Yes that is a link-bait title since that’s what Business Insider, Forbes, and all the other news magazines use when they try to sell you ten books. Usually they pair 10 Top _______ with some item to sell books and some important persons name Benedict Evans. So I’ve sort of done the same thing here, the only difference is that the actual book recommendations were crowdsourced from Benedict Evans followers. All of whom I’m sure were trying to make a good impression with their intellect and so recommended the best book they could possibly think of when Benedict posed the question:
Never read a book whose title includes ‘how’
— Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) November 7, 2014
I’m sure it’s not surprising that he received all sorts of feedback from his loyal followers, but I’ve gone ahead and collected the list of ten books that were included in those responses and listed them here with a note about each. Yes the link goes to a paid Amazon affiliate link, so again trying to keep in line with copying all the major online publications when they put a post like this up. Without further ado, here is the 10 Top How-to books recommended by Benedict Evans’ followers:
- Jamie Pastore (@jamiepastore) recommends How To Win Friends and Influence People
– An excellent book that I completely agree is beneficial to anyone, whether you are good with relationships or not, this book offers some very practical and time tested guidance. I’m a very introverted person and am fine going for days not speaking to anyone. This book made me understand how to deal with people and successfully sell my services as well as understand better my role as a public speaker, presenter, and trainer.
- Kyro Beshay (@Kyro) recommends How to Read a Book (A Touchstone book) – What a great book, I read this book while I was getting a college degree a few years back. I had the luxury of working in tech before going to college and really found tools like
How to Read a Book, useful in being a better learner. Fast forward past college and I still am able to leverage the principles I learned in this book to be a better reader, learner, and student of anything I choose.
- Fukumimi (@fukumimi) recommends Howards End
– I’ve never read this book… I’ve purchased it and added it to the queue though.
- Josh Maher (@joshmaher) recommends How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness
– Well yeah, that’s me – I recommended the book to impress Benedict like everyone else. I really loved this book though. Like Russ Roberts (the author) I could never finish Adam Smith’s first book. Reading Russ’ book though explained Adam’s book so beautifully and completely. It has really affected how I think about life and you’ll see it influence my work.
- Farooq Javed (@farooqmjaved) recommends How Will You Measure Your Life?
– Another book I haven’t read… purchased and added to the queue.
- Phillip Jackson (@ptjackson) recommends How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
– I haven’t read this one yet, but it is in my queue so I’ll get there. Even at a book a week I have a HUGE book queue.
- John Jackson (@johnjac) recommends How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
– Purchased, added to queue… so should you!
- Christian Warden (@xn) recommends How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business – Added to my list.
- Shreeker (@shreekar_72) recommends How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Classic Seuss)
– I love this book! Read it even if you never have and you don’t have kids. It is a book about humans.
- Ted Herman (@tedherman) recommends How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)
– This is another that is already in my queue. Isn’t it Nassim Taleb that judges knowledge on the size of someone’s library (the knowledge they seek) and not the size of someone’s past reads (the knowledge they thought they gained).
Eliot Peper (@eliotpeper) also recommended “How to achieve your dreams with no work at all” – I couldn’t find it on Amazon though so couldn’t include a link.
What other books that include the word “How” in the title would you recommend to Benedict or myself?
“How to achieve your dreams with no work at all” was a joke aimed at the how to/self help genre :).