Dec 30, 2019
#55:
The #1 Author I Read this Year…drumroll please…
Napoleon Hill.
Surprise Surprise.
I re-read 2 of his books, Outwitting the Devil and Think and Grow Rich.
And I listened to another for the first time on audiobook, How to Use Your Own Mind.
But the book I’m going to recommend is: Napoleon Hill in His Own Voice.
I was turned onto this one by friend Cara…and it quickly became an obsession.
This is a 10 hour series of audio recordings from his live workshops when Hill was still alive.
There was a two month period where I would put my Bose Noise Cancelling headphones on and listen to these recordings for 15-20 minutes first thing every morning…and last thing every night.
No joke, I listened to these recordings 3 times through over that period…and rewired my brain.
Listen to this Book if: You want to reconfigure your DNA around what you believe is possible.
…You can listen on Spotify for Free.
The Most Impactful Book I Read this Year:
White Fragility, Why it’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin D’Angelo.
This book is perspective rattling and unapologetically confronting in the best of ways.
Read this Book: If you want a wake-up call.
The big idea of this book, is that the idea of racism is so uncomfortable for white people – as it’s viewed as the ultimate character assassination – that we refuse to look at how we are benefitting from and ensuring the survival of the various systems, behaviors and covert language that perpetuate racism.
The impact on me, was that I was inspired to take a good hard look at where I’d been dismissive, defensive and ignorant in my own life. It led me to pursuing and devouring some really powerful African American authors like Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Colson Whitehead.
The #1 Genre I read this Year: Men’s Work.
I read 6 books this year in the category of men’s work, and I’ll link all of them in the shownotes…but there’s two I want to recommend:
#1 is Modern Manhood by Cleo Stiller. If you listen to this show, you know Bryan and I are big fans of Cleo and this important book, and you can go back and listen to our two part interview episode with her titled…Modern Manhood.
Read this book if: You need help grappling with the complicated world of striving to be a good man in today’s era.
#2 is King Warrior Magician Lover by Robert Moore.
This is widely considered to be one of the most important contemporary books on masculinity.
Read this Book if: You want to create your own definition of what it means to be a powerful, loving and trustworthy man.
This book has heavily influenced our work here on this show. You’ve heard Bryan and I talk about how The Great Man Within creates environments where he and others can thrive.
Well, that comes directly from the King Archetype.
Favorite Fiction:
The Border by Don Winslow
This is the 3rd installment in a trilogy that Winslow writes about the brutal Drug War – that we are losing spectacularly – with Mexico.
Read this book if you want a novel that you absolutely cannot out down.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.
This is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about a runaway slave who
Read this Book if you want a beautifully written and heartbreakingly educational perspective on the America some of us work so hard not to talk about.
Favorite Non-Fiction:
Mindhunter by John Douglas
This is the story of how the FBI created a state of the art personality profiling system to help catch the most notorious serial killers of our time. You’ll hear all about Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, the Unabomber.
Read this book if you want a terrifying lens into the minds of the most brutal serial killers of all time, and how the events of their early lives caused them to careen into a tragic life of destruction.
They’ve fictionalized this book and turned it into a Netflix series, also called Mindhunter, which is directed by the same man who did Fight Club.
The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine.
Read this Book fellas, if you want to understand your wives, daughters, mothers, friends, boss, employees…any woman you care about. Just trust me.
Favorite Leadership Book
Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Laif Babson
This book was probably recommended to me a dozen times over the past year and I finally relented and decided to listen.
Jocko and Laif are Navy Seals who take their battlefield stories and apply them to the business landscape.
The big idea is great leaders take ownership of 100% of whatever happens inside his or her unit. No excuses.
Listen to this book if: You want a stick of dynamite up your ass. Jocko and Laif narrate the book themselves.
Favorite Autobiography
The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
This is a coming of age story about Angelou’s turbulent life as a single mother, singer and political activist that leads her into the worlds of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, Billie Halliday and performing at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Read this book if you want to be whisked away in the stories of a woman who hands down lived one of the most captivating lives of all time.