Fans pick 100 books like Exit Planning

By John H. Brown,

Here are 100 books that Exit Planning fans have personally recommended if you like Exit Planning. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top

John F. Dini Author Of Your Exit Map: Navigating the Boomer Bust

From my list on business owners planning a transition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a coach to business owners for the last 25 years, with a concentration on exit planning for the last twelve. During that time I have personally worked with over 500 owners. I’ve written 4 books on the subject, two of which were award winners. I’ve seen so many owners who built excellent businesses, but are stymied by how to leave them without deserting their employees and customers. Almost two-thirds of business owners over 60 years old have no plan for the transition of their businesses. I am on a mission to fix that.

John's book list on business owners planning a transition

John F. Dini Why did John love this book?

Bo Burlingham is an original editor for Inc. Magazine, leading that publication from its founding in Boston through its acquisition and relocation to New York CIty. This collection of “real life” exiting stories is entertaining and a quick read. The subjects are actual business owners, although most had middle-market companies that attract far more interest than the average Main Street (Under $3,000,000 value) businesses. As the author says, “No two exits are exactly alike.” 

By Bo Burlingham,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Finish Big as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Bo Burlingham, the bestselling author of Small Giants, returns with Finish Big, an original guide to exiting your company successfully and gracefully.

"Finish Big is for all those founder/leaders who want to do more than take...it is for the ones who want to leave something behind." Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last

"Practical and profound, fast-moving and thought-provoking, masterful in its clear prose and compelling stories- Bo Burlingham has once again done a tremendous service in deploying his craft." Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and co-author of Built to Last and Great by…


Book cover of Walking to Destiny: 11 Actions An Owner MUST Take to Rapidly Grow Value & Unlock Wealth

John F. Dini Author Of Your Exit Map: Navigating the Boomer Bust

From my list on business owners planning a transition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a coach to business owners for the last 25 years, with a concentration on exit planning for the last twelve. During that time I have personally worked with over 500 owners. I’ve written 4 books on the subject, two of which were award winners. I’ve seen so many owners who built excellent businesses, but are stymied by how to leave them without deserting their employees and customers. Almost two-thirds of business owners over 60 years old have no plan for the transition of their businesses. I am on a mission to fix that.

John's book list on business owners planning a transition

John F. Dini Why did John love this book?

Chris is the CEO of the Exit Planning Institute, the organization that grants the Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA) designation. The first half of the book is about the transition of the Baby Boomers, the most entrepreneurial generation in history. The second half outlines EPI’s proprietary Value Enhancement Methodology, a system for increasing the value of your company.

By Christopher M. Snider,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Walking to Destiny as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For Business Owners. By a Business Owner.
Walking to Destiny is not only your essential resource to understand what makes your business attractive and ready for transition; it is a business owner’s handbook to know HOW TO rapidly grow value and ultimately unlock the personal wealth trapped in your most significant financial asset: Your Business.

The Voice of the Industry:
Christopher M. Snider, CEPA, CEO and President of the Exit Planning Institute, creator of the Value Acceleration Methodology, and Managing Partner of Snider Premier Growth, is recognized as a thought leader and trendsetter in the field of value acceleration and…


Book cover of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth: A Strategic Guide for Owners and Their Advisors

John F. Dini Author Of Your Exit Map: Navigating the Boomer Bust

From my list on business owners planning a transition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a coach to business owners for the last 25 years, with a concentration on exit planning for the last twelve. During that time I have personally worked with over 500 owners. I’ve written 4 books on the subject, two of which were award winners. I’ve seen so many owners who built excellent businesses, but are stymied by how to leave them without deserting their employees and customers. Almost two-thirds of business owners over 60 years old have no plan for the transition of their businesses. I am on a mission to fix that.

John's book list on business owners planning a transition

John F. Dini Why did John love this book?

John is the founder of the International Exit Planning Association, the organization that grants the Certified Business Exit Planning Consultant (CBEC) designation I’d place this book much higher than fourth, except that it was written in 2008, and could use some updating on legal and tax issues. Nonetheless, the first half is definitely the best in discussing the psychological and emotional issues of an owner separating from the business.

By John M. Leonetti,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Written by John Leonetti-attorney, wealth manager, merger and acquisition associate, and fellow exiting business owner in his own right-Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth will guide you in thoughtfully planning out your exit options as well as helping you analyze your financial and mental readiness for your business exit. Easy to follow and essential for every business owner, this guide reveals how to establish an exit strategy plan that is in harmony with your goals.


Book cover of The $10 Trillion Opportunity: Designing Successful Exit Strategies for Middle Market Business Owners

John F. Dini Author Of Your Exit Map: Navigating the Boomer Bust

From my list on business owners planning a transition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a coach to business owners for the last 25 years, with a concentration on exit planning for the last twelve. During that time I have personally worked with over 500 owners. I’ve written 4 books on the subject, two of which were award winners. I’ve seen so many owners who built excellent businesses, but are stymied by how to leave them without deserting their employees and customers. Almost two-thirds of business owners over 60 years old have no plan for the transition of their businesses. I am on a mission to fix that.

