Harry S. Truman famously said, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders must be readers.”

I aspire to be in the latter group, viewing myself as the catalyst for my personal and professional development. Entrepreneurship is a choice, and our development is an ongoing, evolving process in which reading and study should be foundational.

I tend to average somewhere between 15 and 30 books consumed annually, depending upon their size (pages), scope (subject matter) and magnitude (exploratory thought and provocation). I turned 54 in December, and if I live another 30 years, I’ll have only about 600 books left to read……which doesn’t feel like many. Yet another lesson in the “quality over quantity” argument.

I’m constantly looking to add “worthy reads from credible sources” to my personal reading list, so if you have some good ones to share, please send me an email with a few of your favorites along with a sentence or two about why you liked the book(s) you’re recommending. We all “get better together.”

All that being said, here are the best books I read in the last 90 days(ish) and would recommend them as part of your professional development and worthy of your personal evolution…

“The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt

This book should be required reading for everyone who is a parent of a child under the age of 16. Required reading. Full stop. Consider this equal parts book recommendation and Public Service Announcement.

We are all dependent on our smartphones, but most of us can manage our usage. Our kids cannot. Professor Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business and his depth of research will help you confront the fear in questions like:

• When should I give my child a phone—especially when seemingly everyone else is getting one?
• What apps, subscriptions, or content should I allow them to access?
• Is there a psychological risk to them?

We’re fighting a battle we can’t win. If you want to understand why we (parents) are going to lose, then read “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt. And subscribe to his Substack called “After Babel.” Is smartphone and app usage correlated to the outright destruction of Churchill teen mental health (especially girls)? No…it CAUSES it. Suicide. Depression. Anxiety. Self-harm. Loneliness and isolation. It’s all there. Enjoy the research.

I give (NYU) Professor Haidt credit in that he gives recommendations on what to change as parents and how we should adapt as an educational system. He also tries to provide some level of optimism. All, to turn the tide against Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok and all of the rest is going to require a lot of us as individuals simply saying, “Enough!”

It will also require one other institution taking a stand – the United States Government. I understand we live in a divided society in far too many ways but isn’t there some way to come together to do what’s right for the ONE group of people who need it most – our kids?! This “turning of the tide” must start somewhere, and I’m glad that Jonathan Haidt threw down the gauntlet. I’ll gladly fall in line behind him.

“The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson

I’m not sure exactly why, but I’ve been sucked into a vortex of books centered around the First and Second World Wars lately. “The Splendid and the Vile” is a masterpiece of research, compilation and writing by Erik Larson. He takes letters, journal entries, official correspondence and about anything else remaining in written form to create the story of Sir Winston Churchill’s first year in office as Prime Minister of Great Britain.

While I certainly felt like I knew a lot about Churchill’s leadership during the bombing of Britain, nothing could compare to reading how it all happened over and repeatedly. The Nazi’s lighting fast domination of Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland, and the immediate collapse France. The dramatic rescue at Dunkirk. The sinking of the French navy by the British fleet. The aerial gallantry of the RAF pilots. Londoners sleeping in Tube stations. And Churchill standing tall among it all with his fingers making a “V sign” for victory and proclaiming, “We shall never surrender!”

We all occasionally think times are tough and that we’re fighting through a hard spell, but if you want to read a book that helps you truly understand being resolute against insurmountable odds, this is the one.

“Thinking in Bets” by Annie Duke

I’ve also done (or “am doing”) a bit of a deep dive into the topic of “decision making” lately. As executives, we are forced to live in the world of making decisions without all the facts. Call it “gut feeling” or “instinct” or whatever you want, the fact is that most of us make decisions too quickly without taking the time to think through possibilities, let alone probabilities. When the outcome arrives in our favor, we attribute it to skill. And when it doesn’t, we attribute it to bad luck.

Annie Duke is a retired professional poker player turned corporate consultant…and a compelling author. This book is beyond fantastic. I don’t know how to play poker, but I was able to follow her stories and her insights into the game as to how they relate to real world decisions. She’s obviously highly analytical (which I love…) and she digs deep into “separating the decision from the outcome.” This is something that every executive should learn from. More importantly, we should all embrace the need to improve our decision-making abilities if we expect to improve our outcomes.

“Essentials” by David Whyte

By now, many of you know that I’m a huge fan of the Irish poet, David Whyte. I became a fan by reading his prose in a book called “Consolations” (more on that next quarter…). Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of poetry – probably because I have a hard time understanding it and digesting it. That’s probably still the case overall.

David Whyte’s writing makes me see the world differently. It forces me to slow down. It forces me to wrestle with the words on the paper. It gets me out of my “doing self” and more into my “being self.” His writing is truly a gift to the world, and I’m grateful to have been given it by a friend of mine, Allen Gillespie.

“Essentials” is a small, short book that combines some of Whyte’s best poetry and parts of some of his best essays (prose). Quite a few have explanatory notes from the author that give further insights into the passage. This is a book that I would take out onto my back porch in the early morning sunlight of a Saturday or Sunday and read an entry while drinking a cup of warm coffee. I grew to love the ritual. What took me only 3 or 4 minutes to read gave me 20 to 30 minutes to explore and to appreciate. My appreciation was found in the depths of ordinary things that I had been rushing past for decades. There’s beauty in simple moments. I have more of that now.

“The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway

I thought I had read this novel back in high school, but now I know I hadn’t. It was Hemingway’s first novel and regarded as his best work by critics. I’m not worthy to render a verdict such as that, but I can say that it’s an incredible read.

The book was originally published in 1926 and is set in France and Spain after the close of World War One. This is one of the great novels of “The Lost Generation” and it’s such a compelling look into life of a century ago. It’s completely different in most ways from “The Great Gatsby” which is set in the same timeframe but is more of the “Roaring Twenties” era. The main characters of both stories share some commonality.

“The Sun Also Rises” follows a small group of Americans in their growing disillusionment over life. Hemingway’s curt dialogue accentuates the utter lack of depth and substance of anything in any of their lives at the time. They move from one bar, bistro or club to another in a state of constant inebriation to take their minds off anything of consequence. It almost becomes frustrating to read. And then you get to the bull fighting scenes in Pamplona – epic tales of splendor, grace and carnage told with eloquence and beauty as only Hemingway can. The contrast of these events against the characters of the novel is pure dominance.

I have to admit that one reason the book drew me in so much was because of the time in which it’s set: a century ago…and you feel like you’re there. There are several instances when they must communicate via telegraph. A world without our modern conveniences and it seems to have worked well. Maybe this is a novel that also helps me separate what’s urgent from what’s important.

Public Service Announcement

I’m an entrepreneur like many of you. I run a small business like many of you. I marvel at corporations that change the economic landscape at scale…like many of you. Amazon is one of those businesses, but I don’t buy books there unless I have no other means of finding them.

I buy physical books because I love the practice of reading with a book in my hand and a highlighter and a pencil on my desk. I highlight passages. I make notes. I underline things. I come back and re-read passages repeatedly. I realize you can do all the above on a Kindle, but I spend far too much of my life in front of a computer, so reading for me is a release from that obligation.

I also enjoy going into a bookstore and browsing the shelves. I enjoy the inefficient task of buying a book for myself, not simply opening a cardboard box that appears “24 hours later.” It makes me feel good to support local entrepreneurs who are trying to earn a living by sharing their love of books and taking a risk to create something that a corporation can’t. Park Road Books in Charlotte is one of those stores.

So, here’s my challenge to you. Instead of downloading your next book off of Amazon, buy a physical book from your local bookshop. Give it a try—just once.

Keep going. Keep growing. And keep grinding beans.