Curator's Reading Room: Books for Hospitality Leaders

Missing Pieces of Life Puzzle

A book series by Ahmet Can Yeşildağ

An evolving body of work distilling over thirty years in the tourism, travel and hotel industry — hotel operations, cross-cultural management and the discipline of self-mastery — into a single framework: the missing pieces of a life lived deliberately. Drawing on operational ground-truth from Hilton, Marriott, Radisson, Titanic, Swissôtel and Hyatt, the series translates the craft of running great hotels into the practice of running a great life.

Volumes are released as the manuscript develops. The companion essay Signals and Noise — An Accounting of a Lifespan is the live working draft.

Amazon link is an affiliate link. Individual volume titles and detailed reviews will be added here as the series develops.

Book Rec #001

BREATH

The New Science
of a Lost Art

JAMES NESTOR

★★★★½ 4.5

Audiobook · 7h 55m ✓ Recommended

Wellness · Body Intelligence

Breath

James Nestor · Popular Science

How we breathe shapes our sleep, energy, stress, endurance, and overall health — and most of us have been doing it wrong. Nestor blends science, history, and personal experiment into a genuinely eye-opening read.

Key Lessons

01 Breathe through the nose whenever possible — it filters, warms, and pressurizes air optimally.
02 Slow, deliberate breathing calms the nervous system far more than most people realize.
03 Sleep quality and breathing quality are inseparably linked.
04 Overbreathing is a silent stressor — less can genuinely be more.

Ideal For

Wellness Sleep Stress Mgmt Longevity Leaders

Popular science — treat it as thought-provoking and practical, not a substitute for medical advice. Some claims are broader than the research fully proves.

Buy on Amazon →View in Toolkit

Selected by · Affiliate link CHA · Cornell · Strategic Leadership

Every great GM I know was shaped as much by what they read as by what they built.

Across over thirty years in the tourism, travel and hotel industry — senior leadership at Hilton, Marriott, Radisson and Titanic, built on early years at Swissôtel and Hyatt — and through the Cornell General Managers Program, I collected not just experience, but a library. These are the books that rewired how I think about leadership, wellness, and the standard of excellence. I share them here with the same discipline I apply to everything: carefully chosen, honest commentary, and no filler.

Cornell GMP · GPA 4.59 CHA Certified Past President of Skål International Baku Club Over Thirty Years · 4 Continents

Books That
Govern the Standard

Missing Pieces of Life Puzzle

The reading list that shaped over thirty years of practice.

Breath

Every great GM I know was shaped as much by what they read as by what they built.

These are the books I send every new GM.