Best Biography Books: 50 Picks Recommended by CEOs

Viktor Frankl recounts surviving Nazi concentration camps, where prisoners who held on to a purpose seemed to last longer, and then lays out logotherapy, his view that meaning comes from work, love or bearing suffering with dignity. Simon Sinek finds its lessons apply to everyone.

Phil Knight looks back on the years after business school, when a loan of fifty dollars from his father and a car trunk of Japanese running shoes started what became Nike, and on the crew and the old track coach who joined him. Warren Buffett calls him a gifted storyteller.

Walter Isaacson wrote the Apple co-founder’s life at his request, from more than forty interviews with him and over a hundred with family, friends and rivals, and Jobs gave up any say over the text. Ryan Holiday says modern biographies are rarely this good.

The physicist tells his life in stories taped with his drumming partner, from safecracking, samba and painting to the Manhattan Project and a closing warning against cargo cult science. Tim Ferriss sees a merry prankster and polymath who was also a superb problem solver.

Andre Agassi describes a childhood of all-day practice under a violent father, a rebellious adolescence at a Florida tennis academy and a late comeback to world number one in a sport he resented. Peter Reinhardt admires how openly he writes about his emotions and his drug use.

Doris Kearns Goodwin tells Lincoln’s story beside those of Seward, Chase and Bates, his rivals for the 1860 nomination, showing how his grasp of what others wanted let him bring them into his cabinet. Brene Brown highlights his skill at turning rivals into allies.

Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgery resident told at 36 that he had stage IV lung cancer, writes about crossing from doctor to patient, becoming a father while ill and what gives a shortened life meaning. Bill Gates notes that he spent his whole brief life looking for meaning.

Ron Chernow had full access to Rockefeller’s papers, including late private interviews no earlier biographer used, and follows the oil magnate from a bigamist father’s home to Standard Oil and late philanthropy. Ryan Holiday found it good enough to carry him through 800 pages.

Ron Chernow follows Hamilton from an illegitimate Caribbean birth to aide-de-camp, Federalist author and first Treasury Secretary, arguing that much of America’s economic strength grew from his ideas. John Ciancutti read it as a startup story, with America as the startup.

Walter Isaacson works from the notebooks to connect the painter of the Mona Lisa with the restless student of anatomy, optics, fossils and flying machines, and closes with lessons such as staying curious. Bill Gates calls Leonardo among the most fascinating people who ever lived.

Tara Westover first sat in a classroom at 17, after a childhood in a survivalist Idaho family that shunned doctors and schools, and went on to a Cambridge doctorate while wrestling with what that cost her. Michelle Obama praises its view of what education can do.

Nelson Mandela traces his path from a boyhood near the Thembu royal house and a law career to underground resistance, the Rivonia Trial, more than a quarter century in prison and his release in 1990. Barack Obama and James Mattis both have it on their lists.

Patti Smith recalls meeting photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in 1967 and their pact to look after each other while both pursued art through New York, from Scribner’s to the Hotel Chelsea. Malcolm Gladwell says he finished it in one sitting and then wept.

J. D. Vance uses his own family, from Kentucky grandparents who moved to Ohio to a mother fighting addiction, to look at the decline of the white working class, and follows his own way out through the Marines and Yale Law. Ramit Sethi calls it devastating.

Trevor Noah tells, in eighteen essays, of a childhood in which his parents’ relationship was a crime, of selling bootleg CDs in Alexandra and of a fearless, devout mother set on getting him out. Bill Gates traces Noah’s outsider comedy back to that upbringing.

Sarah Bakewell maps Montaigne’s life against twenty answers to one question, how to live, drawn from his Essays, and argues that he invented the habit of writing about oneself. Marc Andreessen sums it up as questions about loss, violence and getting along with people.

Arnold Schwarzenegger recounts leaving a small Austrian town to win Mr. Universe at twenty-one, building a fortune in real estate before Hollywood, then governing California and facing a scandal of his own making. Gabriel Coarnă calls it a true rags-to-riches story.

Robert A. Caro shows how Robert Moses, never elected, used public authorities to outrank mayors and governors and built bridges and highways at a heavy cost to communities. Mark Manson notes that Caro uses one life to study how power works.

Eddie Izzard looks back on losing his mother young, boarding school, his sexuality and the climb from London street shows to international stand-up, film, politics and running. Bill Gates admires how he worked past a lack of natural talent.

Scott Harrison describes quitting a decade as a New York nightclub promoter, serving on a hospital ship in West Africa and founding charity: water with no money, then growing it to bring clean water to millions. Adam Grant and Arianna Huffington both endorse it.

Bryan Stevenson recounts founding the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama and fighting for Walter McMillian, a man sentenced to death for a murder he denied, alongside cases of children serving life terms. Brene Brown reads it as a call to courage.

Nathaniel Fick recounts training at Quantico, commanding a platoon in Afghanistan soon after 9/11 and joining First Recon before the Iraq war, and weighs the ideals he was taught against how the military really works. Ramit Sethi praises its account of leading in combat.

Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist with terminal cancer, turned his last lecture on childhood dreams into a book for his three young children, each chapter built on an episode from his life. Andrew Huberman counts it among his favourite books.

Robert Coram tells the story of John Boyd, the pilot who won mock dogfights in under forty seconds, reshaped fighter design and military strategy, and spent his career fighting the Pentagon. Morgan Housel compares him to Musk: brazen, rule breaking and a genius.

