I’ve never thought that one of the things I’ll do a lot once I start my own business is travel. I thought I would be stuck in an office, growing my online empire, but that was so far from the truth. At some point, while I was building my company, I travel 5 months in a year: I went to trade show, expos, conferences, all to promote our work and get more contacts in the industry.

Truth is, though, that with the best travel books, you can explore some of the world’s most incredible places without ever having to leave your home. Whether you don’t have the funds to take a fantastic trip or you’re planning a future getaway, you’ll easily be able to pick the perfect destination for your time away. Filled with plenty of pictures and informative blurbs about unique destinations and popular tourist attractions, your travels will be far more interesting.

For me it wasn’t about not traveling, but about adding a little bit of fun to a business trip. I looked in advance for things to do or see and I usually got one more day at the destination (if possible) and I got to enjoy some places I would never have gone to otherwise.

What we have come to love about travel books the most is that they help to educate you about specific areas in the world. You’ll be able to delve into unique cultures, learn about native species, as well as the different environments that we are surrounded by. You would be surprised at how much you can learn about your local area if you were to invest in some of the best travel books.

There is so much to experience in the world, and with the insanely vibrant imagery in these books, it will feel like you’re traveling without having to spend thousands. From destinations, such as Fiji, to the Amazon, there is an extensive number of places that you can experience simply by flipping through the pages. Travelers will especially love these books, as they can help you to pinpoint unique destinations that you may have never thought of before.

During your time away from home, consider picking up some of the best travel books in the area you’re visiting! You might find yourself reinventing your itinerary so that you can have more amazing experiences that are indeed one of a kind.

By the end of your trip, you can guarantee you will have an assortment of unique picturesque moments, so you can show off your amazing travels and soak in everyone’s envy.

It’s easy to see how so many people have wanderlust to see things outside of what they’re faced with every day. Surely consider some of the best travel books for an exceptional experience you aren’t soon to forget.

Vagabundieren: Ein ungewöhnlicher Leitfaden für die Kunst des langfristigen Weltreisens

Travel is something we've found to crave and seek out within the team, and the fact we're set up as a distributed team gives us all a lot of freedom to explore the world. Vagabonding is one of the best books out there to think about travel in a whole new way. Rather than going to places for just a few days and cramming in seeing all the sights, it suggests that if we can we should spend weeks or months rather than days in a place. That way we can get to know the culture and people or even become part of it.

Joel Gascoigne

Co-founder/Buffer

Travels with Charley in Search of America

I wanted to include an older book that has been on my bookshelves for decades, and is a less obvious example of reading to lead. John Steinbeck took a road trip with his dog Charley for company across the length and breadth of the US, and recorded what he saw, who he met and what he learned.

With his inimitable charm, it opens your eyes to the small pleasures of life, and the great wonders of humanity in the little moments that matter. Less a direction on how to lead, you could see it as a subtle guide on how to live.

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

Gulliver’s Travels

Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? [...] Gulliver's Travels (Swift) [to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos]. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist, Author & Science Communicator

The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

The book just a great job describing how communities through the world and history were able to be more innovative than others. It contains some big surprises too.

Colleen McCreary

CEO/CCKPartners

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

It’s not as good as Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. But then, few books are. Diamond finds fascinating anecdotes about what life is like for hunter-gatherers and asks which ones might apply to our modern lifestyles. He doesn’t make some grand pronouncement or romanticize tribal life. He just wants to find the best practices and share them.

Bill Gates

Geschäftsführer/Microsoft

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

Michael Pollan masterfully guides us through the highs, lows, and highs again of psychedelic drugs. How to Change Your mind chronicles how it’s been a longer and stranger trip than most any of us knew.

Daniel Golemann

Autor

In Patagonia

Heute ist Welttag des Buches, eine wunderbare Gelegenheit, diese #Challenge anzusprechen, die Richard von Mike Gonzalez aus New Jersey eingesandt hat: Erstellen Sie eine Liste Ihrer 65 besten Bücher, die Sie im Leben lesen sollten.

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America

Eines der 3 besten Bücher, die ich 2019 gelesen habe

Die CEO Library Community (über anonyme Form)

Reader

Contact

[Currently reading] Contact, by Carl Sagan. Not expecting to gain anything...I just love scifi books.

