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Below is a fairly complete catalog of the physical books I own. I find it enjoyable to read others' lists and browse their bookshelves, so this is intended to be a digital version of that.​ It's difficult to recommend books in the abstract, especially without knowing the individual, and I've no doubt missed some. Since the stacks and shelves in my study lack any particular order, so too does this list.

Three pieces of reading I recommend to everyone, regardless of their interests, are:

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1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig)

2. The Beginning of Infinity (David Deutsch)

3. Poor Charlie's Almanac (Charlie Munger)

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These works of art have had a profound impact on the way I think and go about life, and I believe that anyone can benefit tremendously from the teachings within.

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Philosophy:

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Psychology:

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Systems Thinking:
 

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  • The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts (Shane Parrish) - Swiss Army knife for the mind

  • Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger (Peter Bevelin) - Multidisciplinary crash course in avoiding stupidity

  • Principles (Ray Dalio) - Dalio’s rulebook for decision-making, built from decades of brutal honesty, radical transparency, and market battle scars (little too theoretical for my taste)

  • Counterintuitive Behaviors of Complex Social Systems (Jay Forrester) - Jay Forrester’s memo that blew minds at MIT and still explains why good intentions can often backfire

  • A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes (Peter Bevelin) -  Elementary, yes—but this little gem teaches you to observe, deduce, and think like a damn good detective

  • The Systems Thinker (Albert Rutherford) - Field guide to navigating feedback loops, bottlenecks, and the invisible gears turning behind every complex outcome

  • Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (E.O. Wilson) - Argument for the unity of all knowledge—where science, art, and philosophy converge to explain the world

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Physics, Chemistry, and Biology:
 

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  • Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher (Richard Feynman) - Feynman strips physics down to its essence and makes it feel like common sense—because it is 

  • The Physics of Wall Street (James Owen Weatherall) - How physicists (i.e., quants) invaded finance, bringing rigor, models, math... and a few ticking time bombs

  • The Great Mental Models Volume 2: Physics, Biology, and Chemistry (Shane Parrish) - Physics, biology, and chemistry distilled into everyday thinking tools

  • The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins) - Dawkins rewires how you think about life itself, arguing that genes—not people—are the real protagonists in life

  • Guns Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond) - Sweeping theory of human history that replaces cultural superiority with geography, biology, and just plain luck

  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Harari) - Journey through human evolution, myths, money, and meaning

  • A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson) - Irreverent romp through the science that built (and almost blew up) our world

  • How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going (Vaclav Smil) - Mic drop on energy, materials, and the delusions of modern life

  • The Beginning of Infinity (David Deutsch) - Deutsch argues that progress has no limit—if we keep chasing good explanations and don’t blow ourselves up first. I tend to agree :)

  • The Lessons of History (Will and Ariel Durant) - 5,000 years of human history compressed into 100 pages of distilled wisdom on power, politics, and permanence


Statistics, Probability, Mathematics, Game Theory, and Decision Making:

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  • The Success Equation (Michael Mauboussin) - Mauboussin separates skill from luck with surgical precision, and shows how randomness often masquerades as talent

  • A Man for all Markets (Ed Thorpe) - Ed Thorpe is on my personal Mount Rushmore of bad ass motherfuckers 

  • Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke) - Playbook for making smarter decisions under uncertainty—because life is just poker with higher stakes

  • How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Decisions (Annie Duke) - Toolkit for cutting through noise, fear, and gut instinct to make decisions you won’t regret (even when they go sideways)

  • Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (Philip Tetlock) - What sets elite forecasters apart isn’t some crystal ball—it’s humility, calibration, and brutal self-audits

  • The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (Atul Gawande) - How a simple list can save lives, reduce failure, and bring order to chaos—from the operating room to your inbox

  • Wild Problems: A Guide to Decisions That Define Us (Russ Roberts) - When the stakes are existential and the data's dogshit, sometimes wisdom beats logic

  • Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (Daniel Kahneman) - Kahneman exposes the hidden variability in human judgment—and why it's not bias but randomness that wrecks consistenc

  • The Art of Strategy (Avinash Dixit) - Game theory 101 for real life: how to think a few moves ahead in business, war, or negotiating where to go to dinner with your wife

  • The Art of War (Sun Tzu) - Time is the best filter, and 2,500 years later, Sun Tzu’s tactical wisdom still applies—from boardrooms to battlefields to backchannel politics

  • The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (Mario Livio) - A mathematical love letter to phi—a strange number that consistently shows up in a variety of disciplines including art, nature, and stock charts

  • The Great Mental Models Volume 3: Mathematics and Systems (Shane Parrish) - How to think clearly in a world where numbers, patterns, and incentives quietly rule


Biographies (Personal and Business):

