Recommended Reading
The books are grouped by topic. Use the buttons below to jump to a section.
Energy & Resources
How oil, gas, and raw materials shaped the modern economy, and where energy may be heading.
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The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry, from the first Pennsylvania wells through the wars, booms, and busts of the twentieth century.
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The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
Yergin’s account of how shale, climate policy, and geopolitics are redrawing the global energy map.
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Energy and Civilization: A History
A long view of how societies have captured and used energy, from muscle and wood to fossil fuels and electricity.
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Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization
Follows sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium from the ground to the products and supply chains that depend on them.
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Texas Oil Stories
The people, fortunes, and fields behind Texas oil, in history and in fiction.
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The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
The story of the Cullen, Murchison, Richardson, and Hunt families and the Texas oil fortunes they built and, in some cases, lost.
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Gamble in the Devil’s Chalk: The Battle for Oil in a Field of Broken Dreams
A narrative history of the wildcatters who chased oil in the Austin Chalk around Giddings, Texas.
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The Iron Orchard
A 1966 novel about a young man working his way up from oil field laborer to wildcatter in West Texas.
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Building & Scaling a Business
Frameworks for growing a company without losing discipline.
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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don’t
Collins and his research team compare companies that made a lasting jump in performance with similar companies that did not.
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Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don’t
The Rockefeller Habits 2.0 playbook, organized around four decisions: people, strategy, execution, and cash.
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Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
Introduces the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a practical set of tools for running a leadership team and a company.
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The Science of Scaling: Grow Your Business Bigger and Faster Than You Think Possible
Makes the case that much bigger goals on shorter timelines can push a company to simplify and focus.
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Leadership, Operations & Service
How teams work, where processes get stuck, and what great service looks like.
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The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
A business novel that teaches the Theory of Constraints through a plant manager trying to save his factory.
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Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
Lessons from restructuring a military task force in Iraq, applied to organizations that need to share information and decide quickly.
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Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
The former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park on building a culture of service that goes beyond what customers expect.
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Technology & Innovators
The people and ideas behind computing, software, and artificial intelligence.
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The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
A history of the people and partnerships behind the computer and the internet, starting with Ada Lovelace.
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Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
A former Apple software engineer describes how small teams built products such as the first iPhone keyboard.
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A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going
An Oxford computer scientist traces the field from its early ideas to modern machine learning, and separates the progress from the hype.
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Steve Jobs
The authorized biography of Apple’s co-founder, drawn from interviews with Jobs and the people around him.
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Elon Musk
A biography of the founder behind SpaceX and Tesla, written after Isaacson spent two years shadowing him.
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Links open the book’s page on Amazon in a new tab. Valor is not affiliated with these authors or publishers and does not earn a commission on these links. Cover images belong to their respective publishers.
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Page last reviewed: October 10, 2026. Content is reviewed periodically and updated for accuracy.