Reading List

I love to read, and my life is enriched every day from what gifted writers identify about the human experience in Judaism, politics, sports, history, literature and a myriad of others topics. Here are some books that I have read that I would recommend to anyone who wants to be informed and inspired:

Judaism

1. Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence, Shai Held
2. The Bible and the Believer, Marc Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, and Daniel J. Harrington
3. Inheriting Abraham, Jon D. Levenson
4. Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, David Nirenberg
5. Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food, Timothy D. Lytton
6. The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan, Mel Scult
7. In His Image: The Image of God in Man, Yuval Cherlow

Sports

1. Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game, John Sexton
2. Outside Shot: One County’s Quest for Basketball Greatness, Keith O’Brien
3. The Sports Gene, David Epstein
4. Fantasy Life, Matthew Berry
5. The Game, Ken Dryden
6. Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth, David Gessner
7. Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities, Jeff Mapes
8. Black Gods of Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball, Onaje X.O. Woodbine

Sabermetrics and Data-Driven Decision Making

1. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Michael Lewis
2. The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver
3. Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution, Brian Kenny
4. The Hidden Game of Baseball, John Thorn and Pete Palmer

Literature

1. The Secret Book of Kings, Yochi Brandes
2. The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
3. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading, Nina Sankovitch
4. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
5. Ordinary People, Judith Guest
6. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
7. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
8. The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
9. Mr. Blue, Myles Connolly
10. The Pawnbroker: A Novel, Edward Lewis Wallant
11. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
12. A Guide for the Perplexed, Dara Horn

History

1. The Wilderness Warrior, Douglas Brinkley
2. From Enemy to Brother, John Connelly
3. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, Ira Katznelson
4. Wilson, A. Scott Berg
5. Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow
6. Like Dreamers, Yossi Klein Halevi
7. 1967- Israel, The War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Tom Segev

Leadership Development and Change Management

1. Immunity to Change, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
2. The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande
3. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin
4. The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen
5. The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida
6. Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, Adam Grant
7. Going Public: An Organizer’s Guide to Citizen Action, Michael Gecan
8. Why David Sometimes Wins, Marshall Ganz
9. American Icon, Bryce Hoffman

Comedy

1. Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything, Jennifer Armstrong
2. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?  (And Other Concerns), Mindy Kaling
3. I’m Dying Up Here, William Knoedelseder
4. The Stench of Honolulu, Jack Handey
5. Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, A.J. Jacobs

Behavioral Economics

1. Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, Richard Thaler
2. Who Gets What and Why, Alvin Roth
3. Think Like a Freak, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
4. Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler
5. The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, Michael Lewis
6. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Food and Culinary Arts

1. Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality, Danny Meyer
2. The Making of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman
3. The Soul of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman
4. Save the Deli, David Sax
5. The Tastemakers: Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue, David Sax
6. The Telling Room, Michael Paterniti
7. Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of Jewish Delis, Ted Merwin

Public Policy and Social Justice

1. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson
2. The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
3. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, Elizabeth Hinton
4. Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, Ari Berman
5. Strangers in Their Own Land, Arlie Russell Hochschild
6. Corruption in America, Zephyr Teachout
7. A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power

Productivity and Time Management

1. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen
2. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport
3. Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours, Robert C. Pozen
4. The Strenuous Life, Theodore Roosevelt
5. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, Tim Wu