The Startup Leader’s Summer Reading List

The first official day of summer isn’t until June 20—but with restrictions easing, we can’t be the only ones who want to start the season a bit earlier. While we’re hoping to set the sourdough starters and jigsaw puzzles aside this year, there’s one pandemic hobby we aren’t willing to give up: reading lots and lots of books.

To make sure we don’t run out of recommendations, we asked leaders in the OpenView community to tell us what’s on their summer reading list. We’re adding their new picks on top of last year’s list just in case you missed a few. And if you’ve got one to add, let us know on LinkedIn.

Books about business and leadership

• Murder at First Principles
• The AI-First Company: How to Compete and Win with Artificial Intelligence
• Just Work: Get Sh*t Done Fast and Fair
• I Love It Here
• Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Future
• Burnout
• Think Again
• The Making of a Manager
• The Sacred Enneagram
• A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• Dare to Lead
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
• Radical Candor
• Contagious: Why Things Catch On
• From Head Shops to Whole Foods
• The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
• Break the Wheel

Non-fiction books

• World Travel: An Irreverent Guide
• Crying in H Mart
• Handsome
• How to Be an Antiracist
• A Piece of Cake
• Until the End of Time
• Child of Light
• Humble Pi
• Wow, No Thank You
• The Splendid and the Vile
• Keep Going
• Talking to Strangers
• Make Time
• The Power of Moments

Fiction books

• Big Girl, Small Town
• Where the Crawdads Sing
• A Wealth of Pigeons
• A Dance with Dragons
• Between the World and Me
• Salvage the Bones
• Such a Fun Age
• An American Marriage
• Assassination Vacation

Where to order books

If possible, please support your local bookstore (visit Bookshop.org for help finding it). And here are just a few of many that offer online ordering:

• Frugal Bookstore (Boston)
• Mahogany Books (Washington, D.C)
• Semicolon Bookstore (Chicago)
• Harriet’s Bookshop (Philadelphia)
• Black Pearl Books (Austin)

What are you reading? Share it with us on LinkedIn.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2020 and updated in May 2021.