Chip Cox
What I've Been Reading
Over 1,000 books. Some changed how I think about marketing. Some changed how I think about everything. Most were forgettable.
This is the short list. The ones I still reference, still recommend, and still find myself citing in client conversations. Not a vanity display. A working bibliography for the ideas behind Corlarity.
1,180
Books Read
330,544
Pages
193
Five-Star Reads
Marketing, Branding & Positioning
The foundational texts of how companies get found, understood, and chosen. These shaped the strategic lens behind the C3 Framework.
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (1980)
Al Ries
This is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn To See (2018)
Seth Godin
Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers (2014)
Seth Godin
Ogilvy on Advertising (1983)
David Ogilvy
The Brand Gap (2003)
Marty Neumeier
Building a StoryBrand 2.0: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
Donald Miller
Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads: Turning Paupers into Princes and Lead into Gold (The Wizard of Ads Series, Volume 2) (1999)
Roy H. Williams
Oversubscribed: How to Get People Lining Up to Do Business with You (2015)
Daniel Priestley
The Ultimate Marketing Engine: 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth
John Jantsch
Subscription Marketing: Strategies for Nurturing Customers in a World of Churn (2015)
Anne H. Janzer
Buyer Psychology & Behavioral Science
How people actually make decisions. Not the rational-actor model from business school, but the messy, biased, emotional reality.
Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
Daniel Kahneman
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984)
Robert B. Cialdini
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (2008)
Dan Ariely
Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy (2013)
Phil P. Barden
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (2006)
Chip Heath
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (2010)
Chip Heath
Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter (2017)
Scott Adams
Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense (2019)
Rory Sutherland
Blindsight: The (Mostly) Hidden Ways Marketing Reshapes Our Brains (2020)
Matt Johnson
Online Influence: Boost your results with proven behavioral science
Bas Wouters
Business Building & Expertise
How to turn specialized knowledge into a business that does not depend on you for every decision. Practitioner wisdom, not theory.
The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth
David C. Baker
Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors: Covert Techniques for a Remarkable Practice
David C. Baker
The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (2010)
Blair Enns
Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour
Blair Enns
Value-Based Fees: How to Charge What You're Worth and Get What You Charge (2002)
Alan Weiss
The Boutique: How To Start, Scale, And Sell A Professional Services Firm
Greg Alexander
Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You (2010)
John Warrillow
Business Model Generation (2010)
Alexander Osterwalder
$100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No (2021)
Alex Hormozi
Work Less, Make More: The counter-intuitive approach to building a profitable business, and a life you actually love
James Schramko
Strategy, Systems & Mental Models
Frameworks for thinking clearly about complex problems. The intellectual infrastructure behind diagnostic methodology.
Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models (2019)
Gabriel Weinberg
Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results (2023)
Shane Parrish
Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work (2013)
Chip Heath
Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking (2015)
Richard E. Nisbett
You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself (2013)
David McRaney
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (2016)
Cal Newport
Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (Voices That Matter) (2000)
Steve Krug
Kill Your Conversion Killers with The Dexter Method™: A Pragmatic Approach to Conversion Optimization for E-Commerce
Joris Bryon
Making Websites Win: Apply the Customer-Centric Methodology That Has Doubled the Sales of Many Leading Websites
Karl Blanks
Economics, Markets & Incentives
How markets actually function, what breaks them, and why incentives matter more than intentions.
Economic Facts and Fallacies (2007)
Thomas Sowell
Social Justice Fallacies (2023)
Thomas Sowell
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (2009)
Steven D. Levitt
23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (2010)
Ha-Joon Chang
How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle (Principles) (2025)
Ray Dalio
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation (2025)
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2009)
Liaquat Ahamed
$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better (2007)
Christopher Steiner
Language, Logic & Evidence
The analytical toolkit. How to evaluate claims, spot bad reasoning, and communicate with precision.
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data (2012)
Charles Wheelan
The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics (2020)
Tim Harford
Bad Science (2008)
Ben Goldacre
The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People (2014)
Michael Shermer
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (2010)
Naomi Oreskes
Words on the Move: Why English Won't—and Can't—Sit Still (Like, Literally) (2016)
John McWhorter
The Story of Human Language (2004)
John McWhorter
The History of the English Language (The Great Courses, 2250) (2013)
Seth Lerer
Philosophy, Power & Human Nature
The deep context. What humans value, how power works, and what has not changed in 2,000 years.
Meditations (180)
Marcus Aurelius
Enchiridion (125)
Epictetus
Letters from a Stoic (64)
Seneca
Man's Search for Meaning (1946)
Viktor E. Frankl
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951)
Eric Hoffer
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2010)
Steven Pinker
The Psychology of Totalitarianism (2023)
Mattias Desmet
The Road to Serfdom (1944)
Friedrich A. Hayek
The Practicing Stoic (2018)
Ward Farnsworth
Curated from a Goodreads library of 1,180 books. Only titles I would recommend to a colleague. Updated periodically.
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