Every great leader has a few books that quietly shaped how they lead.

For Duncan and Jason, those books go far beyond tech manuals. They’re the ones that teach you how to think, how to communicate, and how to take responsibility when things get hard.

In this week’s Tech Council, they open their personal libraries and share the titles that stuck. Expect reflections on ownership, transparency, and the hidden leadership lessons inside biographies, history books, and even fiction.

This isn’t your ordinary book recommendations episode. It’s about why some ideas endure, why others fail in practice, and why the best tech lessons sometimes come from outside of tech entirely.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

• The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
• The Dichotomy of Leadership
• Radical Candor
• Turn the Ship Around
• PHP/MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner
• The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
• John Adams by David McCullough
• 1776 by David McCullough
• The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
• Good to Great: A Study of Management Strategies of Companies with Lasting Growth
• High Output Management by Andy Grove
• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture
• Rework by Jason Fried and DHH
• High Growth Handbook
• Three-Body Problem
• The Alchemist

Connect with us:

Duncan Mapes

Jason Ehmke

DevGrid.io

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