John's book list on business owners planning a transition

John F. Dini Why did John love this book?

I don’t know Richard Jackim, but Peter Christman is the founder of EPI, and this book is often described as “Where exit planning for business owners began.” It was the first to outline exit planning as a process that requires a team. It discusses tax and legal strategies, coordinating with estate planning, and developing a plan for due diligence. Written mostly for advisors, the focus is on the M&A process for middle market companies, but no list of exit planning books would be complete without it.

By Richard E. Jackim, Peter G. Christman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The $10 Trillion Opportunity as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The $10 Trillion Opportunity shows business advisors how to develop comprehensive, integrated exit plans for business owners. With the baby boomer generation approaching retirement age, exit planning has become one of the hottest topics for business advisors. Exit planning is a process that asks and answers all of the personal, business, financial, legal, estate and tax issues involved in selling or exiting from a privately held business. The $10 Trillion Opportunity is a logically structured book with a no-nonsense approach to exploring and addressing a topic that is often misunderstood and at times overwhelming for business owners and their advisors…


Book cover of The Tribunal: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid

David S. Reynolds Author Of John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

From my list on John Brown the abolitionist.

Why am I passionate about this?

David S. Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author or editor of 16 books, on subjects that include John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman Andrew Jackson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the literary and popular culture of the American Renaissance. He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Book Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, the Christian Gauss Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

David's book list on John Brown the abolitionist

David S. Reynolds Why did David love this book?

This skillfully edited anthology of contemporary responses to Brown lets us experience firsthand the controversies surrounding Brown during his lifetime. Reprinted in this volume are dozens of 19th-century writings--letters, speeches, articles, poems, diary entries--that demonstrate just how central John Brown was to the cultural and political life of his time. Included in the book are writings about Brown by some of the century's most notable people: Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Henry Ward Beecher, Jefferson Davis, Herman Melville, Stephen Douglas, Louisa May Alcott, Victor Hugo, and Karl Marx, to name a few.

By John Stauffer (editor), Zoe Trodd (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Tribunal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When John Brown led twenty-one men in an attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859, he envisioned a biblical uprising of millions of armed bondsmen, thus ridding the nation of the scourge of slavery. The insurrection did not happen, and Brown and the other surviving raiders were quickly captured and executed. This landmark anthology, which collects contemporary speeches, letters, newspaper articles, journals, poems, and songs, demonstrates that Brown's actions nonetheless altered the course of American history.

John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd have assembled an impressive and wide-ranging collection of responses to Brown's raid: Brown's own…


Book cover of The Good Lord Bird

Moriel Rothman-Zecher Author Of Before All the World

From my list on historical novels brimming with life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I believe that we betray the past when we treat it as the past, and we abandon our ancestors, actual and spiritual, when we dehumanize them as denizens of history, as fundamentally different from us in terms of their lusts and appetites and political nuances and strange senses of humor and nose picking and dance moves and love. Novels, I think, are a powerful mode for understanding and perhaps even undoing the cultural patterns that would have us believe that history is behind us and that the past is not part of the forever dance of the present. 

Moriel's book list on historical novels brimming with life

Moriel Rothman-Zecher Why did Moriel love this book?

This book is, on its face, a sardonic, strange, delightful, and wild retelling of the story of John Brown from the perspective of a formerly enslaved teenager, who John Brown half rescues, half kidnaps, and who is bullied by the Old Man into pretending he is a girl. The story is phenomenally researched and brilliantly told, and the tone accomplishes the magnificent feat of being simultaneously iconoclastic and generous—perhaps even irreverent and reverent. This is a must-read.

By James McBride,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Good Lord Bird as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now a Showtime limited series starring Ethan Hawke and Daveed Diggs

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

From the bestselling author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive.

Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856--a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces--when legendary abolitionist John Brown arrives. When an argument between Brown and Henry's master turns…


Book cover of Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America

David S. Reynolds Author Of John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

From my list on John Brown the abolitionist.

Why am I passionate about this?

David S. Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author or editor of 16 books, on subjects that include John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman Andrew Jackson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the literary and popular culture of the American Renaissance. He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Book Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, the Christian Gauss Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

David's book list on John Brown the abolitionist

David S. Reynolds Why did David love this book?

Engagingly written, this book humanizes John Brown by portraying him as a man “of deep, varied, and sometime conflicting capacities.” Carton describes Brown’s family, business failures, friendships, and deep Calvinistic faith. By fledging out the human picture, Carton challenges simple categorizations of Brown as bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, or criminally insane. Carton places Brown against the background of debates over politics, slavery, and racial issues.

