100+ Must-Read Books In 2021.

DO Lectures
27 min readDec 4, 2021

--

Written by The DO Team

Each year we ask you what books have inspired you, or that you have given to others. Then we take your answers, plus add a few of our own and turn them into our annual list. We hope it proves useful.

WELL-BEING.

Four Thousand Weeks

By Oliver Burkeman

An uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. It introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations.

Shop

You Are What You Say

By Matthew Budd

Presenting the principles of this powerful, scientifically validated program that weaves ancient and modern insights into human behaviour, neurophysiology, language, and spirituality.

Shop

Breath

By James Nestor

A revelatory account of how making minor alterations to the way we breathe could have profound benefits for health and wellbeing. James’ clear, accessible volume combines science with ancient custom to develop a unified theory of breathing.

Shop

The Happiness Hypothesis

By Jonathan Haidt

Every culture hands wisdom down through generations. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others. Happiness comes from within. Can these ‘truths’ hold the key to a happier, more fulfilled life?

Shop

Courage Is Calling

By Ryan Holiday

Drawing on ancient Stoic wisdom and examples across history and around the world, Ryan Holiday shows why courage is so important, and how to cultivate it in our own lives. Courage is not simply physical bravery but also doing the right thing and standing up for what you believe.

Shop

The Art Of Saying NO

By Damon Zahariades

Imagine being able to turn down requests and decline invitations with confidence and poise. Imagine saying no to people asking you for favours, and inspiring their respect in the process.

Shop

Perimenopause Power

By Maisie Hill

Navigating your hormones on the journey to menopause. A well-researched, evidence-based book on perimenopause and menopause that gives women the information they need to address their hormonal needs.

Shop

Living While Black

By Guilaine Kinouani

The essential guide to overcoming racial trauma. Empowering you to adopt radical self-care tools that improve day-to-day wellness. It teaches you how to thrive and find hope — or even joy — in the face of racial adversity.

Shop

Girlvana

By Ally Maz

A handbook for the self. A compassionate, honest, and personal guide to empowering yourself, and others, for a safer and more inclusive world. Being a teenager can be a beautiful time in your life. But it can also be one filled with self-doubt, worries, and complicated relationships.

Shop

The Comfort Crisis

By Michael Easter

In this gripping investigation, Michael Easter seeks out off-the-grid visionaries, disruptive genius researchers, and mind-body conditioning trailblazers who are unlocking the life-enhancing secrets of a counterintuitive solution: discomfort.

Shop

MONEY.

Die With Zero

By Bill Perkins

Introducing the compelling principles he uses to think about personal finances, and more importantly, life. Bill details a thought-provoking framework for maximising net fulfilment, over net worth.

Shop

The Fourth Turning

By William Strauss and Neil Howe

With blazing originality, this book explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict its future.

Shop

Richer, Wiser, Happier

By William Green

How the world’s greatest investors win in markets and life. A fresh and unexpectedly profound book that draws on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with many of the world’s super-investors to demonstrate that the keys for building wealth hold other life lessons as well.

Shop

The Dao of Capital

By Mark Spitznagel

From identifying the monetary distortions and non-randomness of stock market routs to scorned highly-productive assets, Spitznagel “brings Austrian economics from the ivory tower to the investment portfolio.”

Shop

Bank to the Future

By Simon Dixon

Those who play the game by the new rules understand that seven highly disruptive new technologies are changing the rules of work. Those who understand the rules of money and finance also know that we are sitting on a debt trap that is proving increasingly hard to finance.

Shop

The Great Depression

By Benjamin Roth

Benjamin’s depiction of life in a time of widespread foreclosures, a schizophrenic stock market, political unrest and mass unemployment seem to speak directly to readers today.

Shop

The Bitcoin Standard

By Saifedean Ammous

Attempting to make the case that Bitcoin is a digital form of money that can provide a viable alternative to central bank fiat currencies. This book explains what money is, how it has evolved over time, and how and why various monies throughout history have succeeded or failed to serve their purpose.

