My Favorite Books of 2017

I read 53 books in 2017. If you are on the lookout for a 2018 resolution, consider reading more books, and start with the titles in bold below.

Business & Finance

This genre has dominated my reading this year as I have been on the lookout for ideas for my finance and business classes. I love the variety of perspectives on this list.

1. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
2. Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
3. Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School by Gene Callahan
4. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey
5. Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd
6. Business Adventures by John Brooks
7. All About Asset Allocation by Richard A. Ferri
8. Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises by Timothy Geithner
9. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
10. The Active Asset Allocator by Jennifer Woods
11. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip Fisher
12. Get Rich with Dividends by Marc Lichtenfeld
13. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Politics & Current Events

The world is changing. Are you still looking at it through the same lens?

1. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century by Thomas L. Friedman
2. A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes
3. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays by Richard Hofstadter
4. Common Sense by Thomas Paine

History

The top book on this list is the best narrative history I have read.

1. Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese Family Caught Between Two Worlds by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto
2. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson
3. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
4. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution by Kathleen Duval
5. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson

Biography

Investment guru and Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, Charlie Munger, loves to read biographies as a way to “make friends among the eminent dead.”

1. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
2. Elon Musk: Inventing the Future by Ashlee Vance
3. A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
4. Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel

Memoir & Autobiography

If you haven’t read Coates and Malala, and if you don’t understand what is happening to the Koreans, you are not 100% human. The top 3 on this list are absolute must-reads.

1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
3. In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park
4. Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth
5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
6. The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates
7. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susanna Cahalan
8. Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford by Clint Hill

Science

Science writing doesn’t get any better than Carl Sagan.

1. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan
2. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
3. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal
4. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
5. Physics of the Future: How Science with Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Mikio Kaku
6. Everything All At Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap Into Curiosity, and Solve Any Problem by Bill Nye
7. The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley

Novels

My wife says I need to read “more novels,” so I read More: A Novel.

1. More by Hakan Günday
2. The Swarm by Orson Scott Card
3. Demelza (Poldark #2) by Winston Graham
4. Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne
5. Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel by James Luceno
6. Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig

Graphic Novels

Some of the stuff Marvel comics have been putting out in recent years is brilliant. Bringing in Ta-Nehisi Coates to write Black Panther is a bold move. This is no Stan Lee comic. It is highly intelligent and socially conscious.

1. Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Vols. 1-3 by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Black Panther, Vol. 4: Avengers of the New World by Ta-Nehisi Coates
3. Ms. Marvel, Vol. 1: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson

 

SaveSaveSaveSave

SaveSave