Books

I read on average about one book per week. Books that have influenced how I think about finance are listed below, with the most influential in bold.

Goodreads

Goodreads is a great web site for finding books worth reading. The huge community of readers right helpful reviews, and the ratings are highly reliable. If a book is 4 stars or higher with at least 100 ratings, it is probably worth reading.

Groups

There are tons of groups on Goodreads where you can connect with others reading books about your shared interests. Here are some active groups related to this site:

Book Lists

Lists on Goodreads are voted on by members. Once one is created, anyone can vote on it, and the books with the most votes and highest rankings move to the top of each list. There are benefits and downsides to crowdsourcing curated book lists, but many of these lists are fantastic places to find books about certain topics or books with certain themes or characteristics. Here are some that deal with econ, business, finance, and related themes:

My Books

These are books that have influenced me. Please note that just because I read it and was influenced by it does not mean that I agree with everything in it. I also included some of my favorite fiction at the bottom for fun. Links beyond this point go to my book reviews.

Personal Finance

Economics

  • Advanced Macroeconomics by David Romer
  • The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays by Richard M. Ebeling
  • Control or Economic Law by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
  • Debts, Defaults, Depressions, and Other Delightful Ditties from the Dismal Science by Bryan Taylor
  • Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan
  • Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
  • The End of Alchemy by Mervyn King
  • A History of the United States in Five Crashes by Scott Nations
  • Human Action by Ludwig von Mises
  • Janet Yellen Reader by The Ashford Journal of Progressive Economic Studies
  • Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
  • Man, Economy, and the State by Murray N. Rothbard
  • Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard H. Thaler
  • Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee
  • Praxeology & Understanding: An Analysis of the Controversy in Austrian Economics by George Selgin
  • Prices and Production and Other Works by Friedrich Hayek
  • Principles of Economics by Carl Menger
  • On Borrowed Time: Assessing the Threat of Mineral Depletion by John Tilton
  • Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises by Timothy F. Geithner
  • That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen by Frédéric Bastiat
  • Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis–and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Investing & Finance

  • Active Value Investing by Vitaly N. Katsenelson
  • All About Asset Allocation by Richard A. Ferri
  • The Active Asset Allocator: How ETF’s Can Supercharge Your Portfolio by Jennifer Woods
  • The Big Short by Michael Lewis
  • Buffett’s Bites by L.J. Rittenhouse
  • Buffettology and The New Buffettology by Mary Buffett
  • Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip A. Fisher
  • The Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier
  • Financial Literacy for Managers by Richard A. Lambert
  • Financial Reporting, Financial Statement Analysis, and Valuation by James M. Wahlen, Stephen P. Baginski, & Mark Bradshaw
  • Get Rich with Dividends by Marc Lichtenfeld
  • Getting Started in Technical Analysis by Jack D. Schwager
  • Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd
  • University of Berkshire Hathaway by Daniel Pecaut and Corey Wrenn
  • The Warren Buffett Way by Robert G. Hagstrom
  • Time the Markets: Using Technical Analysis to Interpret Economic Data by Charles D. Kirkpatrick

Business

  • Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
  • Berkshire Beyond Buffett: The Enduring Value of Values by Lawrence A. Cunningham
  • Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
  • Business Adventures by John Brooks
  • Business, Government, and Society by John F. Steiner
  • Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  • Good to Great: Why Some Companies Makes the Leap… and Others Don’t by James C. Collins
  • Measuring and Improving Social Impacts: A Guide for Nonprofits, Companies, and Impact Investors by Marc J. Epstein
  • Operations Management by William J. Stevenson
  • Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How It’s Changing the World by Bethany McLean
  • Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
  • Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman
  • University of Berkshire Hathaway by Daniel Pecaut & Corey Wrenn
  • The Young Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting and Running a Business by Steve Mariotti