Shop

The Quest of the Simple Life

By W.J Dawson

This book is a pure joy to read. It’s hard to believe it was published 100+ years ago in 1907 because so much is still applicable today. The story covers Dawson’s thoughts, insights, and reflections as he transitions from a life as a clerk in London to a life in the country.

Shop

The Price of Tomorrow

By Jeff Booth

In this extraordinary contrarian book, Jeff Booth, a leading mind and CEO in e-commerce and technology for 20 years, details the technological and economic realities shaping our present and our future, and the choices we face as we go forward — a potentially alarming, but deeply hopeful situation.

Shop

Snow Crash

By Neal Stephenson

Exploring linguistics, religion, computer science, politics, philosophy, cryptography and the future of pizza delivery, Snow Crash is a riveting, brake-neck adventure into the fast-approaching future.

Shop

When Money Dies

By Adam Fergusson

A classic history of what happens when a nation’s currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless, the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy.

Shop

CREATIVITY.

Something’s Off

By Virgil Abloh and Nike

An extensive collaborative project between NIKE, Inc. and Virgil Abloh, tracing Abloh’s investigative, creative process through documentation of prototypes. Original text messages from Abloh to Nike designers and treasures from the Nike archives.

Shop

Change by Design

By Tim Brown

This is not a book by designers for designers; it is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organisation, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Shop

The Spots and The Dots

By Marion Deuchars

A story told from two different perspectives; from the Spots and the Dots. It has a very relevant theme of prejudice and ignorance but it’s also very playful with its ‘turnaround book’ concept.

Shop

The Artist’s Journey

By Steven Pressfield

It begins with the hero’s journey, it is merely the beginning and it allows us to begin living authentically, to self-actualise. It is the gift you get from going through the often painful hero’s journey, it is what you do with your gift, how you help the world and those around you.

Shop

Art Sleeves

By DB Burkeman

This tightly curated collection of covers is a time capsule of visual art and music culture as shown through the most important record covers designed by visual artists and graphic designers in the past forty years.

Shop

Creative Thinking

By Angus Fletcher

Providing you with a bootstrap guide that you can use to train yourself to be more creative. Creativity is what enabled our species to thrive in the chaotic and uncertain ecosystems of evolution by natural selection.

Shop

Photographs

By Jack Davidson

A self-taught photographer, Jack makes pictures like a painter paints, using intuition and instinct to craft photographs that excavate the surreal and sensual from the fabric of daily life. Experiments with image making from 2007 to present.

Shop

Banksy Graffitied Walls and Wasn’t Sorry

By Fausto Gilberti

A clever, quirky, and highly entertaining biography of the leading contemporary artist, Banksy. Fausto Gilberti brings life, intrigue, and whimsy to the mysterious story of one of the most important contemporary artists of our time.

Shop

Kid A Mnesia

By Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood

Culled from the Radiohead frontman’s collaboration with artist Stanley Donwood in the opening years of the 21st century, Kid A Mnesia is a haunting collection of eerie landscapes and unsettling imagery gathered together in a sumptuous hardback edition.

Shop

Oh No Crow!

By Joanna Perry

Colombo Crow Colombo Crow. You steal and pinch wherever you go. This is a story for all to know. The tale of naughty Colombo Crow.

Shop

There’s a Ghost in This House

By Oliver Jeffers

A captivating new picture book with interactive transparent pages, from world-renowned artist Oliver Jeffers. Step inside to follow a young girl’s entertaining ghost hunt by turning the transparent pages on her journey.

Shop

The Amazingly Astonishing Story

By Lucy Gannon

A classic story of a working-class girl growing up in the fifties and sixties, where dreams and reality seem irreconcilable. Her Catholic upbringing, a father torn between his daughter and his new wife, her irreverent imagination and stubborn determination to enjoy life , all mean that Lucy Gannon really does have an amazing story (including meeting the Beatles in her school grounds) as she finds her place in the world.

Shop

ENVIRONMENT.

Regeneration

By Paul H

A radically new understanding of and practical approach to climate change. Whether you are an individual, community focused or a national government, this book is a call to arms to mobilise and create a better future for ourselves on this planet.

