The lineage: a reading list

Some are about horses and some are not. You won't agree with every line in every one of them. Read them anyway. The lineage is wider than any one author, and the disagreement inside a tradition is most of what keeps it honest.

1. Zachary Leyden with Kalea Leyden. Soft Is Strong: The Art of Horsemanship (2026). The field manual every framework in this course comes from.
2. Tom Dorrance. True Unity: Willing Communication Between Horse and Human (1987). The headwater. A way of paying attention.
3. Bill Dorrance and Leslie Desmond. True Horsemanship Through Feel (1999). The vaquero side of the family, at the end of a working life.
4. Ray Hunt. Think Harmony with Horses (1978). Feel, timing, balance, the smallest try. Read it twice.
5. Buck Brannaman. The Faraway Horses (2001) and Believe (2004). Precision and kindness in the same space.
6. Mark Rashid. Horses Never Lie: The Heart of Passive Leadership (2000). The passive leader, and the source of Chapter 3.
7. Stephen Peters and Martin Black. Evidence-Based Horsemanship (2012). The bridge between the old trade and the new science.
8. Robert Greenleaf. The Servant as Leader (1970). Do those served grow as persons?
9. Jim Collins. Good to Great (2001). Level 5 leadership and the Stockdale Paradox.
10. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Extreme Ownership (2015). No bad teams, only bad leaders.
11. Stephen Porges; Deb Dana. The Polyvagal Theory (2011); The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy (2018). The model behind Chapter 4.
12. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations (c. 170). Self mastery, written in the field.
13. Brene Brown. Dare to Lead (2018). BRAVING: which letter is missing when trust is?
14. Bill Walsh. The Score Takes Care of Itself (2009). The Standard of Performance.
15. Phil Jackson. Eleven Rings (2013). Permission to stop micromanaging the standard.
16. Patrick Lencioni. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002). Absence of trust at the base.

Not everything came off a shelf. David Lichman's liberty work was learned in person, and so was most of what the horses taught.