Benjamin Franklin began his memoirs as a guide for his son and covers his apprenticeship to a Boston printer, the Silence Dogood essays, the move to Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Gazette, breaking off at 52. Charlie Munger lists it, and Joel Gascoigne found much wisdom in it.

Steve Martin traces his path from selling guidebooks at Disneyland at ten through tiny audiences to arena crowds, and explains why he quit stand-up in 1981 at his peak. James Clear valued its detail on his act and his early career.

Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman follow Claude Shannon from small-town Michigan through the MIT thesis and Bell Labs paper that founded information theory, along with his juggling machines and roulette computer. Erik Rostad drew a working lesson from its idea that information measures uncertainty overcome.

Anthony Bourdain mixes confession and anecdote about high-end kitchens, their misfit crews and his own drug use, and explains how restaurants make money and why to skip fish on a Monday. Nicole Baldinu sees in it a lesson in mastery and work ethic.

Evan Thomas portrays Nixon as both hopeful and badly flawed, a Quaker-raised fighter who ended the draft and opened relations with China yet earned the name Tricky Dick long before Watergate. Bill Gates was struck by how poorly Nixon managed his staff.

Kevin Mitnick tells how he hacked and talked his way into the networks of Pacific Bell, Motorola and Sun, treating it as a confidence game, and lived under false names while the FBI hunted him. Richard Bejtlich rates it above his earlier books.

William Manchester follows MacArthur from 1880 to 1964, crediting his courage and gifts as an administrator while documenting his vanity and insubordination, and presses a comparison with Caesar throughout. Elon Musk and James Mattis both list it.

Gandhi tells his life as a series of experiments in simple living, diet, celibacy and nonviolence, meant to explain the search for truth behind his campaigns in South Africa and India. Tim Cook has said he was reading it.

Edmund Morris follows Roosevelt from a sickly childhood and a book a day through ranch life, the New York police board, the Rough Riders and the governorship to the presidency in 1901. Ryan Holiday calls it a lifelong favourite he has reread several times.

Ron Chernow spent six years replacing the image of a stolid Washington with a passionate, moody man held in check by self-control, from the French and Indian War to two terms as president. Ryan Holiday counts it among big biographies worth every page.

Paramahansa Yogananda recounts a Bengali childhood, years of training under his guru, his move to America in 1920 and meetings with Gandhi and Tagore, presenting Kriya Yoga along the way. Steve Jobs has recommended it.

Ron Chernow challenges the picture of Grant as failed businessman, drinker and brutal general, following him through Shiloh and Vicksburg to a presidency that fought the Klan. Jeremy Boudinet read it during his own career ups and downs.

Roxane Gay writes about the sexual violence she suffered at 12, the weight she gained to shield herself and daily life in a very large body, from insults shouted by strangers to seats that do not fit. Brene Brown calls it searingly honest.

George Orwell records his months with a POUM militia in Catalonia, from revolutionary Barcelona and a dull front to street fighting, a bullet through the throat and escape to France. Marc Andreessen lists it among books on a war he sees as a trial run for later history.

Maya Angelou recalls being sent at three to her grandmother’s store in Stamps, Arkansas, and the racism and trauma she met before becoming a mother at 16, with books as her refuge. Julia Enthoven admires the narrator’s voice.

Joan Didion reexamines the year after her husband died at the dinner table while their daughter lay unconscious in hospital, borrowing the anthropologist’s idea of magical thinking, as when she keeps his shoes for his return. Sam Harris recommends it.

Malcolm X told his life to Alex Haley, from his father’s suspicious death and years in prison to national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, his break with it and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Ryan Holiday prefers it to The Catcher in the Rye as a model for young readers.

Candice Millard sets Garfield’s rise from deep poverty to the presidency beside the story of the man who shot him and of the doctors who then treated him. Morgan Housel notes that those doctors did not believe in germs.

Haruki Murakami, who began running in the early 1980s, writes about marathons, an ultramarathon and a triathlon, and about how running sustains his life as a novelist. Cal Newport recommends it to anyone whose life demands creative work.

Charles C. Mann profiles William Vogt, who held that humanity must consume less, and Norman Borlaug, whose high-yield crops fed millions, then tests both outlooks on food, water, energy and climate. Elizabeth Kolbert calls it a portrait of two men who shaped how people see the future.

Lee Kuan Yew recounts how he and his cabinet turned a colonial port given little chance at independence into a rich city state, defeating communists, building an army and stamping out corruption. Xi-Wei Yeo names it as a key inspiration.

Elizabeth Gilbert left a marriage, a country house and a career that had left her panicked, to spend a year seeking pleasure in Italy, devotion in India and balance in Bali. Gabriel Coarnă picked it up after watching her give a talk.

David Goggins describes rising from poverty, abuse and depression to finish Army Ranger, Navy SEAL and Air Force training and set endurance records, and argues that most people use only 40 percent of what they have. Joe Rogan calls him pure will.

Cedric Villani lets readers follow his work on nonlinear Landau damping through diaries and emails, with dry spells, late night breakthroughs, manga and family life. Nassim Nicholas Taleb says it shows exactly how a theorem gets made.

Mainly a guide to the craft of writing, it opens with Stephen King’s memoir of early rejections, drink and drugs, and closes with his recovery after a van struck him in 1999. Ramit Sethi rates the memoir half among the best he knows.

Chris Hadfield’s path from watching Apollo 11 on a Canadian farm to commanding the space station frames a book mainly about counterintuitive NASA habits, such as always planning for disaster. Chris Goward lists it among books that changed his thinking.