Dune

All you need to know about leadership is contained in Dune.

Kelly is a legitimate fantasy and sci-fi nerd. He knows Dune by Frank Herbert and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson inside and out.

My favorite non-business book is by far "Dune" saga, by Frank Herbert. The books transpose you in a vast universe that is build with tremendous talent containing a detailed future fictional society with guilds, families, feudal organisations, politics, social typos, economic drive, conflicts and intrigues. By putting you in the middle, the book is a real-life school of politics, economics, social and personal, good (if not best) practices. Also treats themes like loyalty, fear, treason, bravery, dictatorship, revolts, knowledge of the future, destiny etc. I have read it first time when I was 14 then I have re-read it several times, last time recently, 2 years ago (37 yo).

Chronologically, my first favourite book probably was Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. Or maybe Frank Herbert's Dune.

Dune, by Frank Herbert. When I got this book out of the library at age 12, my father remarked, "It's sinful that so large a book should be devoted to science fiction." Little was he to know that this book, full of wonderful concepts about how to come to grips with a world out of our control, would play so large a role in his son's life. After I graduated from college, a friend who was editing a series of critical monographs about science fiction asked me if I'd like to write a book about Frank Herbert. I agreed, and it was that choice that set me on the path to becoming a writer. My first book, Frank Herbert, is online. In the course of writing the book, I got far deeper into Herbert's ideas than I had reading his books growing up. The core message of all Herbert's work is that we can't control the future, but we can control our response to it, surfing the edge of change and risk.

Outside of all the teenage boy / angst books like Dune and Ender's World...in those, you always imagine you are Paul Atreides or Ender Wiggin and it's up to you to save the world :)

This is my favorite all time science fiction book by a long stretch. Besides giving us an incredibly rich and varied view of an interstellar empire, Herbert has a lot to say about leadership, heroism and strategy in crisis. Dune is the kind of book you really don’t want to end. Herbert wrote five sequels: Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune. Skip the 1984 movie though, it didn’t do the book justice.