Keith's Favorite Books

Business Books

Customer Service

• Inside the Magic Kingdom, by Tom Connellan -Keith Kimmel recommended this one.  The seven lessons from the book:
• The competition is anyone the customer compares you with
• Pay fantastic attention to detail
• Everyone Walks the Talk
• Customers are best heard through many ears
• Reward, Recognize, and celebrate
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• Flight of the Buffalo, by James Belasco
• The Fred Factor, by Mark Sanborn
• Fish, by Lundin, Paul, and Christenson
• The Amazement Revolution, by Shep Hyken
• The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea, by John David Mann
• Raving Fans, by Ken Blanchard

Business Strategy

• Execution, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
• Good To Great, by Jim Collins
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey
• Servant Leadership, by Robert Greenleaf
• Getting to Yes, by Fisher, Ury, and Patton
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath
• The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, by Dan Ariely
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, by Timothy Ferriss - Mike DiFranco suggested this, it is a great way to think about what is really important in life
• Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It, by Marshall Goldsmith
• Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande
• Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslo, by Chip Conley

Employee Engagement and Leadership

• Drive,by Daniel Pink - a great book about what motivates: autonomy, master, and purpose.  Autonomy really resonated with me - and in fact in the back of the book it suggests sending out an autonomy survey, which gave me some interesting results
• The Dream Manager, by Matthew Kelly - a super book about coaching, and how to build an organization that allows team members to achieve their dreams
• Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hshai - gave me a new perspective on employee engagement and customer service, I attended Zappos' two-day boot camp after reading the book

Happiness

• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt

Marketing

• Why We Buy, by Paco Underhill

Other

• Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System--and Themselves, by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Biographies / Autobiographies

• Truman, by David McCullough
• The Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandella
• Churchill, by Martin Gilbert
• The Snowball, by Alice Shroeder - the official biography of Warren Buffet
• Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris - about Teddy Rosevelt
• My Life, by Bill Clinton - facinating to hear his perspective
• The Downing Street Year, by Margaret Thatcher -
•  Rhodes, by Antony Thomas
• The Age of Turbulance, by Alan Greenspan
• Personal History, by Katherine Graham
• The Politics of Diplomacy, by James Baker
• In Retrospect, by Robert McNamera
• The Greatest Generation, by Tom Brokaw
• A Reporter's Life, by Walter Cronkite
• Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

Math

• Calculus Made Easy, by Silvanus P Thompson
• A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, by John Allen Palos
• Innumeracy, by John Allen Palos
• Here's Looking at Euclid, by Alex Bellos

General

Books

• Johnathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach - originally recommended by Rebecca, this was a favorite of mine while I was in my late teens and 20s.  I then read almost all of Bach's books
• A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving- read this on my trip around the world
• Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortensen - I loved this book about developing schools for girls in Packistan and Afghanistan and was crushed when I heard that some of it was fabricated
• The Day After Roswell, by Birnes, and Corso

Other Authors / Series

• John Grisham - great mind candy
• Lonely Planet - our favorite travel series.  Some day I'd love to be a contributing author
• John Irving - all his books worked for me while in my 20s
• Bill Bryson - His dry sense of humor combined with travel stories makes for great reading.  It all started with The Lost Continent, a hysterical story of Bill trying to find the America of his Childhood
• James Michner - I love the way he brings a region alive by weaving a continuous family throughout the ages
• James Clavel - with Nobel House, Tai Pan, and Shogun, I gained a fascination with history.  Because of him, if I had to live in a different age, I'd love to have worked the clipper ships doing trade in Hong Kong in the 1850s
• CS Lewis - I read the Chronicles of Narnia twice - the first time as a kid and the second as an adult.  Only the second time did I fully understand the religious meaning
• JRR Tolkien - who has not read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings?
• Michael Crighton - more mind candy
• Steig Larsen - I loved Dragon Tattoo and they got better from there.  So sad that Steig died as I'd love to have read more from him
• The Famous Five, by Enid Blyton - my absolute favorite children's series
• The Secret Seven, by Enid Blyton - a solid second to Famous Five
• Harry Potter, by JK Rowling - no explanation needed
• Christopher Buckley - amusing conservative humorist
• P.J. O'Rourke - another funnyman, his libertarian take on things is often a riot 
• Peter Rabbit's Bookshelf, by Beatrix Potter - I still have the bookshelf I was given as a kid with all 23 books: starting with "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and ending with "Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes"