Which book do you recommend most often to others, and what makes you pass it on?

Read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don’t really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, “how to” books seldom do any harm.

The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel. I have read hundreds of personal development books, but this is the one that clearly showed me how to visualize, contemplate, and focus on what it was I truly wanted. It revealed to me that we only get what we desire most, and to apply myself with a laserlike focus upon a goal, task, or project. That in order to “have” you must “do,” and in order to “do” you must “be” — and this process is immediate. Although it takes time for these desires to manifest in our material world, you must see the thing you desire as completed, finished, and real, now. The better you can do this, the more you can accomplish. I have bought several copies of this book and distributed it to family and friends. I also reread it probably once a month to keep my vision clear.

Definitely. I would say the top three books that I tend to give as gifts, the first one would be a book that’s written by Dennis Hoff called The Art of the Pimp . It, literally, talks about his journey, how he ended up getting the Bunny Ranch, and a lot of the intimate details in relationship to sex in Nevada. For anybody that’s interested in what I do, wanting to learn a little bit more about the industry, that is always the first book I give is this is kind of your handbook, as it were, to the world of legal sex in Nevada. The second book that I give out most frequently is to my co-workers. It would be The 48 Laws of Power . A lot of the ladies haven’t had the opportunity or haven’t been exposed to that book. And so, I think that it’s a great tool to get into the hands of women and get that positive thinking going, that energy that that book really tends to encapsulate. And the third book is kind of an interesting one. It’s a book called Memoirs of a Geisha . It speaks as to the life of a woman who ended up being a geisha in Japan during the World War II era who was kind of purchased from her family and unwillingly brought into this very foreign world that could not be any more different than what her life was like. The reason why I tend to recommend this book for other people is that there’s this incredibly beautiful, humanistic element in the way that she describes. The author uses language that is very, very rich and colorful. And it sits you into that time and place where you smell the fish in front of you. You hear the sound of the shamisen that she’s playing. You can really immerse yourself into that world and kind of get a sense of what things were like, at that time.

I regularly give books to other people, and up until recently, the book that I have most regularly gifted is Sheryl Sandberg’s book Option B because it’s closely related to the work that I do, and Sheryl is the most inspiring woman that I know. I really respect her. She’s on my executive council. I love her book Option B on healing and building a new future. I feel very spoiled that Sheryl wrote the forward to my own book, which is called A Second Chance . So, now, the book that I’m gifting even more than Option B is my own book, A Second Chance .

The book I’ve probably gifted the most is Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning , since I’m 16.

I’ve listened to your podcast so many times and I wanted – what my answer previously was and what I recommend all the time is Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University , which is a practical book.

Yeah. Every year, I read The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway.

Joseph Campbell many years ago. A couple of the Dalai Lama books. Most recently, Norman Lear’s book.

Well, a book that has influenced my life and one that I keep going back to over and over is the anthology, The Voice That is

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, they’re probably books that you’ve – I mean, it might have been books that you’ve covered in your show here. So, one of them is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, one of the greatest things ever. I come back to that advice so many different times, it’s the same even in the Pink household, where we’ll just say – like one member of my family would say to the other who’s struggling, “Okay, bird by bird. Bird by bird.” And so, I am a huge – and I stumbled into this book – I remember where I got this next book, I got it in the airport in San Francisco, in the bookstore in the SFO. And for some reason, I picked it up because it had this really weird cover. But one of the first editions of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield had this kind of silvery cover to it. And I bought that book in – I think it was a campus bookstore in SFO, just because it’s – I went, “Oh, it’s silver cover, and it’s really short.” I got it and it was like, “Oh, my god. I can’t believe how good this book is.” And so, I have even have a little sign on my desk here that says, “Beat the resistance.” So, I’ve given that book a out a lot too. So Pressfield and Lamott. And then – man, I have to say, Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is up there too. Less – I’ve given that out less, but that’s a hugely important book for me.

So, I love podcasts, and I love audiobooks. I feel like I’m somebody who learns by listening. I retain information better. So, I do like TV, but I just don’t have a ton of time for it. I feel like I’m constantly on the go and so I’m listening to audiobooks, whether I’m walking through airport security or in a cab to the airport. And I love – there’s this book, The Four Agreements, that I recently gave my sisters, who are graduating from college. And I just think it’s got a lot of great principles and ideas.

Climate Change is something which I’ve spent a lot of time on. I would highly recommend a book by Tim Flannery called The Weather Makers , which was one of the books that opened my eyes to the problem that we have in the world. I’m just reading Homo Deus , and I will carry on to read Sapiens , one of his first books. I just love the style of his writing. I love books where you’re learning something from them, rather than if I want fiction, I’ll get a good film out. If I’m reading books, I like to read books which have got some substance.

