Books like A Promised Land

01

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Barack Obama · Memoir

Barack Obama wrote Dreams from My Father in 1995, before entering politics, after being elected the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Both dig into race.

02

Becoming

Michelle Obama · Memoir

Becoming is Michelle Obama's account of how a girl from a modest house on Chicago's South Side became one of the most recognized people in the world — and what that journey cost and revealed.

A kindred memoir read.

03

Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela · Memoir

Nelson Mandela's autobiography traces his life from a rural Xhosa childhood in the Transkei to his release from prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years of incarceration, and ends with his election as South Africa's first democratically chosen president in 1994.

Both dig into leadership.

04

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson · Memoir

Bryan Stevenson's memoir of his career as a capital defense attorney in Alabama, and specifically of his years working on the case of Walter McMillian — a Black man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Monroe County, Alabama — is simultaneously a riveting legal narrative and a sustained moral argument about the American criminal justice system's treatment of the poor and of Black defendants.

Both dig into race.

05

Good Strategy Bad Strategy

Richard Rumelt · Business

Good Strategy Bad Strategy is Richard Rumelt's indictment of the strategic planning process as it is practiced in most organizations, and his articulation of what genuine strategy actually requires.

Shares leadership and decision-making with A Promised Land.

06

High Output Management

Andrew S. Grove · Business

High Output Management is Andrew Grove's manual for how managers at any level should think about their work.

Shares leadership and decision-making with A Promised Land.

07

Leadership Is Language

L. David Marquet · Business

Leadership Is Language is L.

Shares leadership and decision-making with A Promised Land.

08

Leading

Alex Ferguson & Michael Moritz · Business

Leading is Sir Alex Ferguson's account of what he learned managing Manchester United for twenty-seven years, written with Silicon Valley investor Michael Moritz.

Shares leadership and decision-making with A Promised Land.

09

Only the Paranoid Survive

Andrew S. Grove · Business

Only the Paranoid Survive is Andrew Grove's account of how he understood and navigated the most dangerous moments in a company's life — what he calls strategic inflection points.

Shares leadership and decision-making with A Promised Land.

10

Principles

Ray Dalio · Business

Principles is Ray Dalio's account of the mental models and management philosophy that he developed over forty years as founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund.

Shares leadership and decision-making with A Promised Land.

11

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin · Biography

Doris Kearns Goodwin's account of Abraham Lincoln's formation of his cabinet — which included his three main rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination: William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates — is one of the most widely discussed leadership books of the twenty-first century and one of the most readable biographies of the Lincoln era.

Shares leadership and politics with A Promised Land.

12

The Art of War

Sun Tzu · Philosophy

The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu, a general and strategist believed to have lived in the fifth century BCE.

Shares leadership and decision-making with A Promised Land.