As 2024 comes to a close, we're reminded that great leaders never stop learning. The best books don’t just inform us; they challenge our thinking, ignite inspiration, and equip us with tools to evolve both personally and professionally.

This year, we discovered a wealth of exceptional titles that sparked fresh insights, expanded our perspectives, and offered actionable strategies for leadership, culture-building, self-mastery, and high performance.

In today’s edition of The Daily Coach, we’re thrilled to share 10 recommended reads from 2024. These selections, presented in no particular order, are books we wholeheartedly suggest for every leader, coach, executive, and high performer aiming to elevate their game.

Whether you’re looking to refine your skills, fuel your drive, or simply immerse yourself in a compelling narrative, these books promise to help empower your journey of growth and transformation. Let’s dive in!

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There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib

There’s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it’s basketball, or music, or performance—Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.

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The Pivot Year by Brianna Wiest

Devote the next twelve months of your life to making measured and real change, beginning with your mindset. The Pivot Year is a book of 365 daily meditations on finding the courage to become who you’ve always wanted to be, from the internationally bestselling author of 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think, The Mountain Is You, and more.

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The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory by Thomas Fuller

The incredible story of an all-deaf high school football team’s triumphant climb from underdog to undefeated, their inspirational brotherhood, a fascinating portrait of deafness in America, and the indefatigable head coach who spearheaded the team.

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The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self by Dr. Martha Beck

In The Way of Integrity, Beck presents a four-stage process that anyone can use to find integrity, and with it, a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and a life free of mental suffering. Much of what plagues us—people pleasing, staying in stale relationships, negative habits—all point to what happens when we are out of touch with what truly makes us feel whole.

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The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt

A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

Dynamic Drive: The Purpose-Fueled Formula for Sustainable Success by Molly Fletcher

Dynamic Drive is your practical guide to unlocking your true potential. Through her decades of experience working with top athletes and peak performers across industries, renowned keynote speaker and leadership expert Molly Fletcher has created a proven formula backed by research that outlines the seven keys to sustainable success.

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Beyond Comfort: Mastering a Growth Mindset with Excellence Through Urgency by Ted Rath

This book has been written to help you become a better version of yourself through simple yet effective methods. The daily deposits we make through our decisions and actions will lead to our future reality. By leveraging an urgent mindset and applying healthy daily habits, we can become a better version of ourselves right now.

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Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines Dr. Joy Buolamwini

AI is not coming, it’s here. If we answer the beautiful call inside these pages, we can decide who we are going to be and how we’re going to use technology in service of what it means to be fully human.

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Black Cowboys of Rodeo: Unsung Heroes from Harlem to Hollywood and the American West by Keith Ryan Cartwright 

Black Cowboys of Rodeo is a collection of one hundred years of stories, told by these revolutionary Black pioneers themselves and set against the backdrop of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, the civil rights movement, and eventually the integration of a racially divided country.

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Rooted to Rise: The Redwood Legacies of Life-Anchoring People by Sherri Coale

In Rooted to Rise, Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach Sherri Coale shares the indelible truths she’s learned from the people she’s crossed paths with in her life. From Coale’s small-town roots to her award-winning courtside career, her life has been littered with remarkable connections. Each connection, small or large, is a vital part of Coale's journey.

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