Well, we give a lot of books as presents because we’re always evangelizing and proselytizing for plant-based nutrition, for the environment and sustainability and things like that. Suzy, every year, makes up a gift bag on a theme. But usually, the theme is around sustainability. And there are always some books in there. So we give out a lot of books.

That’s sort of pushed Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) into the now number three spot, just ahead probably of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! It’s weird, isn’t it? It says something about us, the books we like to give people, doesn’t it? You thanked Michael Pollan at the end of your interview or maybe it was somewhere in the midst of it, but I thought it was at the end of the interview for writing the book that he did because you said it was the book you wanted to read and that you wish you could have written, but you’re no slouch yourself when it comes to writing books. Is there anything that if Michael hadn’t had done that and you would have been writing that book in addition to all the stuff we’ve talked about today, is there anything else that you would have included in that book that wasn’t included? He’s a tough act to follow.

Well, other than Man’s Search For Meaning , which is probably my number one gift, recently, the last couple years there’s a book called The 100-Year Life . The 100-Year Life , written by a couple Brits, and it sort of says, “Imagine the future where the average person lives to 100. How is that going to change on a personal and societal basis?” It’s a really interesting, observational book. The Happiness Curve , which we talked about earlier. The U-curve of happiness is what we call it. The name of the book is by Jonathan Rauch, it’s called The Happiness Curve . That’s become a favorite to gift. I also love Danny Meyer the restaurateur. He’s got one of the best books on hospitality ever written, which is called Setting the Table .

The book that I gift most to people, because it has had a lasting impact on my psyche, is The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee. I admire Bruce Lee for his physicality, of course, but more so for his deep philosophy, known as “Jeet Kune Do” or “the way of the intercepting fist.” The key element of Jeet Kune Do is its “formless form.” Bruce Lee rejected the rigid rules and structures of Kung Fu and other traditional fighting styles. Instead, he borrowed from several styles to create his own fluid, rapidly efficient technique that was all his. In The Warrior Within, John Little explains how Bruce Lee’s philosophy helped him overcome tremendous challenges and pain to become a man whose originality, intense belief, and commitment I’ve long admired.

I’m very suspicious about recommending books to people because there’s the risk they might listen to what you say. And if you’re recommending to them the book that is not the most valuable next book they should read, in a sense, you’re wronging them. So I don’t give people books that often. One thing I try to encourage people to do is to read more about music and the arts, not a particular book. But I say take the creators you love, whoever, whatever they may be, and read about them. If it’s The Beatles, great. If it’s Beethoven, and really dig into what you might think of as your hobbies, but to read about them in an intense way. And just think about Beethoven. How did he manage his career? What were his productivity tricks, what did he do wrong? And think through some of the questions you’ve written and talked about at length, but in the context of your cultural heroes. If it’s like, what do I tell people to read most often? I am not myself religious, but usually I’ll tell my non-religious friends they ought to go read the Bible. It’s a wonderfully deep and brilliant book and most non-religious people, even most religious people, barely know it, or Shakespeare.

Oh, yes. In fact, it’s funny, because I’ve just sent a couple of friends a pair of novels, and one of the novels I’ve sent to a dozen people, and it will seem like a random choice to you, but it’s one of these books that, it’s just a miracle of a book. It’s called The Long Ships , and it’s by a Scandinavian historian. It’s a novel by a Scandinavian historian who only wrote one novel. I think his name is Frans Bengtsson, and he was a Viking historian, and he packed everything he knew about the Vikings into this wonderful comic novel. At the end of it, you feel like you were a Viking for 400 pages. It’s a piece of history that he just brings to life in this story. I hand that out all the time, partly because it is just an incredible pleasurable reading experience, and partly just to illustrate a point that you never know where great books are going to come from. There are lots of examples of people, even very late in life, a book just pops out of them, and it was their one book. The other book, my pandemic reading gift I’ve been giving to people, because it’s a perfect pandemic novel, is Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow , and it’s about a Russian aristocrat who, during the Revolution, he’s the kind of guy who was supposed to be shot, but because of certain qualities, he isn’t shot. Instead, they lock him up in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, and he doesn’t leave for the next 50 years. So you were stuck inside this place, and it’s Eloise for Grownups , and just beautifully done, but it makes you, in this moment, it makes you see the possibilities of resourcefulness in a confined space. There are a bunch of books that I give to people, but those are the two that I’ve just recently, in the last week, sent to people.

Yeah, there’s a number one. I can’t stop talking about it. I’ve read it three times now. I will read it again soon, is Titan , the Ron Chernow book about

Other than the Oh the Places You'll Go which seems to be a you-must-give-it-to-all-college grads, and How to Cook Everything, which I love giving to people moving out on their own the first time, I think I've probably gifted Geek Love more than anything else.