Shop

Net Positive

By Paul Polman and Andrew Winston

How courageous companies thrive by giving more than they take. Bold, enlightened and argued with persuasiveness and zeal, Net Positive outlines how business can only profit in the modern age by aiming to fix global crises and give something back to society.

Shop

The Economics of Sustainable Food

By Nicoletta Batini

This book details the true cost of food and illustrates how to transform our broken system, alleviating its severe financial and human burden.

Shop

Speed & Scale

By John Doerr

The Speed & Scale Plan gets us to net-zero emissions by 2050 — and halfway there by 2030. What do we need to do? Six objectives lay out the actions we need to take across every sector of the economy in this book.

Shop

Micro Life

By DK and Chris Packham

Find out all about the unique and beautiful kingdoms of life at a microscopic scale and how every organism meets the challenges of survival no matter its size. The perfect book for people who enjoy photography, nature, and biology.

Shop

Why Rebel

By Jay Griffiths

This passionate, poetic manifesto for urgent rebellion is also a paean to the deep and extraordinary beauty of the natural world.

Shop

Wasted

By Katie Treggiden

When Trash Becomes Treasure celebrates 30 optimistic and enterprising designers, makers and manufacturers who use waste as their primary resource, offering a rare glimpse into the embryonic world they inhabit. Accompanying these profiles, five in-depth and thematic essays will explore the societal, cultural and environmental implications of their work.

Shop

From Field & Forest

By Anna Koska

Anna sources inspiration from the flora and fauna in the fields and forests surrounding her home in East Sussex. Her illustrations root us in nature, allowing us to pause and appreciate the beauty and significance of everyday occurrences.

Shop

Consumed

By Aja Barber

A powerful book that is an essential read for everybody who wants to stop feeling clueless and helpless about the impacts of consumerism, and start doing their part to help create a more sustainable world.

Shop

Eating to Extinction

By Dan Saladino

The world’s rarest foods and why we need to save them. An astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, a love letter to the diversity of global food cultures, and a work of great urgency and hope.

Shop

FUTURE YOU.

Dopamine Detox

By Thibaut Meurisse

A guide to help you remove distractions so you can finally work on your goals with ease. If you like easy-to-understand strategies, practical exercises, and no-nonsense teaching, you will love this book.

Shop

Atlas of the Heart

By Brené Brown

Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. If we want to find the way back to ourselves and one another, we need language and the grounded confidence to tell our stories.

Shop

The Gap and The Gain

By Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan

This book will teach you that measuring your current self vs. your former self has enormous psychological benefits. The key to this deceptively simple yet multi-layered concept that will have you feeling good, feeling grateful, and feeling like you are making progress even when times are tough.

Shop

Skip The Line

By James Altucher

The 10,000-hour rule isn’t the only way to achieve mastery. Entrepreneur James reveals a new mindset and proven toolkit that will empower anybody to quickly acquire the skills they need to succeed and achieve their dreams.

Shop

365 Ways to Have a Good Day

By Ian Sanders

For over a decade Ian Sanders has noted down stories and insights, conversations and thoughts, habits and ingredients about how to design a better day.

Shop

Peaks and Valleys

By Spencer Johnson

A story of a young man who lives unhappily in a valley until he meets an old man who lives on a peak, and it changes his work and life forever.

Shop

The Power of Starting Something Stupid

By Richie Norton

Redefining stupid as we know it, demonstrating that life-changing ideas are often tragically mislabelled stupid. What if the key to success, creativity, and fulfilment in your life lies in the potential of those stupid ideas?

Shop

Belonging

By Owen Eastwood

Drawing on his own Maori ancestry, Owen weaves together insights from homo sapiens’ evolutionary story and our collective wisdom. Shining a light on where these powerful ideas are applied around the world in high-performing settings encompassing sport, business, the arts and military.

Shop

Like Streams To The Ocean

By Jedidiah Jenkins

Bringing together new and old writings to explore the eight subjects that give life meaning: ego, family, home, friendship, love, work, death, the soul. You can travel the world looking for yourself, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, how can you find it?

