilda Jetha. CPA and SAD are the fringe of sexual thought. These last two picks, and the next two, are meant to break us out of our scripts when it comes to love, relationships & especially sex.
• The Enlightened Sex Manual: Sexual Skills for the Superior Lover by David Deida
• Slow Love: A Polynesian Pillow Book by James N. Powell

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Biographies & Notable People

• Ghandi: The Story of My Experiences With Truth by Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi and Mahadev H. Desai
• Autobiography of Ben Franklin
• Mother Theresa by Kathryn Spink
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, the concentration camp survivor.
• The Strenuous Life by Theodore Roosevelt
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
• Amazing Grace by Eric Mataxas, is the biography of abolitionist & British parliamentary member William Wilberforce, the man who was inpsiration to Abraham Lincoln.
• Team of Rivals: Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Thomas Jefferson: Art of Power by Jon Meacham
• Peter the Great by Robert K. Massie
• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. by Ron Chernow
• Einstein: His life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
• John Adams by David McCullough
• Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
• Going Solo by Roald Dahl
• Wind, Sand & Stars by Antoine de Sainte Exupery
• The Man Who Fed the World by Leon Hesser, about Norman Borlaug, whose work with corn genetics has probably saved hundreds of millions of lives.
• Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson
• Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know by Ranulph Fiennes, the world’s greatest living explorer.

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Classics

• Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocquevelle
• The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
• Common Sense by Thomas Paine
• Beyond Good and Evil by Freidrich Nietzsche
• The Politics by Aristotle
• Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard
• Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans by Plutarch
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
• Second Treatise on Government by John Locke
• The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
• The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons
• Essays & Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• Faust by Geothe
• Simulations by Jean Baudrillard
• Pragmatism by William James
• How to Tell a Story & Other Essays by Mark Twain
• The Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking
• A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
• Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
• William Shakespeare. You should own a Complete Works. The required reading is simply A Midsummer Night’s Dream & The Tempest (comedy) and Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, & Romeo & Juliet (the great tragedies). You can skip the Histories. Every man should have one Sonnet memorized (see Poetry, below).

Up to index

Poetry

• The Essential Rumi
• The Poetry of Pablo Neruda
• The Sonnets by William Shakespeare. Every man should have at least 1 sonnet memorized. (They’re short.)
• Collected Poems by T.S. Elliot
• Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats by W.B. Yeats
• Lord Byron The Major Works by George Gordon Lord Byron
• Tennyson: Poems by Lord Alfred Tennyson
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

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Business, Money, & Economics

• Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton. Whatever you think of Wal-Mart, this is the world’s richest man, richer than Gates or Jobs or anyone else, and it’s fascinating to see what it’s possible to build in a very simple business with very simple principles.
• A Few Lessons for Investors & Managers by Warren Buffett
• Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. The history of modern money is really the history of debt. Eye-opening.
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
• You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start & Succee​d in a Farming Enterprise by Joel Salatin. What’s the most important business of all? The business of feeding people. Salatin knows how to do it so that it’s additive, not subtractive.
• The Gift by Lewis Hyde. A classic explication of aboriginal economics, and the ways in which they are sometimes superior to our economics of debt.
• Life, Inc by Douglas Rushkoff. An understanding of the character of the modern corporation.
• Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. An insightful companion book to Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.
• The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. Written in 1903,  but holding even more ancient wisdom.
• Influence: The Psychology Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
• Getting More: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life by Stuart Diamond
• Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In & The Power of a Positive No: How To Say No and Still Get To Yes by Roger Fisher, William L. Ury and Bruce Patton
• The E-Myth by Mike Gerber
• Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan
• 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• Superrich & Do You! by Russell Simmons
• Money: Master The Game by Tony Robbins
• Enough by John Bogle
• The Prize by Daniel Yergin. A Pulitzer-Prize winning definitive account of the history of the substance that has shaped modern civilization.

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Martial Arts, War & Violence

• What It is Like to Go To War by Karl Marlantes
• The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows by Brian Castner
• Redeployment by Phil Klay
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
• Meditations on Violence by Rory Miller
• War by Sebastian Junger
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu

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Nature, Adventure & Survival

• My First Summer in the Sierras by John Muir. If you’ve never been to Yosemite valley, Muir’s word-pictures will take you there.
• Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. “I like the desert,” said Lawrence of Arabia. “It’s clean.”
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea by Steve Callahan. Steve’s story is incredible and spiritual all at once.
• Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales
• The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo
• Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe – Laurence Bergreen
• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption – Laura Hillenbrand. The book that was popular with manly men before the Angelina Jolie movie popularized it.
• Surviving the Extremes: What Happens To The Body & Mind At the Limits of Human Endurance by Kenneth Kamler
• SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, In Any Climate, On Land or Sea by John “Lofty” Wiseman. The only book you’ll ever need to learn survival skills. Beyond this book, you just need training & practice.
• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. This account of the early Space Race personalities is a page turner.

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Fiction

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
• Treasure Island by Robert Louise Stevenson
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson & Jonathan Franze
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Dune (and its sequels) by Frank Herbert
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Sainte-Exupery
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokav
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
• One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator – Edwin Lefevre
• Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
• This Side of Paradise – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
• The Master and the Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
• Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
• Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
• The Old Man & The Sea & The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton
• Call of the Wild by Jack London
• The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• The Once & Future King by T.H. White
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

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Don’t want to spend 3+ years accumulating all the wisdom of the above list? Here’s your completely FREE course on speed-reading (350+ page book): Learn To Speed Read.

You’re welcome!

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