AUTOMATION HISTORY READING LISTS

Top 100 Books on Leadership, Technology & Automation

Explore books that can deepen your understanding of leadership, strategy, engineering, invention, industrialization, computing, robotics, and the history of automation.

Open-ended educational list This collection is updated periodically as new books are found and added. These are independent recommendations based on books we find interesting and educational. No author, publisher, or company pays to have a book included.

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The lists are organized by subject rather than presented as an official ranking. A book may appear in more than one category when it supports multiple areas of study.

Foundational Leadership & Management 1–25
  1. The First 90 Days — Michael Watkins
  2. Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek
  3. Multipliers — Liz Wiseman
  4. Multiplying Leadership — Bob Anderson & Bill Adams
  5. Good to Great — Jim Collins
  6. Great by Choice — Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen
  7. The Leadership Challenge — Kouzes & Posner
  8. Leadership and Self-Deception — The Arbinger Institute
  9. Turn the Ship Around! — L. David Marquet
  10. Extreme Ownership — Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
  11. Dare to Lead — Brené Brown
  12. The Effective Executive — Peter Drucker
  13. First, Break All the Rules — Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
  14. Primal Leadership — Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee
  15. On Becoming a Leader — Warren Bennis
  16. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership — John Maxwell
  17. Leadership: In Turbulent Times — Doris Kearns Goodwin
  18. Emotional Intelligence — Daniel Goleman
  19. The Art of War — Sun Tzu
  20. The One Minute Manager — Ken Blanchard & Spencer Johnson
  21. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen Covey
  22. Essentialism — Greg McKeown
  23. Managing Oneself — Peter Drucker
  24. The Leadership Gap — Lolly Daskal
  25. You’re Not the Boss of Me — Zack & Ryan Freedman
Strategy, Vision & Higher-Level Thinking 26–45
  1. Measure What Matters — John Doerr
  2. The Goal — Eliyahu M. Goldratt
  3. The Phoenix Project — Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford
  4. Blue Ocean Strategy — W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
  5. Playing to Win — A.G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin
  6. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt
  7. The Innovator’s Dilemma — Clayton Christensen
  8. The Art of Strategy — Avinash K. Dixit & Barry J. Nalebuff
  9. Thinking in Systems — Donella Meadows
  10. Antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  11. The Advantage — Patrick Lencioni
  12. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — Patrick Lencioni
  13. Strategy Safari — Henry Mintzberg
  14. The Balanced Scorecard — Kaplan & Norton
  15. The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
  16. Crossing the Chasm — Geoffrey A. Moore
  17. Great Strategy Great Execution — Jeroen De Flander
  18. The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
  19. Team of Teams — General Stanley McChrystal
  20. Playing Big — Tara Mohr
Business Acumen & Analytics 46–65
  1. Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
  2. HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers — Harvard Business Review
  3. Finance for Non-Financial Managers — Gene Siciliano
  4. The Personal MBA — Josh Kaufman
  5. Lean Analytics — Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz
  6. Competing on Analytics — Thomas Davenport & Jeanne Harris
  7. How to Measure Anything — Douglas W. Hubbard
  8. The Art of Profitability — Adrian Slywotzky
  9. Financial Intelligence — Karen Berman & Joe Knight
  10. X-Analytics — Eric Siegel
  11. The Most Important Chart — Howard Dresner
  12. Predictably Irrational — Dan Ariely
  13. The Four Disciplines of Execution — Sean Covey, Chris McChesney & Jim Huling
  14. The Outsiders — William Thorndike
  15. Principles — Ray Dalio
  16. Valuation — McKinsey & Company
  17. The McKinsey Way — Ethan M. Rasiel
  18. The McKinsey Mind — Rasiel & Friga
  19. Capital in the Twenty-First Century — Thomas Piketty
  20. Good Math, Bad Math — Tom Siegfried
Communication, Influence & Negotiation 66–80
  1. Crucial Conversations — Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switzler
  2. How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
  3. Never Split the Difference — Chris Voss
  4. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Robert Cialdini
  5. Pre-Suasion — Robert Cialdini
  6. Made to Stick — Chip Heath & Dan Heath
  7. Talk Like TED — Carmine Gallo
  8. Everybody Writes — Ann Handley
  9. Words That Change Minds — Shelle Rose Charvet
  10. Leadership Presence — Harrison Monarth
  11. Thank You for Arguing — Jay Heinrichs
  12. Pitch Anything — Oren Klaff
  13. The Art of Communicating — Thich Nhat Hanh
  14. Difficult Conversations — Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton & Sheila Heen
  15. Conversational Intelligence — Judith E. Glaser
Personal Effectiveness & Habits 81–95
  1. The Coaching Habit — Michael Bungay Stanier
  2. Atomic Habits — James Clear
  3. Deep Work — Cal Newport
  4. Grit — Angela Duckworth
  5. Mindset — Carol Dweck
  6. Essentialism — Greg McKeown
  7. The Power of Habit — Charles Duhigg
  8. Drive — Daniel H. Pink
  9. Peak — Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool
  10. The Compound Effect — Darren Hardy
  11. Flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  12. The Miracle Morning — Hal Elrod
  13. Finish What You Start — Peter Hollins
  14. The War of Art — Steven Pressfield
  15. The Organized Mind — Daniel J. Levitin
Execution, Culture & Team Performance 96–100
  1. The Culture Code — Daniel Coyle
  2. Lean Thinking — James Womack & Daniel Jones
  3. Toyota Kata — Mike Rother
  4. Scaling Up — Verne Harnish
  5. Work Rules! — Laszlo Bock
Foundations: Ancient Technology & Engineering
  • The Ancient Engineers — L. Sprague de Camp