Shop

Mae Among The Stars

By Roda Ahmed

A beautiful picture book for sharing and marking special occasions such as graduation. Inspired by the life of the first African American woman to travel in space, Mae Jemison.

Shop

FOOD.

The Pegan Diet

By Dr Mark Hyman

21 practical principles for reclaiming your health in a nutritionally confusing world. With The Pegan Diet, a food is medicine approach, this delicious diet is not only good for your brain and your body, but also good for the planet.

Shop

The Energy Paradox

By Dr Steven R. Gundry, MD

What to do when your get-up-and-go has got up and gone. Taking a fresh look at one of the top health issues and offering a revolutionary plan for boosting energy and revitalising mental and physical stamina.

Shop

Entangled Life

By Merlin Sheldrake

This book takes us on a mind-altering journey into the spectacular world of fungi. It reveals how these extraordinary organisms transform our understanding of our planet and life itself.

Shop

Advent

By Anja Dunk

For many, the Advent season is one of the most special times of the year, when candles twinkle, the Christmas tree is decorated, and smells of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove fill the kitchen. Advent celebrates the magical run-up to Christmas with over 100 classic German baking recipes.

Shop

One. Pot, Pan, Planet

By Anna Jones

Limiting the pans and simplifying the ingredients for all-in-one dinners that keep things fast and easy. These every night recipes celebrate vegetables and deliver knock-out flavour but without taking time and energy.

Shop

Fast This Way

By Dave Asprey

This book will take you on a journey through cutting-edge science to examine the ways novice fasters and Intermittent Fasting loyalists can up-end their relationship with food and upgrade their fasting game beyond calorie restriction.

Shop

Bress ’n’ Nyam

By Matthew Raiford

More than 100 heirloom Gullah Geechee recipes from a dynamic chef and sixth-generation farmer. It is the culinary representation of the ocean, rivers, and rich fertile loam in and around the coastal South.

Shop

Black Food

By Bryant Terry

With contributions from more than 100 Black cultural luminaires from around the globe, the book moves through chapters exploring parts of the Black experience, from Homeland to Migration, Spirituality to Black Future, offering delicious recipes, moving essays, and arresting artwork.

Shop

Crave

By Ed Smith

Providing first aid to every food craving, the author of The Borough Market Cookbook serves up a tantalising selection of exciting recipes, ingeniously arranged by their flavour profiles, from fresh and fragrant to cheesy and creamy. 6 Flavour Profiles. Over 100 recipes. Every craving covered.

Shop

Cook As You Are

By Ruby Tandoh

Interspersed with reflections on the pleasures of food, these recipes capture the moments that really make cooking special. Celebrating the messy, unglamorous, delicious realities of home cooking today. Finding joy in the ordinary rhythms of cooking, from cobbling together weeknight ‘cupboard dinners’ from store-cupboard staples and leftovers to rejoicing in the glory of carbs.

Shop

Tools for Food

By Corrine Mynatt

From basic necessities to design objects, each image is accompanied by a text detailing its origin, as well as interesting facts about its relationship between culture and cooking.

Shop

SPORT + ADVENTURE.

Why We Kneel, How We Rise

My Michael Holding

The Jamaican commentator and former cricketer expands on the game-changing distillation of the Black Lives Matter movement that he delivered live on air, in this powerful, eloquent work which combines Holding’s own testimony about racial abuse with thoughtful interviews from across the world of sport.

Shop

The Secret to Superhuman Strength

By Alison Bechdel

A deeply layered, personal story about selfhood, self-sabotage, mortality, addiction, bliss, wonder, and the concerns of a generation. This is an extraordinary, laugh-out-loud chronicle of the conundrums we all grapple with as we seek our true place in the world.

Shop

Ask an Adventurer

By Alastair Humphreys

Whether you are adventurous, creative, or just curious, Ask An Adventurer answers your questions from behind the scenes. All of the questions in the book were posed to Alastair by readers on social media.

