Book #1
Title: The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Author: Alice Schroeder

Topic: Business, Biography, Self-Improvement

How it influenced my life:  This is a fascinating look at one of the most influential figures of the past half-century, written not as an as-told-to or ghostwritten book, but by an independent author, formerly the #1-ranked financial analyst of insurance companies (about half of Buffett’s company is insurance), who spend five years and thousands of hours with Buffett, his family, friends and associates. The Snowball is not a book that promises to turn your investments into billions, but it does show attentive readers ways to make their lives run better, more efficiently, with less fuss and more purpose. The lessons of Warren Buffett I’m most able to apply have to do with time management, concentration of resources and decisiveness.

Book #2
Title: The Life You Were Born to Live
Author: Dan Millman

Topic: Life Purpose

How it influenced my life:  What if you could have a road map of your life? That’s the promise of this fascinating book by the author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior and while the map doesn’t show every town, every tourist attraction, every detour and most important, can’t tell you how far down the road you’ve traveled, it does lay out the route. It also assigns a few universal laws specific to each person’s path. This is a book to be pored over, re-read and referenced, and as I’ve lived with it over the years I’ve come to think the juice is in the laws. It’s great to know more about the course of your life and that of your partner, but having keys to the life equivalent of better cornering and greater gas mileage is a gift! Happy motoring.

Book #3
Title: Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584-2069
Author: William Strauss and Neil Howe

Topic: History

How it influenced my life:  The authors posit four generational types in American history that have repeated in sequence since the Mayflower landed. This is a fascinating look backward with a touch of prediction forward, and so far, Strauss & Howe have been spot on. (Generations was written in 1990, so you get to “check their work” over nearly two decades.) I’d often wished I could live my life over, but knowing what would happen in the world. This scholarly but readable tome is as close as I’ll come to that. I finished reading it a week before 9/11, and just seeing that event through the book’s lens was revealing.

Book #4
Title: A Fine Romance: The Passage of Courtship from Meeting to Marriage
Author: Judith Sills, Ph.D.

Topic: Relationships

How it influenced my life:  The road map for dating. What’s supposed to happen, when it’s supposed to happen, why what looks like a detour is really part of the highway. Sills’ straightforward exposition, practical advice and insightful psychology was just what the doctor ordered for a guy who never got the memo in high school. Her other books are good too, and there are just a few other authors I’d put on a short shelf of truly helpful relationship books, but this is likely to do the most good for the most people. It helped me answer questions, deal with situations and move beyond some mistakes I’d grappled with for years.

Book #5
Title: A Sand County Almanac
Author: Aldo Leopold

Topic: Environment

How it influenced my life:  I trace my environmentalism to this classic of the field; it influenced me even more than Silent Spring and Life and Death of the Salt Marsh. It’s a view of living on the land gently with deep appreciation of living things as an integral part of life, not a separate activity or a “cause.” By the way, this book was written many decades ago when hunting was more widespread and some avid hunters were also the most conscientious stewards of the environment. It needs to be read with that ethic and those times in mind.

Book #6
Title: Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity
Author: David Whyte

Topic: Business, Quality of Work Life

How it influenced my life:  Whyte is a published poet who does organizational development consulting for corporations. He’s also one of the two best speakers I’ve ever heard (Alice Schroeder is the other). His book of poems The House of Belonging is incredibly meaningful to me, but this, one of his two prose books on work life was more influential. It tells of his own professional journey, starting as a naturalist in the Galapagos. His chapter on time management (he doesn’t call it that, to him it’s your “relationship with the hours”) is so organic that applying it is virtually automatic once you’ve read it.

Book #7
Title: The ABC's of Really Good Speech
Author: Page Emory Moyer

Topic: Business, Education,

How it influenced my life:  I’d spoken to a lot of professional groups before reading this concise guide and I have to say it improved my speeches. It’s organized for maximum accessibility and geared for people who don’t have the time to read widely in the area or the money for professional speech coaching. If you have a week before your next presentation, you can read and apply the whole alphabet, but if you have even a few minutes before “showtime” there will be at least one brief chapter that will punch up your act.

Book #8
Title: The Lord of the Rings
Author: JRR Tolkein

Topic: Quality of Life

How it influenced my life:  I had the good fortune to read this at a time when my inner life seemed to parallel the physical journey of Frodo and the Fellowship through Middle-Earth. Seeing oneself in the characters of myth can fortify a person when he most needs it (or, of course, be an invitation to psychosis!). Ultimately, that’s what epics are for – by watching gods do great things, to inspire ordinary mortals to do the right things. Part of Tolkein’s genius was his humble, softspoken hero, an English everyman, upon whom the fate of the world depended. That’s the story of all our lives, and having it laid out before me when I most needed it was a wonderful gift.

Book #9
Title: Red Sky at Morning
Author: Richard Bradford

Topic: life purpose

How it influenced my life:  This wonderful coming-of-age novel is charming, humane and filled with life. It whispered to me “you’re on the right track” when I needed that most. Set in New Mexico toward the end of World War II, but timeless, spare and essential, with clear, unforgettable characters and a simple, important message.

Book #10
Title: Ordinary People
Author: Judith Guest

Topic: Happiness, Relationships, Self Realization

How it influenced my life:  Another coming-of-age novel, filled with coldness and secrecy, and finding life in a refuge hidden in an otherwise sterile suburbia. It whispered to me, too, this time saying “you’re not alone” just when that’s what I needed to hear. Its adaptation to film, generally well-done, stripped one character of a key attribute, so read the book even if you’ve seen the movie.