We created this list to promote leadership books by disabled authors. This list is meant to be a resource, not an official endorsement. The books are not ranked or listed in any particular order.
Check out our other leadership book lists by authors who identify as LGBTQIA+, AANHPI, Native American, women, and Hispanic/ Latino/ Latinx.
1. A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain — Christina Crosby
2. A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age with Crouzon Syndrome — Ariel Henley
3. Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer’s World — Thom Hartmann
4. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness — Kay Redfield Jamison
5. And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer’s Early Life — Nicola Griffith
6. Apocalyptic Best Practices: A unique approach to fear and change — Elisebeth VanderWeil
7. ASL Saved My Life…Until it didn’t — Jenni Kleinman Berebitsky
8. Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work — Jodi Ann Burey
9. Be Different — John Elder Robison
10. Being Heumann: an unrepentent memoir of a disability rights activist — Judith E. Heumann
11. Black, Blind, In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity — David A Paterson
12. Blind: A Memoir — Belo Cipriani
13. Body, Remember: A memoir — Kenny Fries
14. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness — Susannah Cahalan
15. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling With Cure — Eli Clare
16. Calling all Minds: How to Think and Create Like an Inventor — Temple Grandin
17. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice — Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
18. Chef Interrupted — Trevis Gleason
19. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity — Simi Linton
20. Count Us In: Growing Up with Down Syndrome — Jason Kingsley (Author), Mitchell Levitz (Author)
21. Crazy, Who Me?: My Journey as a Leader Overcoming Depression — John Panigas
22. Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity — Karen Nakamura
23. Deaf Utopia: A Memoir―and a Love Letter to a Way of Life — Coauthored by Nyle DiMarco
24. Defiant — Michael Scott Monje Jr.
25. Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally — Emily Ladau
26. Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada — Liat Ben-moshe (editor), Allison C. Carey (Editor), Chris Chapman (Editor), Angela Y. Davis (Foreword)
27. Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century — Alice Wong
28. Disabled Leadership — Dr. Tom A. Wiggins
29. Disarm Your Limits: The flight formula to lift you to success and propel you to the next horizon — Jessica Cox
30. Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disabiity and Making Space — Amanda Leduc
31. Dissonant Disabilities: Women With Chronic Illness Explore Their Lives — Michelle Owen, Diane Driedger (Editor)
32. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot — John Callahan
33. Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio — Anne Finger
34. Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation — Eli Clare
35. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature — Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
36. Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History — Corbett O’Toole
37. Fall Down, Laughing: How Squiggy caught multiple sclerrosis and didn’t tell nobody — David Lander
38. Fearlessly Different: An Autistic Actor’s Journey to Broadway’s Biggest Stage — Mickey Rowe
39. Feminist Queer Crip — Alison Kafer
40. Find Another Dream — Maysoon Zayid
41. Gaby Brimmer: An Autobiography in Three Voices — Gaby Brimmer (Author), Elena Poniatowska
42. Goalkeeper: Memoir of Poet Peter Street — Peter Street, Lorraine Worsley-Carter (Foreword)
43. Golem Girl — Riva Lehrer
44. Haben: The deafblind woman who conquered Harvard Law — Haben Girma
45. Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation — Adrienne Maree Brown
46. House of Prayer No. 2 — Mark Richard
47. How I Became a Human Being: A Disabled Man’s Quest for Independence — Mark O’Brien, Gillian Kendall (Contributor)
48. How I See It: A Personal and Historical View of Disability — H Penny Mishkin
49. How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memior — Shayla Lawson
50. I Am Not a Label — Cerrie Burnell
51. I Am Schizophrenic: Poetry from a beautiful brain — Kerenza Ryan
52. I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir — Jan Grue
53. I’ll Scream Later — Marlee Matlin
54. If at Birth You Don’t Succeed: My Adventures with Disaster and Destiny — Zach Anner
55. In the Province of Gods — Kenny Fries
56. Just Human: The Quest for Disability Wisdom, Respect, and Inclusion — Arielle Silverman, PhD
57. Laughing at My Nightmare — Shane Burcaw
58. Life in the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education — Katie Rose Guest Pryal
59. Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstances — Mallory Weggemann
60. Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s — John Elder Robison
61. Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking — Julia Bascom
62. Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life — Margaret Price
63. Madness: A Bipolar Life — Marya Hornbacher
64. Marbles: Mainia, Depession Michelangelo, and Me — Ellen Forney
65. Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up — Selma Blair
66. Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir — Terry Galloway
67. More the Same than Different: What I Wish People Knew About Respecting and Including People with Disabilities — Lorraine Cannistra
68. Moving Violations: Warzones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence — John Hockenberry
69. My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church — Amy Kenny
70. Not a Poster Child: Living Well with a Disability – A Memoir — Francine Falk-Allen
71. Nothing about us without us: disability oppression and empowerment — James I. Charlton
72. On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, and the Gifts of Neurodiversity — Daniel Bowman Jr.
73. Planet of the Blind — Stephen Kuusisto
74. Poster Child: A Memoir — Emily Rapp Black
75. Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People — edited by Alice Wong
76. Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Sotry of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution — Judith Heumann
77. Rough Waters: From Surviving to Thriving with a Progressive Muscular Dystrophy — Heather C. Markham
78. Sick: A Memoir — Porochista Khakpour
79. Sitting Pretty: The View from My Oridinary Resilient Disabled Body — Rebekah Taussig
80. Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism — Dawn Prince-Hughes
81. Speedbumps: Florring it through Hollywood — Teri Garr
82. Staring: How We Look — Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
83. Still Me — Christopher Reeve
84. Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse — Shane Burcaw
85. Successfull to Burnt Out: Experiences of Women on the Autism Spectrum — Karletta Abianac
86. Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening — John Elder Robison
87. The ADHD Advantage: What You Thought Was a Diagnosis May Be Your Greatest Strength — Dale Archer, MD
88. The Body Silent: The Different World of the Disabled — Robert Francis Murphy
89. The Difference That Disability Makes — Rod Michalko
90. The Disability Experience: Working Toward Belonging — Hannalora Leavitt
91. The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt — Franklin Roosevelt
92. The Fully Recovered Mindset — Maddie Neibanck
93. The Ghost in My Brain: How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get It Back — Clark Elliott
94. The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory — Kenny Fries
95. The Obsessive Joy of Autism — Julia Bascom
96. The pretty one: on life, pop cultue, disability, and other reasons to fall in love with me — Keah Brown
97. The Story of My Life — Helen Keller
98. The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s — Temple Grandin
99. The White Album — Joan Didion
100. The World I Live In — Helen Keller
101. Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism — Temple Grandin
102. To Know As We Are Known: Education as spiritual journey — Parker Palmer
103. Too Late to Die Young: Nearly True Tales from a Life — Harriet McBryde Johnson
104. Typed Words, Loud Voices — Various (Author), Amy Sequenzia (Editor), Elizabeth Grace (Editor)
105. Unleash Different: Achieving Business Success Through Disability — Rich Donovan
106. Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding social mysteries theough autism’s unique perspectives — Temple Grandin
107. Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled — Nancy Mairs
108. Walking Papers: The Accident that Changed My Life, and the Business that Got Me Back on My Feet — Francesco Clark
109. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life — Smantha Irby
110. What Doesn’t Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness – Lessons from a Body in Revolt — Tessa Miller
111. When the Chant Comes — Kay Ulanday Barrett
112. Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability — Paul K. Longmore
113. Wishful Drinking — Carrie Fisher
114. Year of the Tiger: An Activists Life — Alice Wong
115. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me — Sherman Alexie
View all of our leadership book lists here.
