OK, these are probably not the best books of all time but these mostly non-fiction titles were important to me when I read them over the last twenty years.
Education
The Power of Their Ideas, Meier (Bible)
The Students are Watching, Sizer
Reinventing Public Education and It Takes a City, Hill
Global Achievement Gap, Wagner
The World is Open, Bonk
Disrupting Class, Christensen, Horn and Johnson
Mindset, Dweck
Education Unbound, Hess
Business
5th Discipline, Senge (Didn’t like the field guides as much)
In Search of Excellence, Peters and Waterman
Competitive Strategy, Porter (Classic)
Positioning, Ries and Trout
The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christiansen
The Age of Unreason, Handy
Good to Great & Built to Last, Collins
Managing, or anything by Drucker
Leadership & Biography
Leadership is an Art, DePree (Still the best)
The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner (The guidebook)
A Force for Change, Kotrer
Orbiting the Giant Hairball, MacKenzie (Fun runner up)
7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey
John Adams, McCullough (Read a Madison biography after that.)
Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson
Globalization/Development
Guns, Germs & Steel, Diamond
Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen
Which World, Hammond
Culture Matters, Harrison & Huntington
Fourth Turning & Millennials, Strauss/Howe
The Lexus and the Olive Tree & Longitudes and Attitudes, Friedman
The Post-American World, Zakaria
Poetry
Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Macy and Barrows
The Heart Aroused, Whyte (Good runner up with leadership application)
Early Morning, Stafford (Touching biography makes Bill Stafford accessible)
New and Collected Poems, Milosz
Poems New and Collected, Szymborska (What is it about mid-century Poles?)
The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence
Teaching With Fire, Intrator and Scribner
Science
Consilience, Wilson (Wow)
Art & Physics, Shlain (Amazing parallels)
Turning Point, Capra (Where Meg Wheatley got her start)
The Clock of the Long Now, Brand
Einstein’s Dreams, Lightman (Only fiction on the list; mind bending)
For the Time Being, Dillard (Another mind bender/dual biography)
The Blank Slate & Drive, Steven Pinker
Elegant Universe, Greene (or A Brief History of Time, Hawkin)
Tipping Point, Gladwell
Work
Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi and Damon
Flow, Csikszentmihalyi
Care of the Soul, Moore
The Reinvention of Work, Fox
Wow, I left so many great business and education books out. And no non-fiction!?! What books made a difference to you and your work?