Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recommends reading these 10 books to achieve greatness in and out of the office

REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks to members of the media at a Microsoft event in San Francisco, California March 27, 2014.

The sheer number of books contained in Satya Nadella's corner office highlight how much he reads - both pages and screens are indispensable parts of his life.

The CEO of Microsoft, the most valuable company in the world, grounds himself and Microsoft's culture on ideas he's learned thanks to his reading habit. The principles he derived from psychological and historical titles like "Mindset" by Carol Dweck continue to define his tenure as CEO.

"I read a few pages here or a few pages there," Nadella told Fast Company. "There are a few books, of course, that you read end-to-end. But without books I can't live."

Nadella's time as CEO was initially shaped by Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication, which he asked his top executives to read. This was the first indicator to senior leadership that Nadella would not operate like his predecessors. In his second earnings call, Nadella borrowed a phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche by saying that investors could expect "courage in the face of reality" from Microsoft.

We've compiled in the following list for anyone who wants to start reading, or quoting literature, like Satya Nadella.

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