Thinking Differently

Leadership and Self-Improvement

  • An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
  • Attitude: Develop a Winning Mindset on and off the Court by Jay Wright
  • Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker
  • Endurance by Scott Kelly
  • Everything All At Once by Bill Nye
  • The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey
  • Mastery by Robert Greene
  • The Power of Negative Thinking by Bob Knight

History

  • Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke
  • American Dynasty by Kevin Phillips
  • An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson
  • An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
  • Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson
  • A Century of War by John V. Denson
  • Conceived in Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard
  • The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson
  • Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  • The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
  • Flash Boys by Michael Lewis
  • The Great Upheaval by Jay Winik
  • The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough
  • Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
  • The Histories by Herodotus
  • The Idea of America by Gordon S. Wood
  • The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation by Brenda Wineapple
  • In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson`
  • The Insurgents by Fred Kaplan
  • Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum
  • Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong
  • Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis
  • Midnight in Broad Daylight by Pamela Rotner
  • A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
  • Rome: An Empire’s Story by Greg Woolf
  • A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong
  • The Tariff History of the United States by F.W. Taussig
  • Theory and History by Ludwig von Mises
  • What Hath God Wrought by David Walker Howe

Biography

  • The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis
  • Bolívar: American Liberator by Marie Arana
  • Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by John Lee Anderson
  • The First Emancipator by Andrew Levy
  • Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
  • Henry Clay: The Essential American by David S. Heidler
  • The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Steven Lee Myers
  • The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Philosophy and Politics

  • Anatomy of the State by Murray N. Rothbard
  • A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes
  • Common Sense by Thomas Paine
  • The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
  • Declarations of Independence by Howard Zinn
  • The End of America by Naomi Wolf
  • A Foreign Policy of Freedom by Ron Paul
  • Good to be King by Michael Badnarik
  • How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky
  • How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
  • The Law by Frédéric Bastiat
  • Liberty Defined by Ron Paul
  • The Market for Liberty by Morris Tannehill
  • Memoirs by Ludwig von Mises
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
  • No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority by Lysander Spooner
  • On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
  • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
  • The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter
  • Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttegieg
  • We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

Science

  • The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
  • Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker
  • Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger
  • Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal
  • Birds by the Shore: Observing the National Life of the Atlantic Coast by Jennifer Ackerman
  • Chasing New Horizons by Alan Stern
  • Cosmos by Carl Sagan
  • The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan
  • Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel
  • The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
  • The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
  • How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson
  • Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History by Jeremy Brown
  • The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf
  • Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding by Scott Weidensaul
  • Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght
  • Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan
  • Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah
  • Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku
  • The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Stephen Brusatte
  • A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration by Kenn Kaufman
  • The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
  • The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson
  • The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen
  • The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum
  • Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River by David Owen

Memoirs

  • The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Boom, Bust, Boom: A Story About Copper, the Metal That Runs the World by Bill Carter
  • Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
  • Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
  • Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
  • Educated by Tara Westover
  • I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  • In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park
  • Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
  • On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Fiction

  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  • American War by Omar El Akkad
  • The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
  • Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • Circe by Madeline Miller
  • A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  • Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
  • Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card*
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  • A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin*
  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
  • Ignorance by Milan Kundera
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
  • Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey*
  • The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
  • Looking for Alaska by John Green
  • The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar
  • The Martian by Andy Weir
  • Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  • Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
  • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
  • Mort(e) by Robert Repino
  • Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer*
  • Orbital Decay by Allen Steele
  • The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
  • Ross Poldark by Winston Graham*
  • A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
  • Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
  • The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
  • The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar
  • The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin
  • The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Wicked by Gregory Maguire
  • World War Z by Max Brooks

*Series

Graphic Novels

  • Annihilators by Dan Abnett
  • Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Destroyer by Victor LaValle
  • The Extinction Parade by Max Brooks
  • The Hedge Knight by Ben Avery
  • Ms. Marvel by Willow G. Wilson
  • Saga by Brain K. Vaughan
  • The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman
  • Whispers by Joshua Luna
  • The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks