From our first exposure to tactical behavioral analysis as the path to help our country get left of bang, to growing a business, making decisions, improving community or standing on a stage to deliver a presentation, we have been learning from those who have come before us and passed their knowledge on to us.  We are simply Standing On The Shoulders of Giants.

If you are looking for a book, here is the list of books that we recommend and have pulled lessons learned from.  We read every book that we recommend and we don’t recommend every book that we have read, but have chosen those books that we hope will provide the most value to you, the professional improving yourself on your own time.

The books below are grouped thematically for the most part and most links go directly to an article that we have written about the book.  There are only in a few exceptions where the links do go directly to Amazon, but even if we haven’t written about the book yet, we still recommend it.

First Books to Read To Get Left of Bang:

  1. “Left of Bang” by Patrick Van Horne and Jason Riley
  2. “What Every Body is Saying” by Joe Navarro
  3. “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker
  4. “Lie Spotting” by Pamela Meyer
  5. “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell
  6. “Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction, 7th Edition” by Mark Knapp and Judith Hall

Other Books About Non-Verbal Communication and Decision-Making

  1. “You Say More Than You Think” by Janine Driver
  2. “Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions” by Gary Klein
  3. “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman
  4. “Honest Signals” by Alex Pentland
  5. “Emotions Revealed” by Paul Ekman
  6. “Silent Messages” by Albert Mehrabian
  7. “The Hidden Dimension” by Edward Hall
  8. “Brain Rules” by John Medina

Tactical Questioning – Contact – Conversation

  1. “It’s Not All About Me” by Robin Dreeke
  2. “How To Argue” by Jonathan Herring
  3. “Changing The Conversation” by Dana Caspersen
  4. “Behavior, Truth and Deception” by Michael Napier
  5. “Telling Lies” by Paul Ekman

Business and Professional Development:

  1. “Rework” by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
  2. “Turning Pro” by Steven Pressfield
  3. “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss
  4. “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuk
  5. “The Lean Start Up” by Eric Reis
  6. “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis
  7. “The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career” by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

War and History:

  1. “Warfighting” by the United States Marine Corps
  2. “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield
  3. “The Warrior Ethos” by Steven Pressfield
  4. “Left of Boom” by Douglas Laux and Ralph Pezzullo
  5. “On Guerrilla Warfare” by Mao Tse-Tung
  6. “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card

For Public Speakers, Instructors and Presenters:

  1. “Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is and What You Can Do About It” by Steven Pressfield

Community Building, Public Outreach and Counter-insurgency:

  1. “Startup Communities” by Brad Feld

For Fun and Fiction:

  1. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Note:

We are members of the Amazon Affiliate program and do receive a small commission for the sale of any book or Amazon product that we recommend.  This does not impact the cost of the book you buy in any way, but the small fee that we receive offsets many of the costs associated with running and growing our site.  We don’t recommend any book that we haven’t read and we don’t recommend every book that we do read, only those that we believe are ones that our audience will find to be valuable.