Anyone who wants to expand their knowledge and develop Mental Models has to be an avid reader. No matter what kind of business you’re in—finance, technology, or anything else—developing Mental Models for ideas and decision making is essential. Charlie Munger says it best:
In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero. You’d be amazed at how much Warren [Buffett] reads—at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out.
Below is a list of books that I’ve read (or own and plan to read) separated into subject categories. Keep in mind that this list is a work in progress, and I’ll be continually adding to or revising it.
Investing
The Intelligent Investor
— Benjamin Graham
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
— Roger Lowenstein
The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
— Lawrence Cunningham / Warren Buffett
Security Analysis
— Ben Graham / David Dodd
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
— Philip Fisher
The Warren Buffett Way
— Robert Hagstrom
Poor Charlie\’s Almanack
— Peter Kaufman / Charlie Munger
The Little Book That Beats the Market
— Joel Greenblatt
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius
— Joel Greenblatt
Fortune\’s Formula
— William Poundstone
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role in Life and in the Markets
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
More Than You Know
— Michael J. Mauboussin
Latticework: The New Investing
— Robert Hagstrom
Expectations Investing: Reading Stock Prices for Better Returns
— Alfred Rappaport / Michael Mauboussin
Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond
— Bruce Greenwald / Judd Kahn
The Dhando Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns
— Mohnish Pabrai
Security Analysis on Wall Street
— Jeffrey C. Hooke
Business
Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time
— Daniel Gross
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap.. and Other\’s Don\’t
— Jim Collins
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
— Jim Collins
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
— Malcolm Gladwell
Made In America
— Sam Walton
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire
— James Wallace and Jim Erikson
Losing My Virginity
— Richard Branson
Art of the Start
— Guy Kawasaki
The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit and When to Stick
— Seth Godin
First, Break All the Rules: What the World\’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
— Marcus Buckingham
Mental Models
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
— Malcolm Gladwell
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
— Peter Bernstein
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
— Jared Diamond
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
— Jared Diamond
The Selfish Gene
— Richard Dawkins
Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity
— John Gribbin