  • Ancient Engineers’ Inventions — Cesare Rossi, Flavio Russo & Ferruccio Russo
  • Ancient Machines: From Wedges to Waterwheels — Michael Woods & Mary B. Woods
  • Ancient Technology — John W. Humphrey
  • Ancient Technology — Henry Hodges
  • Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook — John W. Humphrey, John P. Oleson & Andrew N. Sherwood
  • Handbook of Ancient Water Technology — Örjan Wikander, ed.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World — John Peter Oleson, ed.
  • Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity — S. Cuomo
  • Technology in the Ancient World — Henry Hodges
  • Ancient Water Technologies — Larry W. Mays, ed.
  • Engineering in the Ancient World — J. G. Landels
  • Greek Science after Aristotle — G. E. R. Lloyd
  • The Forgotten Revolution — Lucio Russo
  • The Antikythera Mechanism — Alexander Jones
China, Islam & Medieval Technology
  • Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4 — Joseph Needham
  • Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 5 — Joseph Needham et al.
  • The Genius of China — Robert Temple
  • Lost Enlightenment — S. Frederick Starr
  • The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices — Ismail al-Jazari
  • Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History — Ahmad Y. al-Hassan & Donald R. Hill
  • Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology — Donald R. Hill
  • Arabic Mechanical Engineering — Donald R. Hill
  • Medieval Technology and Social Change — Lynn White Jr.
  • Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel — Frances & Joseph Gies
  • Medieval Technology: A Reader — Pamela O. Long, ed.
  • The Medieval Machine — Jean Gimpel
  • Engineering the Medieval Achievement — Lynn T. Courtenay, ed.
  • The Clockwork Universe — Edward Dolnick
  • Revolution in Time — David S. Landes
Renaissance, Scientific Revolution & Precision Machines
  • The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci — Leonardo da Vinci
  • The Machines of Leonardo da Vinci and Franz Reuleaux — Francis C. Moon
  • The Theatre of Machines — Alex Keller
  • The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli — Agostino Ramelli
  • The Clockwork Universe — Edward Dolnick
  • Longitude — Dava Sobel
  • Revolution in Time — David S. Landes
  • The Measure of All Things — Ken Alder
  • The Information — James Gleick
  • The Perfectionists — Simon Winchester
Broad Histories of Technology
  • A History of Western Technology — Friedrich Klemm
  • Technology in World Civilization — Arnold Pacey
  • The Maze of Ingenuity — Arnold Pacey
  • Technics and Civilization — Lewis Mumford
  • The Lever of Riches — Joel Mokyr
  • The Gifts of Athena — Joel Mokyr
  • The Enlightened Economy — Joel Mokyr
  • Technology: A World History — Daniel R. Headrick
  • The Tentacles of Progress — Daniel R. Headrick
  • Technology in World History — W. Bernard Carlson
Industrial Revolution & Mechanization
  • The Most Powerful Idea in the World — William Rosen
  • The Lunar Men — Jenny Uglow
  • The Industrial Revolution in World History — Peter N. Stearns
  • The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective — Robert C. Allen
  • Technology in the Industrial Revolution — Barbara Hahn
  • The Unbound Prometheus — David S. Landes
  • The First Industrial Revolution — Phyllis Deane
  • The Industrial Revolution 1760–1830 — T. S. Ashton
  • The Age of Machinery — Maxine Berg
  • The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy — Maxine Berg
  • Engines of Change — H. W. Dickinson
  • The Steam Engine — Andrew Nahum
  • James Watt: Making the World Anew — Ben Russell
  • The Workshop of the World — J. D. Bernal
  • The Evolution of Technology — George Basalla
Electricity, Communication & the Second Industrial Revolution
  • Empires of Light — Jill Jonnes
  • Edison: A Biography — Matthew Josephson
  • Edison — Edmund Morris
  • Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age — W. Bernard Carlson
  • Networks of Power — Thomas P. Hughes
  • American Genesis — Thomas P. Hughes
  • The Victorian Internet — Tom Standage
  • Thunderstruck — Erik Larson
  • The Idea Factory — Jon Gertner
  • Creating the Twentieth Century — Vaclav Smil
Manufacturing, Mass Production & Scientific Management
  • The Principles of Scientific Management — Frederick Winslow Taylor
  • Shop Management — Frederick Winslow Taylor
  • My Life and Work — Henry Ford with Samuel Crowther
  • Today and Tomorrow — Henry Ford with Samuel Crowther
  • Fordlandia — Greg Grandin
  • The Machine That Changed the World — James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones & Daniel Roos
  • Toyota Production System — Taiichi Ohno
  • The Birth of Lean — Takahiro Fujimoto et al.
  • Machines as the Measure of Men — Michael Adas
Control, Cybernetics & Automation
  • Cybernetics — Norbert Wiener
  • The Human Use of Human Beings — Norbert Wiener
  • Automation: The Advent of the Automatic Factory — John Diebold
  • Automation and Technological Change — John T. Dunlop, ed.
  • Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory — George P. Richardson
  • The Control Revolution — James R. Beniger
Computing, Robotics & Artificial Intelligence
  • The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann — Herman H. Goldstine
  • Engines of the Mind — Joel Shurkin
  • Computer: A History of the Information Machine — Martin Campbell-Kelly et al.
  • The History of Computing: A Very Short Introduction — Doron Swade
  • A History of Modern Computing — Paul E. Ceruzzi
  • From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog — Martin Campbell-Kelly
  • The Innovators — Walter Isaacson
  • Machines Who Think — Pamela McCorduck
  • Robotics: A Reference Guide to the New Technology — Joseph A. Angelo Jr.
  • Transforming the Twentieth Century — Vaclav Smil

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Use these lists as a starting point for independent study. Always check the original publisher, author, library, or academic source for complete editions and publication details.

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