Business books mostly bore us. Too many skip the basics of readable writing: a gripping plot, characters you love or hate, narrative momentum. They often reek of bull-polished academic bull or vainglorious, CEO-memoir bull. They fail to do the one thing Hemingway said was essential: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." Sports books do much better, as a rule. I've found some of the most inspiring books on business are actually, first and foremost, sports books. Here are seven great ones that will get your business juices flowing. They Call Me Coach-by John Wooden with Jack Tobin (McGraw-Hill Education, $18). The great UCLA basketball coach wrote several books. Many more were written about him. The Wooden success formula in all of them is dirt simple: preparation, hard work and integrity. But what do these mean in practice? How do you keep players motivated when you're saying the same thing each day? How do you handle a star (Bill Walton, for example) who bucks the system? It's the details about the hard questions that make Wooden's book an all-timer. The Score Takes Care of Itself-by Bill Walsh (Portfolio, $17). When Steve Forbes hired me in 1992 to start a futurist magazine called Forbes ASAP, I recruited Bill Walsh, the retired 49ers coach, to write a column. I would visit Walsh, and he'd tell stories. How he hit upon the idea of his West Coast offense. Why he drafted Joe Montana after every other NFL team had passed on him. How every winning organization has what Walsh called a "standard of excellence" and how you establish that on day one. When to crack down and when to keep it light. Walsh's book brings all of these lessons together.
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