Top Business books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Business books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Business

Understanding the concepts of Business starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Emotional Intelligence (with Featured Article What Makes a Leader? by Daniel Goleman)

This collection of articles includes: “What Makes a Leader” by Daniel Goleman, “Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance” by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, “Why It’s So Hard to Be Fair” by Joel Brockner, “Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions” by Andrew Campbell, Jo Whitehead, and Sydney Finkelstein, “Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups” by Vanessa …

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion

WeWork would be worth $10 trillion, more than any other company in the world. It wasn’t just an office space provider. It was a tech company—an AI startup, even. Its WeGrow schools and WeLive residences would revolutionize education and housing. One day, mused founder Adam Neumann, a Middle East peace accord would be signed in a WeWork. The company might help colonize Mars. And Neumann would b…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The $100 Startup

The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau is a guide for aspiring entrepreneurs. It offers practical insights and case studies on starting and growing a business on a shoestring budget. The book emphasizes creativity, simplicity, and resourcefulness as key ingredients for success.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Trajectory: Startup: Ideation to Product/Market Fit

Trajectory: Startup removes the mystery from the startup process and outlines a roadmap of tasks and timeframes, with monthly milestones and resources. This pre-accelerator program will help you get the momentum you need.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Work Week is all about how to change the way readers look at how they live and work and why they should challenge old assumptions. The author writes from a unique vantage point. He created a life and a career he chose out of consistently questioning the traditional assumptions about life and work.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

Book Summary – Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. The way we think affects not just our ability to succeed in a dynamic, fast-changing world; it also affects how we make sense of things around us. This book by Adam Grant is about improving your mental agility and the ability to rethink.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Additional Business Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Business, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss's head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations

A good visualization can communicate the nature and potential impact of information and ideas more powerfully than any other form of communication. For a long time

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Mental Toughness (with Bonus Interview "Post-Traumatic Growth and Building Resilience" with Martin Seligman) (HBR's 10 Must Reads)

If you read nothing else on mental toughness, read these ten articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you build your emotional strength and resilience--and to achieve high performance.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy

In 2016, the fate of Paramount Global—the multibillion-dollar entertainment empire that includes Paramount, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Showtime, and Simon & Schuster—hung precariously in the balance. Its founder and head, ninety-three-year-old Sumner M. Redstone, was facing a very public lawsuit brought by a former romantic companion, Manuela Herzer—a lawsuit that placed Sumner’s deteriorating hea…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The World Is Flat

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century is a book by Thomas L. Friedman that analyzes globalization, primarily in the early 21st century. The title suggests the world has a more level playing field for commerce in which most competitors, except for labor, have an equal opportunity.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

"The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz is a guide for entrepreneurs and leaders that offers practical advice on managing difficult situations in business, including laying off employees, handling investor relationships, and making tough decisions.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.

Augment your Business books

There is no better source of accountability and motivation than having a personal mentor. What used to be impossible to find is now just two clicks away! All mentors are vetted & hands-on!


Hello, I'm Ben! I've spent the majority of my career as a Software Engineer at Microsoft. I'm passionate about open source, crypto and the future of the web. My day job is spent working on a range of client-side javascript/typescript, mostly related to service workers and react.js. I also have …

$240 / month
  Chat
1 x Call

Only 1 Spot Left

15+ yrs exp, 10+ as CEO/Exec, leading teams, raising capital, building tech, scaling, investing and advising companies. Hey there! I'm Aly, a Canadian-based entrepreneur, investor and advisor who has spent over a decade building, investing and advising companies. I've had the opportunity to build both bootstrapped and venture-backed companies, learning …

$220 / month
  Chat
2 x Calls
Tasks

Only 1 Spot Left

Who am I? I have 12 years hands-on expertise in building and managing innovative fintech and AI solutions. Currently, at Mastercard I'm a Technical co-founder of a portfolio of six fintech products, driving their end-to-end lifecycle from ideation to global market launch. Currently leading six teams totalling 110 team members. …

$110 / month
  Chat
1 x Call
Tasks

Only 4 Spots Left

Ciao! I’m a Senior Product Designer at Microsoft in Prague, where I help shape the future of meetings for Microsoft Teams. With over 7 years of experience as a design consultant working with international clients across diverse industries, including automotive and tobacco, I’ve honed my skills in every phase of …

$60 / month
  Chat
2 x Calls
Tasks

Only 2 Spots Left

Hello there! I'm Tiziana, currently serving as Chief of Staff at one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world. With over 7 years of experience in hypergrowth startups, I've gained valuable expertise in various areas, including hiring top talent (conducting over 200 interviews and making 30+ hires), scaling sales …

$150 / month
  Chat
1 x Call
Tasks

Only 2 Spots Left

I help you 1. Implement processes to deploy stress-free several times per day (without heroics) 2. Bring your team together by collaborative pairing and release planning 3. Grow highly capable, happy engineers who don't shy away from working with legacy code I coach leaders managing product engineering teams in engineering …

$80 / month
  Chat
Tasks

Browse all Business mentors

Still not convinced?
Don’t just take our word for it

We’ve already delivered 1-on-1 mentorship to thousands of students, professionals, managers and executives. Even better, they’ve left an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for our mentors.

Find a Business mentor
  • "Naz is an amazing person and a wonderful mentor. She is supportive and knowledgeable with extensive practical experience. Having been a manager at Netflix, she also knows a ton about working with teams at scale. Highly recommended."

  • "Brandon has been supporting me with a software engineering job hunt and has provided amazing value with his industry knowledge, tips unique to my situation and support as I prepared for my interviews and applications."

  • "Sandrina helped me improve as an engineer. Looking back, I took a huge step, beyond my expectations."