This book opened my eyes to what a small team can do in a short time if they are dedicated to the mission and masters of their craft. It’s an inspiring read for anyone who’s interested in the history of technical innovation in aerospace or in learning more about the Skunkworks philosophy.
Sister book to Lightness, this is also an inspiring consolidation of ideas on structural optimization, but this one focuses solely on transportation. If you also share a passion for sustainable transportation, this is the book for you. You’ll likely only be able to find this book used, but it’s absolutely worth the effort!
An inspiring consolidation of ideas and technologies around the subject of structural optimization in many fields — primarily architecture. Though difficult to find and somewhat challenging to read (you’ve never seen captions like these!), this book will be an absolute inspiration for anyone interested in the pursuit of structural purity and performance.
With our singular focus on NPD, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the same tools we use to develop new products, packages and medical devices have been used by the most innovative organizations on the planet to inspire some of the greatest achievements of humanity. The Art of NASA is a powerful and inspiring reminder of how powerful are the tools of design.
If you’re interested in a brilliant coffee table book with rich visuals and a tangible reminder of design’s power to inspire intellectual and scientific greatness, click here to buy this title on Amazon.
It’s no overstatement to say that this book is life-changing. I had been screwing around with bread baking for years with almost zero success. When this book was recommended by Allez Bakery owner Thomas McKenna, I had essentially given up on ever being able to bake an airy, crusty, delicious loaf of bread. This book taught me to think of bread-making as a fermentation process. (And as someone who regularly makes 3 - 5 gallon batches of homemade kimchi and home-brewed beer, this revelation was mind-blowing!)
Perhaps equally important — and unlike other cookbooks I’ve read — Flour Water Salt Yeast is written to truly educate its reader rather than provide rote instructions. For just one example, ingredients are listed in such a way as to allow the reader to compare recipes at a glance and to develop an understanding of how the proportions of each recipe — combined with temperature, humidity and time — can be adjusted to achieve different results. (it sort of reminds me of how tables of offsets are used to describe boat hulls.)
If you’ve always wanted to make amazing bread, pick this book up immediately. Click here to buy on Amazon.
Sister book to Lightness, this is also an inspiring consolidation of ideas on structural optimization, but this one focuses solely on transportation. If you also share a passion for sustainable transportation, this is the book for you. You’ll likely only be able to find this book used, but it’s absolutely worth the effort!
An inspiring consolidation of ideas and technologies around the subject of structural optimization in many fields — primarily architecture. Though difficult to find and somewhat challenging to read (you’ve never seen captions like these!), this book will be an absolute inspiration for anyone interested in the pursuit of structural purity and performance.
With our singular focus on NPD, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the same tools we use to develop new products, packages and medical devices have been used by the most innovative organizations on the planet to inspire some of the greatest achievements of humanity. The Art of NASA is a powerful and inspiring reminder of how powerful are the tools of design.
If you’re interested in a brilliant coffee table book with rich visuals and a tangible reminder of design’s power to inspire intellectual and scientific greatness, click here to buy this title on Amazon.
It’s no overstatement to say that this book is life-changing. I had been screwing around with bread baking for years with almost zero success. When this book was recommended by Allez Bakery owner Thomas McKenna, I had essentially given up on ever being able to bake an airy, crusty, delicious loaf of bread. This book taught me to think of bread-making as a fermentation process. (And as someone who regularly makes 3 - 5 gallon batches of homemade kimchi and home-brewed beer, this revelation was mind-blowing!)
Perhaps equally important — and unlike other cookbooks I’ve read — Flour Water Salt Yeast is written to truly educate its reader rather than provide rote instructions. For just one example, ingredients are listed in such a way as to allow the reader to compare recipes at a glance and to develop an understanding of how the proportions of each recipe — combined with temperature, humidity and time — can be adjusted to achieve different results. (it sort of reminds me of how tables of offsets are used to describe boat hulls.)
If you’ve always wanted to make amazing bread, pick this book up immediately. Click here to buy on Amazon.
This may be the most important piece of equipment in our shop. It was one of the first pieces of office equipment we purchased when we started Pixel & Timber, and it’s been reliably cranking out outstanding espresso ever since.
I really can’t recommend this machine highly enough. This device is so awesome, I picked up a second one when the pandemic forced me to work from home.
The Delonghi Magnifica is the answer to the coffee/convenience/waste conundrum. It makes an amazing cup of espresso with a nice head of crema, at the press of a button. You can use whole beans from your local artisanal roaster, so you’ll never be limited to the junk you can buy in pods or at the supermarket. The coffee this machine produces is 100x better than a Keurig, with less waste and greater convenience.
Does the machine cost more? Sure. Quality costs money. And I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about how the one cup convenience of a Keurig or Nespresso is worth the waste. This thing produces better coffee from better beans without the packaging waste. Just do it. Working from home? Sounds like an office expense to me. Click here to buy on Amazon.
I refer a lot of new inventors to this book. It’s been on and off my shelf for a decade (the old edition, anyway), and I’ve lent and lost more than a few copies to students and clients. This book is an essential resource for entrepreneurs assembling their pitch decks. It includes a handful of useful tools for new and experienced entrepreneurs, including an outstanding set of pitch deck templates. And that’s just the 1.0 edition! The new version has been updated with all kinds of new content, including a section on crowdfunding! This book is an essential resource for all new product entrepreneurs. Click here to buy on Amazon.
How entrepreneurship and a midwestern work ethic changed the course of human history. Click here to buy on Amazon.
