A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson from avc.com kicked up interest in books that entreprenuers should read. Fred, in particular, made the point that “there is way more insight to be gained from stories than from business books.” He suggested Kavalier and Clay, Atlas Shrugged, The Prince, and anything by Shakespeare.

At the end of his post, he asked for more suggestions. The post generated 191 comments and prompted the creation of a wiki.

I pulled all the books from the wiki over into this post and linked to the books. The [FW] tag denotes that it was endorsed by Mr. Wilson himself directly or in the comments of the original post.

• Atlas Shrugged [FW]
• The Prince [FW]
• All of Shakespeare’s Histories & Tragedies [FW]
• Founders at Work
• Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Catch-22 [FW]
• The Gold Coast
• State of Fear
• Confessions of a Street Addict
• Selling the Wheel
• Plato’s Republic
• The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
• Moby Dick [FW]
• The Art of War [FW]
• Exodus
• Taking on the World
• A Short History of Nearly Everything
• Garp [FW]
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull [FW]
• Rossi: MotoGenius
• The Puritan Gift
• The Fountainhead [FW]
• Pillars of the Earth
• The White Tiger
• The Monk and the Riddle
• Outrageous Optimism: Wisdom for the Entrepreneurial Journey
• The E-Myth Revisited
• Setting The Table [FW]
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Siddartha [FW]
• Confederacy of Dunces
• Dark Star Safari
• Project X – Nissin Cup Noodle
• The Red Horse
• St. Augustine’s Confessions
• Mastery
• The Four Agreements (Miguel Ruiz)
• Tao Te Ching (Lau Tzu)
• The Sharper your knife, the less you cry (Kathleen Flinn)
• What Would Google Do? (Jeff Jarvis)
• Burn Rate (Michael Wolff)
• Startup (Jerry Kaplan)
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell)
• The Alchemist (Coelho)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
• The Wealth of Nations (Smith)
• Absalom, Absalom (Faulkner)
• The 33 Strategies of War
• The 48 Laws of Power
• Hide a dagger behind a smile
• Cold Calling For Chickens
• Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity (Flores)
• The Art Of Profitability
• The Innovator’s Dilemma
• Crossing The Chasm
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20
• The Compassionate Samurai
• The Art of Learning
• The Selfish Gene
• Capital (Karl Marx)
• Mein Kampf
• The Singularity is Near
• How to Win Friends & Influence People
• Hope is not a Strategy
• The Four steps to the Epiphany
• The Principles of Product Development Flow – Second Generation Lean Product Development
• One Hen
• Blueprint To A Billion
• Moneyball
• The Places In Between
• Mavericks at work
• Blink
• The Tipping Point
• Outliers
• Freakonomics
• Behind Closed Doors (Secrets of great management)