Shop

Yoke

By Jessamyn Stanley

In a series of deeply honest, funny autobiographical essays, Jessamyn explores everything from imposter syndrome to cannabis to why it’s a full-time job loving yourself, all through the lens of yoke.

Shop

Saltwater in the Blood

By Easkey Britton

Surfing, natural cycles and the sea’s power to heal. Powerful feminist nature writing by the pioneer of women’s big-wave surfing in Ireland. A rare female perspective on surfing, exploring the mental skills it fosters, and the need to recognise the value of the ocean and of nature’s cycles in our lives.

Shop

Vince Lombardi on Leadership

By Pat Williams

Envision a successful future then chart a course to get there. Communicate your vision with passion and conviction. Know the people you lead; find out what motivates each one. Lead with character and integrity. Inspire confidence through your competence and success. Lead boldly, act decisively, don’t second-guess yourself. Don’t just be a boss; be a servant to your people.

Shop

Relentless

By Alistair Brownlee

Secrets of the sporting elite. The double Olympic champion triathlete dissects the anatomy of sporting success through a series of revealing interviews with elite sports stars from Ian Botham to Paula Radcliffe.

Shop

The Backyard Adventurer

By Beau Miles

YouTuber, new dad, and self-described oddball who needs to shower more, Beau is what happens when you cross Bear Grylls with Casey Neistat. Staying put for the first time in years, Beau developed a new kind of lifestyle as the Backyard Adventurer.

Shop

I Hate Running and You Can Too

By Brendan Leonard

How to get started, keep going, and make sense of an irrational passion. This is a humorous, punchy, motivating guide to running longer distances than some might think sensible — whether that’s a 5K or a marathon.

Shop

Extreme Like a Girl

By Carolina Amell

Filled with breathtaking photographs and inspirational personal texts, these profiles of extraordinary women athletes in action are definitive proof that extreme sports are not male-only territory.

Shop

Artisan United

By Jason C. Arnold and Kevin Wilkins

Skateboard illustration and fine art featuring artists Sean Cliver, Todd Bratrud, Philip Morgan, Marc Mckee, Thomas Campbell, Rob Mathieson, FOS, Mako, Jim Phillips, Chris Reed, Jason C Arnold, Yaia, George Yarnton, Pitchgrim, Benjamin Deberdt, Johnny “MOJO” Munnerlyn

Shop

All In

By Jamie Heaslip and Matt Cooper

An inspiring personal memoir and insider account of Ireland’s transformation from amateur backwater to professional powerhouse, All In is also a profound meditation on sport, leadership and what it takes to succeed in the harshest of environments.

Shop

BUSINESS.

Empire of Pain

By Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick turns his penetrating gaze to the stupendously wealthy and influential Sackler family, probing the dark and murky methods they have employed to amass their fortune.

Shop

Think Again

By Adam Grant

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.

Shop

A World Without Email

By Cal Newport

Drawing on sociology, behavioural economics and fascinating case studies of thriving email-free companies, Cal explains how this modern tool doesn’t work for our ancient brains and provides solutions you can implement today to transform your workday into one without constant, distracting pings.

Shop

Beating Burnout at Work

By Paula Davis

A first-of-its-kind, science-backed toolkit takes a holistic approach to burnout prevention by helping individuals, teams, and leaders build resilience and thrive at work. Burnout has become one of the most talked about workplace topics, and its impact is far-reaching.

Shop

Elites

By Douglas Board

In this authoritative, ground-breaking guide, Douglas suggests that true fulfillment demands an adventure into the unknown inside ourselves: why do we seek what we seek? Prepare to be surprised.

Shop

The Conversation

By Robert Livingston

A road map for uprooting entrenched biases and sharing candid, fact-based perspectives on race that will lead to increased awareness, empathy, and most importantly action.

Shop

Rebuild

By Mary Portas

How we live, buy and sell is changing, and it’s changing for good. Rebuild is a vital guide to how we reset post-pandemic, build back better and thrive in the new Kindness Economy.

