90 Books That Fueled a Mission to Change the World

Early in my career, I started reading a wide range of books that sparked ideas, challenged my thinking, and helped shape the vision for GrantOrb.com — an AI-powered grant system unlocking capital for a better world.

From sci-fi to social impact strategies, tech and startup culture to reflections on personal growth, these 90 books blend technology, purpose, and creativity. They’ve inspired the culture and mission of GrantOrb, and they might just ignite your own journey to make a difference.

Sci-fi

1. Daemon — Daniel Suarez
2. Freedom — Daniel Suarez
3. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
4. Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson
5. Animal Farm — George Orwell
6. Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
7. Accelerando — Charles Stross
8. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore — Robin Sloan
9. Sourdough — Robin Sloan
10. The Lost Cause — Cory Doctorow
11. Rainbows End — Vernor Vinge
12. The Graveyard Book — Neil Gaiman
13. Little Brother — Cory Doctorow
14. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley

Social impact

15. Building Social Business — Muhammad Yunus
16. Start Something That Matters — Blake Mycoskie
17. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man — John Perkins
18. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman — Yvon Chouinard
19. The Day the World Stops Shopping — J.B. MacKinnon
20. Buy the Change You Want to See — Jane Mosbacher Morris
21. Rebel Code — Glyn Moody
22. Deschooling Society — Ivan Illich
23. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds — Charles Mackay
24. Manifesto for a Moral Revolution — Jacqueline Novogratz
25. Check Your Financial Privilege — Alex Gladstein
26. Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World — John Freeman
27. FoodPrints: The Story of What We Eat — Paula Ayer
28. Conscious Capitalism — John Mackey and Raj Sisodia
29. The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid — C.K. Prahalad
30. The Business of Changing the World — Marc Benioff
31. Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential — Dan Pallotta
32. New Power — Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms
33. The Delusions of Crowds — William J. Bernstein

Tech & startups

34. Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson
35. The Everything Store — Brad Stone
36. The Story of Lululemon: Little Black Stretchy Pants — Chip Wilson
37. Elon Musk — Walter Isaacson
38. The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew — Lee Kuan Yew
39. Crypto — Steven Levy
40. Attention Factory — Matthew Brennan
41. Alibaba — Duncan Clark
42. Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World — Michael Moritz
43. The Nudist on the Late Shift and Other True Tales of Silicon Valley — Po Bronson
44. Behind the Cloud — Marc Benioff
45. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul — Howard Schultz
46. The Ins-N-Outs of In-N-Out Burger — Lynsi Snyder
47. Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary — Linus Torvalds and David Diamond
48. The Age of Cryptocurrency — Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey

How to scale

49. Hackers and Painters — Paul Graham
50. Zero to One — Peter Thiel
51. The Startup of You — Reid Hoffman
52. The Messy Middle — Scott Belsky
53. Influencer: The Power to Change Anything — Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenny
54. Badass: Making Users Awesome — Kathy Sierra
55. Working in Public — Nadia Asparouhova
56. The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
57. Difference — Bernadette Jiwa
58. The Fortune Cookie Principle — Bernadette Jiwa
59. Make Your Idea Matter — Bernadette Jiwa
60. Hunch — Bernadette Jiwa
61. The Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande
62. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big — Scott Adams
63. Hooked: 30 Minute Expert Guide — Nir Eyal
64. Talk Like TED — Carmine Gallo
65. The Long Tail — Chris Anderson
66. Jugaad Innovation — Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, and Simone Ahuja

Memoirs & personal narratives

67. Kitchen Confidential — Anthony Bourdain
68. Barbarian Days — William Finnegan
69. Hillbilly Elegy — J.D. Vance
70. What Do You Care What Other People Think? — Richard P. Feynman
71. Shantaram — Gregory David Roberts
72. Hippie — Paulo Coelho

Psychology & philosophy

73. Grit — Angela Duckworth
74. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World — David Epstein
75. Originals — Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg
76. The Courage to Be Disliked — Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
77. Antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
78. The Sovereign Individual — James Dale Davidson

Societal & cultural insights

79. The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel
80. The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class — Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
81. Dawn of the New Everything — Jaron Lanier
82. How to Do Nothing — Jenny Odell
83. The Future Is Asian — Parag Khanna
84. Connectography — Parag Khanna
85. Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America — Wendy A. Woloson

Literature & lifestyle

86. On Writing — Stephen King
87. Siddhartha — Hermann Hesse
88. Sit Like a Buddha — Lodro Rinzler
89. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up — Marie Kondo
90. The Little Book of Hygge — Meik Wiking

---

What are some of the books you’ve read from this list? I’d love to hear.

Connect with me on X or LinkedIn and watch the GrantOrb story unfold.

👋 I’m Deepa, founder of GrantOrb AI — unlocking capital for a better world.

---

Originally published on Substack — read the original →.