Sean Seton-Rogers

Partner/PROfounders Capital

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

While re-reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s wonderful book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, I came across this passage on working crossword puzzles. I think he could just as well be talking about making blackout poems:

"There is much to be said in favor of this popular pastime, which in its best form resembles the ancient riddle contests. It is inexpensive and portable, its challenges can be finely graduated so that both novices and experts can enjoy it, and its solution produces a sense of pleasing order that gives one a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. It provides opportunities to experience a mild state of flow to many people who are stranded in airport lounges, who travel on commuter trains, or who are simply whiling away Sunday mornings."

Austin Kleon

Author/Steal Like an Artist

Peak: Wie große Unternehmen ihr Mojo von Maslow bekommen

Rarely has a CEO bared his soul in a book...this powerfully authentic story and the resulting emotional building blocks that define how we can understand our internal weather make for a compelling read and an invaluable operating manual for life.

Tony Hsieh

CEO/Zappos

Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger

I’m a huge Charlie Munger fan. For some reason, I’d missed this biography of him. I learned a few things I didn’t know and got to travel back in time to a book written in the context of Charlie Munger about 20 years ago.

Brad Feld

Co-Founder/Foundry Group

Erinnerungen von Sergeant Bourgogne

There’s this book I really really enjoyed: The memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne. I would have never even heard about it had I not asked someone for an odd recommendation. It’s raw, the edition is poor or lacking, but your imagination covers for it. The story is so detailed and crude that I still don’t understand why there isn’t a movie about it!

Joan Boixados

Gründer/EverydayCheck

Die Emporkömmlinge: Wie Uber, Airbnb und die Killerunternehmen des neuen Silicon Valley die Welt verändern

Wenn Sie lesen, um die Motivation aufrechtzuerhalten und unterhalten zu werden, empfehle ich ein paar Bücher, die nicht nur großartige Geschichten erzählen, sondern auch Lektionen und Erkenntnisse enthalten. Sie werden aus diesen Büchern nicht viele Schritt-für-Schritt-Lektionen gewinnen, aber Sie werden feststellen, dass nicht alle Startups, egal in welcher Phase sie sich befinden, so ausgefeilt sind, wie Sie denken. Sie werden feststellen, dass sie Fehler machen und sich durch die gleichen Dinge kämpfen, durch die Sie sich am Anfang kämpfen. Ich finde, das hilft mir, mich zu motivieren.

Craig Pearce

Co-Founder/Kid Genius

Willkürliches dummes Ziel

Die Memoiren des Grafikdesigners, sicherlich mein liebstes Buchcover des Jahres, versetzen Sie direkt in die Kinderperspektive des Greenwich Village der 1970er Jahre. Mit seinen gegliederten Abschnitten und handgezeichneten Illustrationen bereitete es mir die gleiche Art von schneller, sprunghafter Freude, die ich beim Lesen von Vonnegut bekomme.

Austin Kleon

Schriftsteller, Künstler

Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

The book is new (2017) and growthhacking is a real trend right now.

Kyrylo Taranenko

Head of Marketing/Y-Productive

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Kaku interviews some of the world's best and brightest scientists to find out what they're working on. What he unveils is a future of sci-fi-like innovations and breakthroughs worth sticking around for.

Michael Dell

CEO/Dell

Peter Pan

Heute ist Welttag des Buches, eine wunderbare Gelegenheit, diese #Challenge anzusprechen, die Richard von Mike Gonzalez aus New Jersey eingesandt hat: Erstellen Sie eine Liste Ihrer 65 besten Bücher, die Sie im Leben lesen sollten.

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover’s Life List

If one is to name the single most knowledgeable person about food on planet Earth, it would be Mimi Sheraton. She is also --by far-- the most experienced food critic in an area where experience matters the most, a field in which the expert is the expert.

She has an insatiable curiosity, does her homework, visits countries, argues with locals, tries all manner of restaurants, and is never fooled by hot air or pseudosophistication. I have seen it with my own eyes. Over the past 34 years i watched her in action, particularly when after my graduation, I would go order for her in restaurants so the food would get to the table before the waiters recognized her. She did not use her priviledge as a food critic to get the better quality food and service than the rest of the people --a testament of both ethics and curiosity.

As I said she is the real thing; this book is the real book.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Flaneur

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process

My current obsession is John McPhee. He's a creative nonfiction wizard, and as soon as I got my hands on Draft No. 4, where he explains quite vividly how he chooses the structure of his stories, I was hooked. He even mentions creating an entire article based on a spiral-like diagram structure, before even starting to actually write the piece.

Catalina Penciu

Food Styling and Photography Blogger

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