I’ve read books in English, French, and Arabic. Both fiction and non-fiction.
Mostly, I’ll post here non-fiction English books. At least, the ones that I can recommend and might be relevant to most of you.
Also, I’ll skip the books that I read but don’t remember much of them. I spent a decade reading without taking notes. Please don’t do like me. It’s such a waste.
This section is only meant to spark your interest in books. So I’ll only write my impressions and three notes from the books. For more details, summaries and reviews, you can find them on Amazon or any other source.
For a faster research, you can click on any tag below to find the books of your interests.
Mahatma Gandhi
Nonviolent Power in Action
Dennis Dalton
The book tackles Gandhi’s life from different perspectives making it a balanced analysis. It goes over Gandhi’s story before he became the Mahatma, how he evolved as a person, the origins of his unshakeable belief in nonviolence, inclusive leadership, the critiques of his contemporaries, the strengths and weaknesses of his method, his views on the Holocaust, and much more. Find out more in my 'Book Notes'.
Three notes from the book:
1- “The outward freedom therefore that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment.”
2- “The belief that there is no connection between the means and the end is a great mistake. Through that mistake, even men who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes. …there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. …We reap exactly as we sow.”
3- “Religion in the highest sense of the term. It includes Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc., but is superior to them all. You may recognize it by the name of Truth, not the honesty of experience, but the living Truth that pervades everything and will survive all destruction and all transformation.”
Essentialism
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Greg McKeown
If you are the kind of person who has 10 priorities per day, then you need to read Essentialism. This book is not about getting more things done. It's about doing the few and essential things in a better way.
Three notes from the book:
1- If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.
2- Have you ever felt the stress that comes from simultaneously holding two contradictory beliefs: "I can't do this" and "I have to do this"?
3- For a type-A personality, it is not hard to push oneself hard. Pushing oneself to the limit is easy! The real challenge for a person who thrives on challenges is not to work hard.
Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln
21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers
James C. Humes
This book is filled with stories of great speakers and leaders. Each one of them had tools to make their speech impactful. Without them, they couldn't sell their ideas. Some of the tools are applicable to writing.
Three notes from the book:
1- Never, never, never let words come out of your mouth when your eyes are looking down.
2- Listening to long speech can seem like reading a book without punctuation>
3- The difference between so-so and superb speakers is often this: One begins banally, the other with a bang.
Delivering Happiness
A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Tony Hsieh
I bought this book when I was interested in companies' culture. Even though I never used Zappos (they don't operate in Canada), I found the story of their growth fascinating. Something I always believed: the companies that assist their employees in their growth and learning do greatly. The story of Zappos is the proof.
Three notes from the book:
1- Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience instead, letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.
2- What is the best way to build a brand for the long term? In a word: culture.
3- Without continually growing and learning both personally and professionally, it's unlikely that any individual employee will still be with the company ten years from now.
Crucial Conversations
Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
This book helped me manage emotionally charged situations. I don't always do it well. But now I have more tools to succeed than I had before. An essential book to have as crucial conversations can happen every day, at work or at home.
Three notes from the book:
1- Crucial conversations: A discussion between two or more people where (1) stakes are high, (2) opinions vary, and (3) emotions run strong.
2- The mistake most of us make in our crucial conversations is we believe that we have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend.
3- There's an intermediate step between what others do and how we feel. There's always an intermediate step because actions themselves can't and don't cause emotional reaction.
Tribal Leadership
Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright
This book is about creating a killer company culture. Anyone in teams will find precious insights in this book. The authors identified five stages a tribe must go through to move from bad to excellent.
Three notes from the book:
1- People at Stage One are despairingly hostile, and they band together to get ahead in a violent and unfair world...People operating at Stage Two use language centered on "my life sucks"...The Stage Two talk is that they've seen it all before and watched it all fail.
2- The theme of Stage Three, the dominant culture in 49 percent of workplace tribes in the United States, is "I'm great". Or, more fully, "I'm great, and you're not"...The gulf between "I'm great" (Stage Three) and "we're great" (Stage Four) is huge...In fact, the full expression of the theme is "we're great, and they're not".
3- Stage Five's T-shirt would read "life is great"...Their language revolves around infinite potential and how the group is going to make history--not to beat a competitor, but because doing so will make a global impact.
Muhammad (s)
11 Leadership Qualities that Changed the World
Nabeel Al-Azami
It's already a tour de force to condense the leadership qualities of Muhammad into 11. More than a list of qualities, this book is meant to be practical. It includes contemporary case studies with tips on how to implement the prophetic qualities in our daily life.
Three notes from the book:
1- Leadership is like a tea bag, you don't know how good it is until it's in hot water.
2- Facilitate things for people, and do not make it hard for them and give them good tidings (encouragement) and do not make them run away (discouragement).
3- The beauty of values and qualities such as integrity, fairness, and wisdom is that they don't have any religion and they have many religions. Hence, a religious person can apply them universally.
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
Follow Them and People Will Follow You
John C. Maxwell
No one does the 21 laws well. But if you need to lead a team, this book can be insightful. It has an evaluation that will help you identify your strengths, what you can turn into strength, and the weaknesses you don't need to waste time on them.
Three notes from the book:
1- The bottom line in leadership isn't how far we advance ourselves but how far we advance others.
2- When people respect you as a person, they admire you. When they respect you as a friend, they love you. When they respect you as a leader, they follow you.
3- You can't move people to action unless you first move them with emotion...The heart comes before the head.
The Leadership of Muhammad
On a journey, the leader of a people is their servant
John Adair
This book focuses more on the bedouin beliefs at the time of the Prophet. It analyses some events of Muhammad's life to show the leadership qualities he displayed. This book inspired me to write my speech "Winning Together" when I was still a Toastmasters member.
Three notes from the book:
1- Deal as gently with the faults of others as you do with your own.
2- Muhammad was not a reasonable man, not even by the standards of his day. But reasonable men do not change the world.
3- When God wants to punish the sheep he sends them a blind shepherd.
Managing Oneself
The Key to Success
Peter F. Drucker
Peter Drucker is considered the father of modern management. In this little gem, he's answering few questions to help us develop ourselves and manage our working life effectively.
Three notes from the book:
1- Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at--and even then more people are wrong than right.
2- The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a decision or take an action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations.
3- Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.
