Ryan Holiday Reading List (Book Recommendation to Base Your Life On)

By Arvind Kumar

Ryan Holiday’s Book Suggestion to make your life better & meaningful

Reading gives clarity to what you already know…! 

Ryan Holiday is your go-to guy for meditations on strategy and life. Not only is he an author, but also a media strategist. 

Do you know he was an apprentice under the famous author Rober Greene? This was after he dropped out of college. 

Besides having a successful career in marketing at American Apparel, he went on to establish a creative agency called Brass Check, advising clients like Google, TASER, and other authors.

Most of his best-selling books have sold over 2 million copies in thirty languages. Isn’t that great?

Ryan Holiday started his journey with a blog 10 years ago on self-teaching. He has about 200,000 people subscribed to his newsletter. Sharing with them his most viral articles on how to be more productive. 

Here in this article, I have collected the complete reading list recommended by Ryan Holiday. From different genres but meaningful to your life. Which will help you make the base of your life and have more clarity to your purpose.

You can also checkout a complete list of Ryan Holiday books.

Let’s Get Started…!

Books to Base Your Life On

Here are some of the books suggested by Ryan Holiday that will help you find the purpose of life.

  • The Meditation – Marcus Aurelius
  • Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
  • Letters From a Stoic – Seneca
  • 48 Laws of Power – Robert Greene
  • 48 Laws of Mastery – Robert Greene
  • Letter From a Self-made Merchant To His Son – George Horace Lorimer
  • Letter To His Son – George Horace Lorimer
  • Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love from Dear Sugar – Cheryl Strayed
  • Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation – Tyler Cowen 
  • Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life – Anne Lamott
  • The Score Takes Care of Itself – Bill Walsh

Fiction Books Suggestion

  • The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
  • Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
  • The Harder They Fall – Budd Schulberg
  • The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz – Mordecai Richler
  • What Makes Sammy Run? – Budd Schulberg
  • Civil War Stories – Ambrose Bierce 
  • Company K – William March
  • Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

Biographies

  • Plutarch’s Lives – Plutarch
  • Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window – Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
  • The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects – Giorgio Vasari
  • The Power Broker – Robert Caro
  • Titan – Ron Chernow
  • Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American – B.H Liddell Hart
  • The Power Broker – Robert Caro
  • My Bondage and My Freedom – Frederick Douglass 
  • The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Frederick Douglass 
  • My Life and Battles – Jack Johnson
  •  Up from Slavery – Booker T. Washington
  •  The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt – Edmund Morris
  • The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King – Rich Cohen 
  • No Hiding Place – William Seabrook
  • Asylum: An Alcoholic Takes the Cure – William Seabrook

Relatable Books Recommendations:

Books on Practical Philosophy

  • Essays and Aphorisms – Arthur Schopenhauer
  • The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus
  • Fragments – Heraclitus

Books on War/Strategy

  • Reveille for Radicals – Saul D. Alinsky
  • Boyd: The Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War – Robert Coram
  • Rules for Radicals – Saul D. Alinsky 
  • 33 Strategies of War – Robert Greene
  • The Book of Five Rings – Musashi
  • The Strategy Paradox – Raynor
  • The Prince

Books on Evolutionary Psychology

  • Sex on the Brain – Deborah Blum
  • The Moral Animal – Robert Wright
  • The Game – Neil Strauss 
  • The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
  • The Evolution of Desire – David Buss
  • The Origins of Virtue – Matt Ridley

Books on The Internet

  • Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization – John Robb
  • Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations – Clay Shirky
  • You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto – Jaron Lanier 
  • The Pirate’s Dilemma – Matt Mason
  • Founders at Work – Jessica Livingston 
  • The New New Thing – Michael Lewis
  • Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age – Paul Graham
  • The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom – Evgeny Morozov
  • The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source – Eric S Raymond
  • Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything – Don Tapscott

Books on Narrative Nonfiction

  • The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey – Candice Millard
  • The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival – John Vaillant
  • The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey – Candice Millard
  • Shadow Divers – Robert Kurson
  • Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage – Alfred Lansing

Some Classic Books

  • Candide – Voltaire
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • The Aeneid – Virgil
  • Epigrams – Martial
  • Hamlet – Shakespeare
  • Satires – Juvenal

Conclusion

So this are the reading list of books recommended by Ryan Holiday. Just start with any of these and you will find your way to jump into the next read.

I hope this article will help you to find the books you are looking for.

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