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  • The Outsiders (William Thorndike) - Eight renegade CEOs who ignored Wall Street and created more shareholder value than the darlings ever did

  • Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Walter Isaacson) - The original American polymath: printer, postmaster, inventor, diplomat, and world-class bootstrapper

  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller (Ron Chernow) - Best biography on America’s best businessman

  • Katharine Graham: A Personal History (Washington Post) (Katharine Graham) - A raw, elegant memoir of power, family legacy, and what it takes to lead through crisis from the 1950s version of Kris Jenner

  • Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Alice Schroeder) - The most intimate and complete biography of Warren Buffett—and the only authorized one that still feels brutally honest

  • Shoe Dog (Nike) (Phil Knight) - Chaotic, poetic, and brutally real memoir of how Phil Knight built Nike one near-bankruptcy at a time

  • The Everything Store (Amazon) (Brad Stone) -  How Jeff Bezos built Amazon by ignoring short-term noise and thinking long-term like an absolute savage

  • Bezonomics (Amazon) (Brian Dumane) - Amazon’s business model dissected with surgical clarity—from data dominance to digital chokeholds

  • Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos (Amazon) (Walter Isaacson) - Brain dump of Bezos’ annual letters

  • Last Man Standing: Jamie Dimon (Duff McDonald) - How Dimon became the adult in the room when Wall Street caught fire

  • Hard Drive: The Making of the Microsoft Empire (James Wallace & Jim Erickson) - Scrappy, backroom story about the first 20-years of Gates and Allen building Microsoft

  • What it Takes (Blackstone) (Stephen Schwartzman) - Unapologetic blueprint for building Blackstone into the most dominant investing firm (arguably of all time) 

  • Barbarians at the Gate (RJR Nabisco) (Bryan Burrough) - Cautionary tale about greed, ego, and the birth of modern PE

  • Behind the Cloud (Salesforce) (Marc Benioff) -  How Benioff wrote the SaaS playbook with equal parts vision and volcanic energy

  • The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin) - Part memoir, part self-help manual from the OG master of reinvention

  • In Their Own Words: Benjamin Franklin (Peter Roop) - More accessible, curated lens into Franklin’s thoughts and life—without the 18th-century density

  • Bad Blood (Theranos) (John Carreyrou) - Theranos wasn't a startup—it was a cult built on lies, charisma, and Silicon Valley delusion

  • When Genius Failed (Long Term Capital Management) (Roger Lowenstein) - The rise and implosion of LTCM—a hedge fund that believed it had outsmarted risk, until it didn’t

  • The Man Who Solved the Market (Renaissance Technology) (Gregory Zuckerman) - Jim Simons turned math into money, building Renaissance into the most profitable hedge fund of all time

  • Delivering Happiness: Zappos (Tony Hsieh) - Zappos founder Tony Hsieh (RIP) on culture, weirdness, and why profits follow purpose

  • Tap Dancing to Work (Warren Buffett biography) (Carol Loomis) - Mosaic of Buffett’s career, stitched together from decades of media and shareholder letters

  • Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist (Roger Lowenstein) - The Buffett story before the halo: ambition, ruthlessness, and sheer investing brilliance

  • Steve Jobs: A Biography (Walter Isaacson) - Biography of Apple’s volatile genius—equal parts artist, tyrant, and visionary

  • Creativity Inc. (Pixar) (Ed Catmull) - How to lead creative teams without smothering them

  • Stress Test (Tim Geithner) - Geithner’s front-row account of the 2008 financial crisis

  • The Ride of a Lifetime (Disney) (Bob Iger) - Scaling Disney, acquiring empires, and managing egos without losing yours

  • In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (Steven Levy) - How Google really works, behind the algos, OKRs, and moonshots

  • Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) - 

  • In-N-Out Burger (Stacy Perman) - 

  • Powerhouse CAA (Creative Artists Agency) (James Andrew Miller) - 

  • In Their Time: The Great Business Leaders of the 20th Century (Anthony Mayo) - 

  • Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (Adam Alter) - 

  • Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success (Phil Jackson) - 

  • Sam Walton: Made in America (Wal-Mart) (Sam Walton) - 

  • Only the Paranoid Survive (Intel) (Andy Grove) - 

  • The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook (Ben Mezrich) - 

  • Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul (Howard Schultz) - 

  • Black Edge (Steve Cohen - SAC Capital) (Sheelah Kolhatkar) - 

  • Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire (Michael Kaufman) - 

  • The Fish that Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Rich Cohen) - 

  • The Education of a Coach (Bill Belichick) (David Halberstam) - 

  • Baruch: My Own Story (Bernard M. Baruch) - 

  • Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals (John LeFevre) - 

  • No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram (Sarah Frier) - 

  • Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft (Paul Allen) - 

  • Den of Thieves (Drexel Burnham) (James Stewart) - 

  • Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power (Max Chafkin) - 

  • The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade that Transformed Wall Street (Jonathan Knee) - 

  • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (IBM) (Jon Gertner) - 

  • Ma Huateng & Tencent: A Business and Life Biography (Leng Hu) - 

  • The Digital War: How China's Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain, and Cyberspace (Winston Ma) - 

  • The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg (Eleanor Randolph) - 

  • The King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Stephen Schwarzman and Blackstone (David Carey) - 

  • Two and Twenty: How the Masters of Private Equity Always Win (Sachin Khajuria) - 

  • More Money Than God (Sebastian Mallaby) - 

  • The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the Future (Sebastian Mallaby) - 

  • Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary and Social Innovator (Price Club) (Robert Price) - 

  • Michael Jordan: The Life (Roland Lazenby) - 

  • Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy) - 

  • Confessions of an Advertising Man (David Ogilvy) - 

  • Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant (Roland Lazenby) -

  • Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It (Henry Singleton) (George Roberts) - 

  • Napolean: A Concise Biography (David A. Bell) - 

  • Anna: The Biography (Anna Wintour) (Amy Odell) - 

  • The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising (Ogilvy & Mather) (Kenneth Roman) - 

  • Michael Jordan: Life Lessons from His Airness (David H. Lewis) -

  • Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products (Leander Kahney) - 

  • James Dyson: Invention (James Dyson) - 

  • Elon Musk (Walter Isaacson) - 

  • The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (Scott Galloway) - 

  • Walt Disney: An American Original (Bob Thomas) - 

  • The Man Who Sold America: Albert Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century (Jeffrey L. Cruikshank) - 

  • Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It (Peter C. Wensberg) - 

  • The House that Cheese Built (Mexican Cheese Producers) (Miguel A. Leal) - 

  • Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America (Christopher Leonard) - 

  • Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon (General Electric) (William D. Cohan) - 

  • Wallenberg: The Family That Shaped Sweden's Economy (Investor AB) (Gunnar Wetterberg) - 

  • Wall Street People: True Stories of Today's Masters and Moguls (Charles D. Ellis and James R. Vertin) - 

  • The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership (49ers) (Bill Walsh) - 

  • Lessons from the Titans: What Companies in the New Economy Can Learn from the Great Industrial Giants to Drive Sustainable Success (Scott Davis, Carter Copeland, and Rob Wertheimer) - 

  • The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (Continuous Improvement) (Eliyahu Goldratt) - 

  • Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon (Colin Bryar and Bill Carr) - 

  • American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune (Greg Steinmetz) - 

  • The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Founders Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Jimmy Soni) - 

  • Driven: An Autobiography (The Larry Miller Group) (Larry Miller) - 

  • From Predators to Icons: Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero (Michel Villette) - 

  • Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man (Wal-Mart) (Vance Trimble) - 

  • The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co. (William D. Cohan) - 

  • The Merchant Bankers (Joseph Wechsberg) - 

  • Financier: The Biography of Andre Meyer (Lazard) (Cary Reich) - 

  • The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey & Mars (Joel Glenn Brenner) - 

  • How to Make a Few Billion Dollars (United Waste, United Rentals, XPO) (Brad Jacobs) - 

  • Am I Being Too Subtle? Straight Talk From a Business Rebel (Sam Zell) - 

  • The Whiz Kids: Ten Founding Fathers of American Business and the Legacy They Left Us (Ford) (Litton Industries) (John A. Byrne) - 

  • The Making of a Blockbuster: How Wayne Huizenga Built a Sports and Entertainment Empire from Trash, Grit, and Videotape (Gail DeGeorge) - 

  • Autopsy of a Merger: TransUnion (Jay Prtizker) (William M. Owen) - 

  • Predator's Ball: How the Junk Bond Machine Started the Corporate Raiders (Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham) (Connie Bruck) - 

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Economics:

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  • The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith) - 

  • Capitalism in America: An Economic History of the United States (Alan Greenspan) - 

  • What Would Keynes Do? (Tejvan Pettinger) - 

  • Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics (Richard Thaler) - 

  • Nudge (Richard Thaler) - 

  • Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely) - 

  • The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire (Neil Irwin) - 

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Finance & Investing:

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  • Poor Charlie's Almanac (Charlie Munger) - Munger's mental latticework of multidisciplinary thinking, rationality, and living wisely on peak display