A comprehensive and accessible book on the subject of Tenkara fly fishing. Like the philosophy that underpins many of the books in this list, Tenkara celebrates the idea that "the more you know, the less you need." In this short text, Yvon Chouinard unpacks this simple fishing technique and the tools and techniques that make it beautiful. Click here to buy on Amazon.
This is currently my favorite book of 2019 and for good reason: It is decidedly contrary to pretty much every piece of modern advice about working in a creative field, and defends its position succinctly. While not quite demanding we become luddite hermits, it does encourage those of us that are in creative jobs to “go into airplane mode” more often, get fresh air, change your mind, and seek the long view. That last piece of advice has stuck with me every day since reading it. We are submerged in a culture of “overnight” successes and daily encouragement to share our newest work for the sake of “posting for our personal brand.” Kleon, in this brief book lays out why we might make better work (and communities) if we slow down a bit, and aim for creating in a time frame much larger than today’s Instagram story feed. Click here to buy on Amazon.
Some see creativity as a fickle muse, one that comes and goes on a whim, without any control or reason. Twyla Tharp, in this aptly subtitled “Practical Guide,” sets out to prove that wrong. Creativity is a habit that is practiced and nurtured through repetition and environment, not by an amorphous notion of “inspiration.” Tharp’s combination of solid advice and exercises along with her delightful personal stories as a legendary choreographer make this an easy read. And since I discovered this book in college, I’ve turned back to it whenever I’m in a rut, and it consistently breaks my brain wide open and gets me back into practice. Click here to buy on Amazon.
I love poring over this book and dreaming up building my own thru-hiking setup. The approach Ray Jardine takes to lightweight backpacking, “The Ray Way” as it’s known, at first seems a little extreme and dangerous — eschewing weight at all costs means going without some extra REI bells and whistles. But the gain is also extremely appealing: speed and enjoyment. By leveraging knowledge, planning, and an adaptable set of choice equipment, one can enjoy natural trails without the feeling of lugging heavy boots and bags every inch of the way. I’ve not built my own “ray way” backpack yet, but I’ve definitely lightened up my hiking gear and it’s made all the difference. Click here to buy on Amazon.
Natalie Goldberg takes a gentle, no-nonsense approach to the craft of writing that removes the pressure of the blank page and reminds readers that writing, like all skills, is a practice. Goldberg sees writing through a zen-like lens that is unlike other books about writing — and that means a lot of the lessons learned are applicable to other creative fields. Having read this book a few times over the last decade, the biggest takeaway for me is always the concept of morning pages, and it has changed the way I start my day. Click here to buy on Amazon.
When my brother bought me a bottle of this for an upcoming woods trip, he described it as “peaty” and, I believe, “challenging.” I didn’t expect to like it (and I admit that first taste was staggering), but Laphroaig has grown on me. I don’t know if it’s the imagery the brand evokes or the memories of the freezing, rain-soaked trip on which I first tasted it, but this stuff makes me think of cold weather and warm conversations with friends around a campfire.
This amazing children’s book charts the historic Apollo 11 moon landing mission with beautiful illustrations and simple, evocative prose. Moonshot is the perfect bedtime book for a space-obsessed kiddo. Even after the twentieth (?!) reading, it’s still outstanding! Click here to buy on Amazon.
Like the title suggests, this book encourages the reader to put their day to day life under the microscope and come to terms with the fact that today, the world moves at breakneck speeds often leaving us bouncing from one distraction to the next. Co-authored by 20 of the business worlds best creative minds, Manage Your Day to Day arms you with actionable tips, tricks, and insights to help you maximize your time and make the most of every opportunity you get in a day. If you feel like you always have to be in two places at once and can’t seem to make progress on your ever growing to-do list, log out of your email, silence your phone, and give this book a read. Click here to buy on Amazon.
If you’re like me, you’ve been struggling with this question your whole professional life: get creative fulfillment from a fulfilling (but likely low-paying) job or punch the clock at a soulless (but likely high-paying) job and get fulfillment elsewhere. This book not only highlights the improbability of achieving happiness through the latter, it discusses the meaning of and methods to achieve happiness through what author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “optimal experience.” Click here to buy on Amazon.
Brandon’s Take — A hearty recommendation from myself as well. Flow changed my view on restructuring the tasks in my day re: what deserves automation vs. deep thinking. When you finally know why some tasks are inherently boring for you and others are truly challenging but also invigorating, it starts to reframe your outlook on your entire career path.
This book contains a sweeping exploration of the history of organizations and offers inspiring suggestions around which to craft a new business based on equity, accountability and self-management. This book describes the organizational model we always hoped businesses would be based on and gives it a name — teal. (It also provides a hauntingly familiar description of “red” businesses, which we’ve also experienced.) We’ve built Pixel and Timber around the philosophies and methods described in this book. I absolutely recommend it to anyone who is building a new business or seeking to change the culture of the one they’re in. Click here to buy on Amazon.
We’re not suggesting that everyone should spend $100 on a hammer, but Stiletto hammers epitomize the idea of buying quality once. This 14oz titanium head hits as hard as its 24oz steel counterpart and is sure to last a life time. In the event that you have $100 and need to set a nail, look no further. Click here to buy on Amazon.
While I haven’t sought out a desert shaman, or decided to start microdosing during a brainstorm, this book has opened up my mind to a very different perception of what consciousness really is. Pollan explores these questionably legal drugs (and his guided experiences on them) with the same scientific and emotional detail as his other tamer works on food and nature. While these drugs are already in use to help adjust moods and behaviors for those experiencing a chemical imbalance, Pollan makes a great case for their general therapeutic use to help us all be more empathetic, mindful, and appreciative. Click here to buy on Amazon.