By Evan Carton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Patriotic Treason as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With a combination of scrupulous original research, new perspective, and a sensitive historical imagination, Patriotic Treason vividly recreates the world in which John Brown and his compatriots lived as well as the biography of John Brown and the history of the events leading up to the Civil War. Evan Carton narrates the dramatic life of the first U.S. citizen committed to absolute racial equality. In defiance of the culture around him, Brown lived, worked, ate, and fought alongside African Americans. Inspired by the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule, he collaborated with black leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Martin…


Book cover of Cloudsplitter

Michael C. White Author Of Soul Catcher

From my list on slavery from both sides.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m the author of seven novels, including Soul Catcher, a Booksense and Historical Novels Review selection; A Brother’s Blood, which was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and an Edgar Award Finalist; The Blind Side of the Heart, A Dream of Wolves, and The Garden of Martyrs, a Connecticut Book Award finalist and made into an opera. My historical novel Beautiful Assassin won the 2011 Connecticut Book Award for Fiction. I’ve also published a collection of his short stories, Marked Men, in addition to over 50 short stories in national journals.  I was the founding editor of two magazines, American Fiction and Dogwood, as well as the founder and former director of Fairfield University's MFA Creative Writing Program. I’ve just completed a new historical novel set during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Michael's book list on slavery from both sides

Michael C. White Why did Michael love this book?

What makes this immense novel (768 pages) so engrossing is that we get a very inside view of the great (or demonic—depending on your perspective) figure of John Brown. Told by his son Owen, the novel gives us both a panoramic view of Brown, his vision of slavery, his tumultuous times, and his quest to eradicate slavery by any means, as well as a very intimate portrait of the myth of John Brown as opposed to man and father.  

By Russell Banks,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cloudsplitter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Owen Brown is the last surviving son of America's most famous political terrorist, John Brown, who in 1859 raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, intending to galvanise the Southern slaves into rebellion. Now Owen tells John's story. This incredible novel recreates pre-Civil War America, when slavery was tearing the country apart, and tells of one man's passage from abolitionist to guerrilla fighter and, finally, martyr. Cloudsplitter is a dazzling, suspenseful, heartbreaking story filled with both intimate scenes of domestic life and chilling violence.


Book cover of Fire from the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown

David S. Reynolds Author Of John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

From my list on John Brown the abolitionist.

Why am I passionate about this?

David S. Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author or editor of 16 books, on subjects that include John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman Andrew Jackson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the literary and popular culture of the American Renaissance. He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Book Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, the Christian Gauss Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

David's book list on John Brown the abolitionist

David S. Reynolds Why did David love this book?

John Brown was a devout Calvinist who believed that God had chosen him to fight against slavery. In this stimulating book, Decaro provides us with the first full-scale religious biography of Brown, placing him in the context of nineteenth-century revivals and religiously inspired abolitionists. Decaro also explores Brown’s closeness to African Americans and his debt to Black militants such as David Walker, Denmark Vesey, and Henry Highland Garnet.

By Louis A. Decaro Jr.,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fire from the Midst of You as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Reveals a complex new portrait of John Brown, radical abolitionist and leader of the 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry
John Brown is usually remembered as a terrorist whose unbridled hatred of slavery drove him to the ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Tried and executed for seizing the arsenal and attempting to spur a liberation movement among the slaves, Brown was the ultimate cause celebre for a country on the brink of civil war.
"Fire from the Midst of You" situates Brown within the religious and social context of a nation steeped in racism, showing his roots in…


Book cover of John Brown

David S. Reynolds Author Of John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

From my list on John Brown the abolitionist.

Why am I passionate about this?

David S. Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author or editor of 16 books, on subjects that include John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman Andrew Jackson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the literary and popular culture of the American Renaissance. He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Book Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, the Christian Gauss Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

David's book list on John Brown the abolitionist

David S. Reynolds Why did David love this book?

First published in 1909, this succinct biography by a leading Black author and reformer spearheaded a tradition of appreciative commentary on Brown by African Americans. Brushing aside longstanding critiques of John Brown as a fiend, a fanatic, and a traitor, Du Bois explores the depth of Brown’s antislavery commitment and his willingness to sacrifice his own life in order to bring about the emancipation of Amerca’s 4 million enslaved people. Du Bois makes the memorable generalization: “John Brown was right.”

By W.E.B. Du Bois,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked John Brown as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A moving cultural biography of abolitionist martyr John Brown, by one of the most important African-American intellectuals of the twentieth century.

In the history of slavery and its legacy, John Brown looms large as a hero whose deeds partly precipitated the Civil War. As Frederick Douglass wrote: "When John Brown stretched forth his arm ... the clash of arms was at hand." DuBois's biography brings Brown stirringly to life and is a neglected classic.


Book cover of Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top
Book cover of Walking to Destiny: 11 Actions An Owner MUST Take to Rapidly Grow Value & Unlock Wealth
Book cover of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth: A Strategic Guide for Owners and Their Advisors

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,588

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in John Brown, North America, and CEOs?

John Brown 7 books
North America 71 books
CEOs 67 books