36 Books Like Authentic

Nike is one of the most recognized companies in the world. Known for its innovative products and its focus on high performance, the Nike mystique intrigues everyone. I love this book because it tells the story of Nike from the very beginning. Few people are aware of the many obstacles this company overcame to become the powerhouse it is today.

A new company must be innovative just to survive, and Shoe Dog describes years of struggling and experimentation at Nike simply to gain traction in its business. The massive scale the company now enjoys is built on collaborative partnerships with athletes, designers, suppliers, and many others in its vast ecosystem.  

This book came out when I was a struggling founder CEO and hit me in the right way. Steve is clearly a polarizing leader, and for good reason. He’s complex and deeply flawed, but he also created magic products that changed the world. As a founder, you must constantly step back and question your motivations, as they will subconsciously drive your decisions in ways you don’t always consider. 

For me, this was a call to action to understand what it takes to inspire teams to greatness, but it was also a warning to approach it from the right source of inspiration. 

I have recommended We Are Not Like Them to friends and recently my 20-year-old niece for several reasons. The novel addresses important themes of race, friendship, and community, providing a thought-provoking and timely exploration of contemporary societal issues.

By following the story of two lifelong friends, one Black and one White, navigating a racially charged incident, the book prompts meaningful conversations about empathy, understanding, and bridging divides. I appreciate the book's powerful storytelling, engaging characters, and its ability to foster empathy and promote dialogue about race relations.

Overall, it's a compelling and relevant read with valuable lessons for personal growth and social awareness.

I have been in the fashion industry for over two + decades and have been fortunate to work with Alyssa Hardy the author of this book. She has featured me in several articles she writes for and has been a model in one of my anti-bullying campaigns.

Why I would recommend her book is not only because I think she is a rock star but because how important her book is to our society. It gives a real insider look at the rise of “fast fashion” and the abuse and neglect of garment workers.

What do we know about the Revolution, and why do we think we know it? Sometimes, even canonical events we think we know are not nearly as well-documented as we might think, like the Boston Tea Party.

This book is about history and memory, the gap between what happened when colonists threw the East India Company’s tea into Boston Harbor, and how that event was remembered decades later. Drawing on the as-told-to-reminiscences of Tea Party participant George Robert Twelve Hewes, which were written down over half a century after the Tea Party took place, Young plumbs the gap between the “destruction of the tea,” as the event was known at the time, and the “Boston Tea Party,” a name which only emerged in the 19th century as Americans reimagining that revolt into the story of how America was made. 

Young shows us that accounts like Hewes’s had as much to… show more.

This beautiful book is the catalogue of an art exhibition devoted to paintings and photographs that capture the world of tennis, demonstrating the close link between art and the sport. Indeed, many enthusiasts see tennis as an art in its own right and this book should convince any waverers. The gorgeous coloured and black and white illustrations range from late Victorian genre scenes of tennis as a social event including champagne, strawberries, and flirtation, on through the androgynous twenties and thirties and its development into the modern power game. Accompanying essays trace the game’s wider cultural influence. Here you will find above all the languor and elegance of social tennis and especially the centrality of women to it, from ladies playing in bustles and high heels to the Williams sisters in skin-tight miniskirts.

I would recommend Unstoppable to children (boys and girls) aged about 10 – 14 years old. Roxy and Kaine are twins – she plays tennis, he plays football, and they have a troubled home life. I remember that being a teenager is difficult enough, with all the confusion, uncertainty, and pressure it brings, but in this book you also throw in elite sport, knife crime, ambitious parents, and sibling rivalry. It’s the kind of book you might give to your son or daughter and you wouldn’t see them again until they’ve finished it. Should be called Unputdownable.

If there’s a writer who could have written about tennis and pornography and made it work way better than yours truly, it is David Foster Wallace. But David did not waste his time on this planet (suicide in his 46th year) on idle silliness – no, he wrote essays like “Federer as a Religious Experience” for The New York Times, which is the fifth and final essay in his collection of his tennis nonfiction. Ranked nationally as a junior, David possessed intimate knowledge of the sport, and the first essay, “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley,” indeed features a tornado that rips through team practice, but believe it or not, that natural disaster is not as frightening as the drudgery of tennis drills that he must master.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Charley for our book.

He’s a great storyteller. He was probably the first practitioner to advocate for passive index investing. He’s a tennis enthusiast, and his book was inspired by a book he read aimed at amateur tennis players. Ellis learned that to win at tennis, the best strategy is to simply try to not lose, and to not try to act like professional players.

He realized that the same strategy worked for investors as well. That means that investors shouldn’t try to beat the market.

Originally written as a tennis coaching text – the wisdom of this approach transcends the world of tennis and carries an important message about how changing our thinking can release the latent potential in us whatever we are doing.

The focus is on the importance of self-talk – what our outer self is telling the inner self and in doing so chimes beautifully with what we know about our unconscious mind. We know that more than 90% of our behaviour is driven by our unconscious and it hears everything we say to ourselves – so consider the impact of critical self-talk and the potential damage to our confidence and performance.

The book is summarised in the formula: Potential minus Interference = Performance

We achieve at our best when we manage the ‘Interference’ we impose on ourselves!