My Reading List
Outside of the ‘Goosebumps’ books from my 90s childhood, I did not enjoy reading at all — it was all of those free ‘book-it’ personal pan pizzas by PizzaHut! That slowly changed in high school when I started to take an interest in electrical and mechanical engineering via radio control cars, real cars, stereo systems and model cars. It wasn’t until college that I found myself far behind my peers in literature, history and other disciplines. Since then, I have rarely discriminated against subject matter as my ‘waitlist’ of unread books only gets longer with each passing year. While I do not endorse all of the thoughts and authors below, I have found their writing to be thought-provoking enough to get me to reflect about a subject or idea in a new way and perhaps recognize patterns between subjects that have not been linked together before.
Alcohol and Tobacco
American Bourbon, Whiskey and Rye
Guide to Urban Moonshining
Modern Moonshine Techniques
The Cigar Book
The Complete Idiots Guide to Cigars
The Craft of the Cocktail
The PDT Cocktail Book
History
Crooked Politics in Northwest Indiana
Frank Nitti
Gary’s First Hundred Years
Lost Gary, Indiana
Mobsters, Unions and the Fed
The Indiana Way
Yellow Kid Weil
Sports
Player’s First: Coaching From the Inside Out
Science and Math
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
A New Kind of Science
Antifragile
Designa
Fooled by Randomness
Is God a Mathematician
Making Things Work, Yaneer Bar-Yam
Thinking
The Bed of Procrustes
The Black Swan
This Explains Everything
This Idea Must Die
This Will Make You Smarter
Quadrivium
Style, Fashion and Etiquette
100 Years of Menswear
50 Things Every Young Gentleman Should Know
A Gentleman Entertains
A Gentleman Gets Dressed Up
A Gentleman Walks Down the Aisle
A Southern Belle Primer
As a Gentleman Would Say
ABCs of Men’s Fashion
Artist Rebel Dandy
Bereolaesque
Bespoke: The Men’s Style of Savile Row
Bespoke Menswear: Tailoring for Gentleman
Business Etiquette
Classic Wisdom for the Professional Life
Details Men’s Style Manual
Dressing the Man
Emily Post’s Etiquette 18th Edition
Esquire: The Handbook of Style
Esquire The Biggest Black Book Ever
Fashionisto: A Century of Style Icons
Fashionopedia
Generations of Style
Gentleman: A Timeless Guide to Fashion
How to Be a Gentleman
How to Be a Lady
How to Raise a Gentleman
Icon’s of Men’s Style
Image Matters for Men
Measure of a Man
Men’s Style: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Dress
Menswear Dog
Nordstrom Guide to Men’s Style
Preppy: Cultivating Ivy Style
Style and the Man
The Appearance of Power
The Gentry Man
The London Cut
The Mr Porter Paperback
The Style Bible
Ties of Distinction
Toasts & Tributes
True Prep
True Style
Updated 7/19/19
Business & Finance
A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
Alpha Male Syndrome
America’s Best Kept Secret
Asking: a 59 Minute Guide to Everything
Bringing Down the House
Confessions of a Street Addict
Damn it Feels Good to be a Banker
Dragon’s at Your Door
Guide to Fashion Entrepreneurship
Every Landlord’s Guide to Tax Deductions
Fashion Entrepreneurship
Good to Great
How to Make Money in Stocks
Investing in Real Estate
Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques
Landlording
One Up On Wall Street
Options for the Stock Investor
Power Failure
Profit by Investing in Real Estate Tax Liens
Rainmaking: The Fundraisers Guide to Landing Big Gifts
Real Money, Jim Cramer
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Rhinoceros Success
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Retail in Detail
Selling
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace
The 4-Hour Workweek
The America We Deserve
The Art of the Deal
The Big Short
The Challenger Sale
The Electronic Day Trader
The E-Myth Revisited
The Idea-Driven Organization
The Little Black Book of Connections
The Little Red Book of Selling
The Millionaire Next Door
The Oil Factor
The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource
The Smartest Guys in the Room
The Successful Investor
The Writing System
Tools and Tactics for the Master Day Trader
When Genius Failed
Sociology/Psychology
A First-rate Madness
A Framework for Understanding Poverty
Batman and Philosophy
Batman and Psychology
Blink
Boundaries in Marriage
Butter My Butt and Call Me a Biscuit
Buyology
David and Goliath
Emotional Intelligence
The Five Love Languages
Freakonomics
Gang Leader for a Day
How to Create a Mind
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Hidden Brain
Outliers
Predictably Irrational
Superfreakonomics
Sway
The Art of Seduction
The Female Brain
The Five Love Languages
The Game
The Invisible Gorilla
The Mystery Method
The Pickup Artist
The Psychopath Test
The Secret
The Tipping Point
The Upside of Irrationality
The Way of the Superior Man
What the Dog Saw
Cars
Auto Audio
Designing, building and testings your own speaker systems with projects
Chassis Engineering
Engineer to Win
Tune to Win
The Car Stereo Cookbook
Race
Disintegration
Enough
Life on the Color Line
Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America
Politics and Policy
Animal Farm
Beer and Circus
Boss: Richard J Daley of Chicago
Capitol Punishment
Courage and Consequence
Decision Points
Dreams from my Father, Barack Obama
Faith of my Fathers, John McCain
Flat Tax Revolution
From Father to Son, Evan Bayh
Game Change
Here is your Indiana Government
I Am America (and so can you)
International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior
Keeping the Republic
Leading the Revolution, Eric Holcomb
Living History, Hilary Clinton
Making Globalization Work
My Life, Bil Clinton
Obama: From Politics to Power
Reveille for Radicals
Rules for Radicals
Run Mitch Run
Supreme Conflict
The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama
The Communist Manifesto
The World is Flat
The Revolution: A Manifesto
Military and Strategy
Lone Survivor
The 33 Strategies of War
The 48 Laws of Power
The 50th Law
The Art of War, Niccolo M.
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
The Prince
The Warrior Elite
Fiction
American Psycho
Ender’s Game
Religion
A Grief Observed
Free Will, Harris
God is Not Great, Hitchens
Mere Christianity
Mortality
River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins
The Case for Christ
The Four Loves
The God Delusion, Dawkins
The Great Divorce
The Power to be Free
The Problem of Pain
The Screwtape Letters
The Selfish Gene
The Question of God
Till We Have Faces