Ask YC: What are some the best business books?

I've found the best ones are books about the history of business and biographies of individual founders.

Thinking Strategically is one of my favorites. It spends each chapter analyzing techniques of competition, trend, and innovation. It reads quite easily and offers outside examples ranging from sports, large corporations, and world wars.

While you may find it challenging to read straight through, it works well, too, as something to pick up every so often or to read alongside other reading material. Even for those of you without a peaking interest in business, the advice presented in the book is undeniable logic that will definitely appeal to programmers and entrepreneurs alike.

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Strategically-Competitive-Bus...

Information Rules (Varian and Shapiro)

Economics of network industries (Shy)

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Mackay)

The information Rules book belongs on your bookshelf if you want to understand how information goods are priced and how competition works in information driven industries. (Varian is now google's chief economist.)

The second one goes deep on the math of price-setting and standards wars.

And Mackay's work is a classic study of financial bubbles and panics.

The best business book I've ever read is The Seven Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler. I was turned onto Semler after Jason Fried recommended the book on one of 37signals live sessions.

http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works/...

http://searchyc.com/business+book

For startups,

-Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki -Blue Ocean Strategy -High Tech Startup by John Nesheim -The Power of Unfair Advantage by John Nesheim -Crossing the Chasm

These are all helpful for startups.

Founders at Work (completely agree w PG on this), also The Undercover Economist, for economic indsigths. I found in this book a LOT of things to take home, business and entrepeneurial wise.

Art of the Start- Guy Kawasaki Go It Alone- Bruce Judson (Yale professor of Management) Mark Cuban's blog (blogmaverick or something like that) Anything by or about Warren Buffet

-Art of the Start

-How to win friends and influence people [this title pains me]

-Tipping point

-Design of every day things [not business..but product]

For high-tech start-ups:

- Innovators Dilemma

- Finding Fertile Ground

- Myths of Entrepreneurship

- Blue Ocean Strategy

- Made to Stick

http://personalmba.com/recommended-business-books/

somebody a while ago recommended Titan, the bio of John Rockefeller, its good, very long and dry at parts, I stopped reading after he became the richest man in the world, but his journey from poor boy in small shack to richest man in the world is pretty neat.

how to get rich by Richard dennis.

Softwar - A bio on Larry Ellison, one where he writes footnotes responding to the biographer's text

Made in japan - Akio Morita and sony - written by Akio Morita - founder describes early days of the company

are you looking for business textbooks, books written by business leaders or Startup business books?