Books like The Copy Workshop Workbook — picked by fans

By now, you might have noticed a theme: if I don’t enjoy reading a book, I don’t trudge through it for the deep insights or how-to information. The storytelling needs to be as strong as the concepts are useful.

Just like The Copy Workshop Workbook, I read an earlier edition of this book when I was just starting out – and it formed the basis for some of my thinking around how to influence – i.e., persuade – consumers and the role psychology and behavioral economics play in crafting effective marketing and brand development programs.

I also recommend this book if you are a consumer, too (who isn’t), because it will help keep you from falling into many of the traps that Cialdini identified.

I love this book because it is clear, concise, and a fast read. This is one of those books you can truly complete in one sitting, but the ideas in it will keep you thinking for years.

In addition, it has lots of charts that make it easy to understand the concepts – while many other branding authors complicate their descriptions and definitions of these concepts. As a result, it has become one of my gold standards when I judge my writing.

Finally, it’s probably the book I cite and quote the most with my clients when I need to explain a brand-building concept to them. One more thing: If it doesn’t turn you into a design advocate, nothing will. 

I first discovered Rory Sutherland’s work via his TED Talks and found that he is entertaining as well as insightful and inspiring, which is why I often show his talks to my students.

Alchemy is just as insightful and inspiring. And it’s fun to read.

Through his videos and writing, I’ve found that no one can explain the irrationality of human behavior just like him. I’ve been inspired by his stories, insights, and case studies, and often used them to form my thinking when solving branding problems for clients. I believe you will, too.

For transparency’s sake, I should note that because I’m a fan of his work, I reached out to him and he wrote an introduction to one of my books and has endorsed others. But even if he’d said no, I’d still be recommending this book.

I read Primal Branding when it was first published in 2006, and I still talk about it today in 2025. In fact, when I’m working with clients, I often talk about Hanlon’s seven elements that comprise a strong brand and aim to create these components in my clients’ brands.

So, right behind The Brand Gap, Primal Branding is the book I cite the second most often. When I think about Primal Branding, I recall that it’s a short book, but it’s actually 272 pages long for the first edition, which shows that it is a fast read, even with the deep insights and wisdom that it conveys. 

More and more of our interactions occur via social media. This does more than poison our minds; it poisons our relationships, including our most intimate one: life partner. 

There are established downsides to social media, including its addictive nature and oxymoronic means of fomenting alienation. It promotes comparison-driven inferiority complexes, and allows racists and bigots to hide behind pseudonyms. 

But for marriages, social media’s most worrisome issue is its promotion of phoniness. Cyber platforms prompt people to portray themselves in a faux-optimized light – happier, wealthier, and more moral than they really are. They also promote groupthink and reticence driven by fear of backlash. 

A marriage in recovery requires two honest, unabashed partners. Two people trying to heal must minimize the festering wounds inherent in social media.

Onuf, who held the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Chair at the University of Virginia, is the most accomplished student of Jefferson’s thought. In Jefferson’s Empire, Onuf interrogates Jefferson’s thinking about the meaning of the American Revolution. He places Jefferson’s thinking in the context of the Enlightenment showing that his vision of the American future arose from his idealized notions of nationhood and empire. Rather than see the US as the antithesis of empire, Onuf shows that Jefferson believed that Americans should craft a new form of republican empire that he believed would be a model for the rest of the world. Onuf recognizes, as Jefferson didn’t, that this vision depended on enslaved labor and the displacement of Indigenous people and he explores these contradictions. Onuf’s reading of the Declaration of Independence transformed my own thinking about that foundational document.   

This is another early American expedition lost to modern memory. In 1810, one of America’s richest men, John Jacob Astor, sent out two expeditions to exploit the riches of the western coast of North America. Unclaimed at the time.

One was to progress overland the other by sea. Both ended in personal and economic disaster. Yet, showcasing moments of heroism and cowardice, selflessness, and greed – but ultimately awakening America to this untapped potential of this rich, rugged, and unforgiving territory.

Stark writes like a novelist weaving rich, character studies Into the narrative that helped invest me in the people and their mostly, unfortunate fates. 

Here’s another take on America’s relationship with King George III. The story shows the differences between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson but despite their differences, they have a love of country and a hate for King George. They unite their strengths - John’s power of persuasion and Tom’s mighty pen - to formulate the Declaration of Independence. The endnotes are just as fascinating, talking about how their relationship continued - and almost ended. They both died on the same day, on July 4th.

I love Kalman’s vivid, colorful illustrations (so luscious, they look edible) and her lively, breezy style, peppered with questions to the reader and her own feelings.

The enthusiastic writing focuses on Jefferson’s many enthusiasms—such as books, food, music, and gardening. The big reveal that he owned slaves comes quite a bit later in the text, along with Kalman’s commentary (“our hearts are broken”).

An important book for young readers that introduces them to our brilliant, complex, flawed third president.

Next to Franklin, Thomas Jefferson is surely the most inventive, innovative member of the American Revolutionary pantheon. He is known for his powerful formulations of revolutionary ideas—in the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and his inaugural address as third President of the United States. These contributions rested on deep and disciplined study in the human sciences, including history, geography, ethnography, political economy, as well as applied sciences such as horticulture, viticulture, and architecture. In their learned meditation on the life and thought of this most learned of American founders, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf offer a fresh perspective on Jefferson.

In so many ways, he embodied the cutting-edge values of the American Revolution, but Jefferson also embodied the contradictions of the Revolution—particularly as they related to the institution of slavery. Rather than dismiss him as a hypocrite, Gordon-Reed and Onuf set out to explain Jefferson. For… show more.