Books Jeff Bezos has recommended
The books Jeff Bezos assigned to Amazon's executives and named as favorites, from Brad Stone's reporting and Bezos' own interviews.
Jeff Bezos has no affiliation with this site and does not endorse it. Recommendations are quoted from public sources listed at the bottom. Background: Wikipedia.
Bezos ran Amazon's senior team partly as a book club. Brad Stone's The Everything Store reproduces 'Jeff's Reading List', the dozen books he assigned to executives, and Bezos has talked about several of them (and one perfect novel) in interviews since. Each entry notes which it was.
The through-line is operations and long-term thinking: constraints, flywheels, disruption from below, and why small teams ship.
The list
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989
His favorite novel. He has said that before reading it he did not think a perfect novel was possible.
Built to Last
Jim Collins & Jerry I. Porras · 1994
His favorite business book and one of the titles he assigned to Amazon's executive team.
The Innovator's Solution
Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor · 2003
Assigned to executives; the 'disrupt yourself' logic behind launching Kindle and AWS while they cannibalized existing businesses.
The Goal
Eliyahu M. Goldratt · 1984
Assigned to executives: a novel about a factory manager that teaches the theory of constraints, visible in how Amazon runs fulfillment.
Sam Walton: Made in America
Sam Walton · 1992
On Jeff's Reading List; Bezos borrowed Walton's frugality and 'bias for action' almost verbatim into Amazon's leadership principles.
The Mythical Man-Month
Frederick P. Brooks Jr. · 1975
On the list; the origin of the idea that adding people to a late project makes it later, and of Amazon's two-pizza teams.
Good to Great
Jim Collins · 2001
On the list; Collins coached Amazon's leadership on the flywheel concept that became the company's strategic diagram.
The Black Swan
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 2007
On the list: experiment constantly, expect the unexpected, and do not confuse a smooth past with a safe future.
Creation: Life and How to Make It
Steve Grand · 2000
On the list; Grand's argument for building from simple primitives influenced the design philosophy of AWS.
Lean Thinking
James P. Womack & Daniel T. Jones · 1996
On the list; the Toyota-derived waste-elimination philosophy that runs through Amazon's warehouses.
Questions people ask
What is Jeff Bezos' favorite book?
He has named The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro as his favorite novel, and Built to Last by Jim Collins as his favorite business book.
Where does 'Jeff's Reading List' come from?
Brad Stone's 2013 book The Everything Store includes the list of titles Bezos assigned to Amazon's senior leadership; it has been widely reprinted since.
Sources
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Keep going
Charlie Munger
Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman (1924–2023)
The books Charlie Munger recommended in Poor Charlie's Almanack and at Berkshire Hathaway and Daily Journal meetings, with sources.
Elon Musk
SpaceX, Tesla, xAI
Books Elon Musk has cited in interviews and on X: the science fiction behind SpaceX, the engineering texts he recommends, and the AI books he told people to read.
Paul Graham
Y Combinator co-founder, essayist
Books Paul Graham has recommended in his essays and on X, each linked to the essay or post where he said it.
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