7 Books Every Leader Should Read, According To A Harvard Business School Professor

rachel sian, flickr

Max Bazerman, a business psychology professor at Harvard Business School and the author of the best book on general decision making that I've ever read, "Judgment in Managerial Decision Making," came out with 7 book recommendations.

I hadn't heard of two of these, which I picked up.

1. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

I think we've all heard of this one. Bazerman says:

2. "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness" by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein

This is another one I think most of you have heard of but it's a classic. I once used this book as the foundation to make the case to a management team for hiring a group of behavioral psychologists. Along with "Thinking, Fast and Slow" it is part of the ultimate behavioral economics reading list.

3. "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis

4. "Eyewitness To Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton" by David Gergen

This one looks fascinating.

5. "Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them" by Joshua Greene

This book has been recommended to me by so many smart people that there must be something to it.

6. "Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending" by Elizabeth Dunn & Michael Norton

7. "The Art and Science of Negotiation" by Howard Raiffa

More from Farnam Street:

• Sensemaking as a Complement to Default Thinking
• Genevieve Bell on the Value of Humanities in an Executive Role
• Brené Brown: Your Critics Aren't Always The Ones Who Count
• William Blake - Heaven and Hell
• Max Bazerman: Books for Leaders