  • The Tao of Warren Buffett (Mary Buffett) - 

  • The Tao of Charlie Munger (David Clark) - 

  • The Essays of Warren Buffett (Warren Buffett) - 

  • The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes (Nassim Taleb) - 

  • Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits (Philip Fisher) - 

  • You Can Be a Stock Market Genius (Joel Greenblatt) - 

  • The Little Book that Beats the Market (Joel Greenblatt) - 

  • Security Analysis (Benjamin Graham) - 

  • The Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham) - 

  • Margin of Safety (Seth Klarman) - 

  • The Money Game (Adam Smith) - 

  • Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond (Bruce Greenwald) - 

  • What Works on Wall Street (Jim O'Shaughnessy) - 

  • Market Wizards (whole series) (Jack Schwager) - 

  • Random Walk Down Wall Street (Burton Malkiel) - 

  • A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers from Warren Buffett (Peter Bevelin) - 

  • The Most Important Thing (whole series) (Howard Marks) - 

  • Mastering the Market Cycle (Howard Marks) - 

  • One Up on Wall Street (Peter Lynch) - 

  • Beating the Street (Peter Lynch) - 

  • Millenial Money: How Young Investors Can Build a Fortune (Patrick O'Shaughnessy) - 

  • Zero to One (Peter Thiel) - 

  • The Acquirer's Multiple (Tobias Carlisle) - 

  • Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor (Tren Griffin) - 

  • Intelligent Fanatics: How Great Leaders Build Sustainable Businesses (Ian Cassel) - 

  • Intelligent Fanatics: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Ian Cassel) - 

  • The Little Book That Builds Wealth (Pat Dorsey) - 

  • Templeton's Way with Money (Alasdair Nairn and Jonathan Davis) - 

  • Damn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger (Janet Lowe) - 

  • The Warren Buffet Portfolio (Robert Hagstrom) - 

  • The Dhando Investor: The Low Risk Value Method to High Returns (Mohnish Pabrai) - 

  • Liar's Poker (Michael Lewis) - 

  • The Big Short (Michael Lewis) - 

  • Flash Boys (Michael Lewis) - 

  • The Education of a Value Investor (Guy Spier) - 

  • HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business (Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff) - 

  • Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Jump and Others Don't (Jim Collins) - 

  • Competition Demystified (Bruce Greenwald) - 

  • Unknown Market Wizards (Jack Schwager) - 

  • Creating Shareholder Value (Alfred Rappaport) - 

  • Quality of Earnings (Thornton L. Grove) - 

  • Richer, Wiser, Happier (William Green) - 

  • Buffett's Early Investments: A New Investigation Into the Decades When Warren Buffett Earned his Best Returns (Brett Gardner) - 

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Music:

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  • This is Your Brain on Music (Daniel Levitin) - 

  • Chronicles: Volume I (Bob Dylan) - 

  • The Philosophy of Modern Song (Bob Dylan) -

  • This Is What It Sounds Like: What The Music You Love Says About You (Susan Rodgers) - 

  • Maximum Volume: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin (Kenneth Womack) - 

  • Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution (Albert Glinsky) - 

  • Story Engineering (Larry Brooks) - 

  • The Soaring Twenties (Thomas J. Bevan) - 

  • Eminem: The Way I Am (Eminem) - 

  • Rolling Stones: The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (Rolling Stone) - 

  • The Come Up (Jonathan Abrams) - 

  • Hendrix: The Illustrated Story (Gillian Garr) - 

  • First Avenue: Minnesota's Mainroom (Chris Riemenschneider) - 

  • Minnesota in the 70's (Dave Kenney and Thomas Saylor) - 

  • Prince A to Z (Steve Wide) - 

  • Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office (Zack O'Malley Greenburg) - 

  • Rick Rubin: In the Studio (Jake Brown) - 

  • The Creative Act: A Way of Being (Rick Rubin) - 

  • The Soundcloud Bible (Budi Voogt) - 

  • All You Need to Know About the Music Business (Donald Passman) - 

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Miscellaneous & Other: 

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  • Outliers: The Stories of Success (Malcolm Gladwell) - 

  • Poor Richard's Almanac (Benjamin Franklin) - 

  • The Compound Effect (Darren Hardy) - 

  • The 5 AM Club (Robin Sharma) - 

  • How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie) - 

  • The Mamba Mentality (Kobe Bryant) - 

  • Think and Grow Rich (Napolean Hill) - 

  • The Defining Decade: Why Your 20's Matter (Meg Jay) - 

  • The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance (Josh Waitzkin) - 

  • In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing (Matthew May) - 

  • The Hidden Habits of Genius (Craig Wright) - 

  • Give and Take (Adam Grant) - 

  • The Millionaire Next Door (Thomas Stanley and William Danko) -  

  • Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (David Epstein) -  

  • Stories that Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Business (Kindra Hall) - 

  • The MAF Method (Phil Maffetone) - 

  • Originals: How Non-Comformists Move the World (Adam Grant) -  

  • How to Air Condition a Hot Rod (Jack Chisenhall) - 

  • Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity (Dr. Peter Attia) - 

  • Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work (Steven Pressfield) -  

  • Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win (George Stalk) - 

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