Shop

Good Is The New Cool

By Afdhel Aziz and Bobby Jones

A bold new manifesto. In provocative, whip-smart, and streetwise style, Afdhel and Bobby take aim at conventional marketing, posing the questions few have had the vision and courage to ask: If the system is broken, how can we fix it?

Shop

The Good Ancestor

By Roman Krznaric

Drawing on radical solutions from around the world, Roman celebrates the innovators who are reinventing democracy, culture and economics so that we all have the chance to become good ancestors and create a better tomorrow.

Shop

Framers

By Kenneth Cukier

The power of mental models to make better decisions. We’re always told that humans make bad decisions and that more data is better. But this is backwards: people are actually good at decisions because we use mental models and can envision new realities outside of data. Framers shows how.

Shop

EDUCATION.

Building a Second Brain

By Tiago Forte

A methodology for saving and systematically reminding us of the ideas, inspirations, insights, and connections we’ve gained through our experience. It expands our memory and our intellect using the modern tools of technology and networks.

Shop

Change Your Questions, Change Your Life

By Marilee Adams

12 powerful tools for leadership, coaching and life. Used as the basis for Question Thinking training for leaders, managers, executives, coaches, consultants, and teams in organisations around the world.

Shop

Brain Rules

By John Medina

Every brain is wired differently. Exercise improves cognition. We are designed to never stop learning and exploring. Memories are volatile. Sleep is powerfully linked with the ability to learn.

Shop

Mastering Blockchain

By Lorne Lantz and Daniel Cawrey

This detailed guide distills the complex, fast moving ideas behind blockchain into an easily digestible reference manual, showing what’s really going on under the hood.

Shop

How to DeFi

By Coin Gecko

Decentralised Finance (DeFi) is disrupting the traditional financial sector at a breakneck speed. Use this book to gain insight into the novel financial innovations enabled by DeFi.

Shop

The Storyteller

By Dave Grohl

A collection of memories of a life lived loud. From his early days growing up in the suburbs of Washington, DC, to hitting the road at the age of 18, and all the music that followed. Dave can now share these adventures with the world, as seen and heard from behind the microphone. Turn it up!

Shop

Everything I Know About Life I Learned from PowerPoint

By Russell Davies

PowerPoint is about presentation, theatre and culture, how to think, create and persuade. It’s hated and loved in equal measure for reasons that tell us a lot about power and who gets to say what where. Life is somewhere in a PowerPoint slide.

Shop

The Art of Accelerated Learning

By Selena Watts

Have you ever wondered how you might be able to reach your true potential? Imagine if there was a way to speed up the learning process, giving you a broader knowledge in a much shorter time.

Shop

We Are All Birds of Uganda

By Hafsa Zayyan

Ranging across decades and continents, Hafsa’s debut novel is rooted in the brutal regime of Idi Amin’s Uganda yet opens up to make profound, compelling arguments about immigration and identity that sweep the reader along.

Shop

Uncommon Sense Teaching

By Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky and Terry Sejnowski

Neuroscientists have made enormous strides in understanding the brain and how we learn, but little of that insight has filtered down to the way teachers teach. This book applies this research to the classroom for teachers, parents, and anyone interested in improving education.

Shop

100 Things We’ve Lost To The Internet

By Pamela Paul

Remember all those ingrained habits, cherished ideas, beloved objects, and stubborn preferences from the pre-Internet age? They’re gone. A nostalgic tour of the pre-Internet age, offering powerful insights into both the profound and the seemingly trivial things we’ve lost.

Shop

CHANGE MAKERS.

A Shot to Save the World

By Gregory Zuckerman

Deeply reported and endlessly gripping, this is a dazzling, blow-by-blow chronicle of the most consequential scientific breakthrough of our time. It’s a story of courage, genius and heroism.

Shop

Atlas of AI

By Kate Crawford

Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, this is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.

Shop

Exponential

By Azeem Azhar

An indispensable guide to the gap emerging between human and technological capabilities, Azhar’s piercing analysis provides practical solutions to a range of concerning problems.

Shop

Race Matters 25th Anniversary

By Cornel West

This classic treatise on race contains Dr. West’s most incisive essays on the issues relevant to black Americans, including the crisis in leadership in the Black community, Black conservatism, Black-Jewish relations, myths about Black sexuality, and the legacy of Malcolm X.

Shop

René Girard’s Mimetic Theory

By Wolfgang Palaver

A systematic introduction into the mimetic theory of the French- American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist Rene Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars with the help of examples from literature and philosophy.

Shop

What White People Can Do Next

By Emma Dabiri

In this incisive, radical and practical essay, Emma draws on years of research and personal experience to challenge us to create meaningful, lasting change. From allyship to coalition, we need to talk about racial injustice in a different way.

Shop

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

By Bill Gates

Bill has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. This book makes clear; achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

Shop

Do Something For Nothing

By Joshua Coombes

Seeing beneath the surface of homelessness, through the simple act of a haircut. In 2015, while working at a hair salon, Joshua Coombes took to the streets with his scissors to build relationships and offer haircuts to men and women experiencing homelessness in London. The stories of the people he met resonated and others began to get involved — the movement #DoSomethingForNothing was born.

Shop

The Rational Optimist

By Matt Ridley

Bold and controversial, it is a brilliantly confident assertion that the 21st century will be the best for humankind yet. Reaching back into the past to give a rational explanation for why we can, and will, overcome the challenges of the future, such as climate change and the population boom.

Shop

How to Change Your Mind

By Michael Pollan

Michael remains concerned with what we put into our bodies, but we’re not talking about salad. At various points, he ingests LSD, psilocybin and the crystallised venom of a Sonoran Desert toad.

Shop

Glittering a Turd

By Kris Hallenga

The story of an ordinary girl who, with a side-serving of cancer, makes life extraordinary. Glittering a Turd is more than just another cancer memoir; it’s a handbook for living life to the fullest, shining a new perspective on survival and learning to glitter your own turd, whatever it might be.

Shop

Dream First, Details Later

By Ellen Marie Bennett

This gutsy guidebook will help anyone who’s procrastinating on a goal, career change, or business idea stop the obsessive worrying and leap into action. You don’t need to have all the answers to make your dream a reality. You just need to start before you’re ready.

Shop

The Responsible Company

By Yvon Chouinard and Vincent Stanley

This book aims to sketch, in light of our environmental crisis and economic sea change, the elements of business responsibility for our time, when everyone in business at every level has to deal with the unintended consequences of a 200-year-old industrial model that can no longer be sustained ecologically, socially, or financially.

Shop

2021 DO Book CO RELEASES.

DO Earth

By Tamsin Omond

A collective action and community engagement. It’s about healing our relationships with nature, each other and ourselves; and feeling inspired about what the next phase of human evolution might be. With practical guidance and gentle encouragement, Do Earth provides a blueprint for reimagining the world and reviving our beautiful planet.

Shop

DO Build

By Alan Moore

Drawing on his years of research into some of the most pioneering and progressive businesses on the planet. By speaking to their purpose-driven founders, Alan discovers that it is possible to lead with generosity, have a transparent supply chain, design products and services that are considered and joyful, and create a company culture where individuals flourish.

Shop

DO Team

By Charlie Gladstone

This book is about working with other people. It’s about making that experience a positive one. It’s about how a happy, engaged and motivated team becomes an unstoppable force. It will help you get the best from everyone so that you, your team and your business can thrive.

Shop

DO Walk

By Libby Delana

One morning in 2011, Libby stepped outside her New England home for a walk. She did the same thing the next day, and the next. It became a daily habit that has culminated in her walking over 25,000 miles — the equivalent of the earth’s circumference.

Shop

Giphy

Phew.

Thank you for making it all the way to the bottom of the list. Our aim was to share useful and inspiring books.

Sign up to our newsletter for a regular roundup of ideas and inspiration. It might just spark something for you.

--

--

DO Lectures
DO Lectures

Written by DO Lectures

The Encouragement Network | Founders help Founders. thedolectures.com

No responses yet