Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

1. "Meditations" – Marcus Aurelius 2. "The Practicing Mind" – Thomas Sterner 3. "Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance" – Atul Gawande (I'm not a surgeon; the principles herein are universal) (honorable mention: "How to Win Friends and Influence People" – Dale Carnegie; various biographies by Caro and Chernow)

The best book I've read in the last 5 years is David Simon's, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"...if you've watched The Wire, half of its material is derived from this real life account of being embedded in Baltimore's homicide unit: https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b... (https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b0_bvUC&hl=en) All of Atul Gawande's books, notably: The Checklist Manifesto [1]: http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/ Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance: http://atulgawande.com/book/better/ [1] You can read the essay that this book is based on in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist