Hi Friend,
We were discussing books last time. I definitely recommend listening to Thinking, Fast and Slow & other books that deal with psychological biases (relevant to model building and trading). I'd also highly recommend Nassim Taleb's books, like we discussed.
Below is a nearly complete set of books I've read or listened to in the last few years. There are books about stock investing, market bubbles, economics, macro investing, uncertainty in the real world. Each book tends to be 80-90% repetition of others, and 10-20% completely new. From that perspective, all books here have something interesting, and I'd recommend all of them. Though checking the reviews on Amazon is probably a more fool-proof idea :)
As you can see, I'm pretty much addicted to reading recently. In reality, I feel that I'm just trying to catch up with all the years where I read mostly math & science, and nothing else. Theorizing about the real world feels more fascinating to me than theorizing about wireless networks these days :)
Hope you'll find the list interesting or useful. Please let me know if you want to discuss any of them.
Cheers,
Gokhan
1. Economics & Economic Thought
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | Capital in the Twenty-First Century | Thomas Piketty (trans. Arthur Goldhammer) | 2013 | 4.06 · 35k | English translation 2014; long-run wealth inequality and r > g across 20 countries |
| 2 | Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty | Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson | 2012 | 4.08 · 68k | Inclusive vs. extractive institutions as the driver of prosperity |
| 3 | Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics | Henry Hazlitt | 1946 | 4.16 · 22k | Seen vs. unseen effects of policy; the broken-window fallacy |
| 4 | Free to Choose: A Personal Statement | Milton Friedman & Rose Friedman | 1980 | 4.22 · 9.8k | Companion to the PBS series; markets, welfare and the role of government |
| 5 | Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think | Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler | 2012 | 4.05 · 12k | Exponential technologies as a path to meeting global basic needs |
| 6 | An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations | Adam Smith | 1776 | 3.89 · 36k | Division of labor and free markets; founding text of classical economics |
| 7 | Capitalism and Freedom | Milton Friedman | 1962 | 3.90 · 16k | Economic freedom as a precondition for political freedom |
| 8 | The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor | William Easterly | 2014 | 3.87 · 1.4k | Critique of technocratic development policy |
| 9 | The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers | Mark Skousen | 2001 | 3.99 · 481 | History of economic thought from Adam Smith on, through the lives of its great thinkers; 2nd ed. 2009 |
| 10 | It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years | Stephen Moore & Julian L. Simon | 2000 | 3.67 · 67 | Data on 20th-century gains in health, wealth and living standards; few ratings, but a must-read |
2. Liberty & Political Philosophy
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | Animal Farm | George Orwell | 1945 | 4.03 · 4.8M | Allegorical novella satirizing the Russian Revolution and Stalinism |
| 2 | The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy | Thomas Sowell | 1995 | 4.40 · 3.6k | Critique of elite policymaking insulated from evidence |
| 3 | The Road to Serfdom | F. A. Hayek | 1944 | 4.14 · 27k | Central planning as a path to lost liberty; Bruce Caldwell's Definitive Edition (2007) |
| 4 | The Revolution: A Manifesto | Ron Paul | 2008 | 4.13 · 7.8k | Limited government, sound money, non-interventionism |
| 5 | For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto | Murray N. Rothbard | 1973 | 4.28 · 2.8k | Anarcho-capitalist case against the state |
| 6 | Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom | Ron Paul | 2011 | 4.22 · 3.2k | Short A–Z essays on 50 policy issues |
| 7 | Libertarianism: A Primer | David Boaz | 1997 | 4.04 · 1.9k | Survey of libertarian thought; later revised as The Libertarian Mind (2015) |
3. Money, Debt & Global Macro
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy | Michael Pettis | 2013 | 4.26 · 519 | Global trade imbalances and China's growth model |
| 2 | Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets | Jim Rogers | 2013 | 3.96 · 1.3k | Memoir of the Quantum Fund co-founder and commodities investor |
| 3 | The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System | James Rickards | 2014 | 3.88 · 2.1k | The dollar's reserve status, gold, and systemic risk |
| 4 | Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History | Milton Friedman | 1992 | 3.91 · 855 | Case studies of how monetary shifts ripple through economies |
| 5 | Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How It Changes Everything | John Mauldin & Jonathan Tepper | 2011 | 3.70 · 925 | Sovereign-debt deleveraging after 2008 |
| 6 | Code Red: How to Protect Your Savings from the Coming Crisis | John Mauldin & Jonathan Tepper | 2013 | 3.83 · 280 | Sequel to Endgame; central-bank money printing and portfolio defense |
| 7 | The New International Money Game | Robert Z. Aliber | 1973 | 3.86 · 7 | Exchange rates, capital flows and the international monetary system; first published as The International Money Game, 7th ed. 2011; Goodreads splits its editions, hence few ratings |
4. Risk, Randomness & Forecasting
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets | Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 2001 | 4.08 · 74k | Luck, survivorship bias, and misread track records |
| 2 | Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder | Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 2012 | 4.10 · 60k | Systems that benefit from volatility and stress |
| 3 | The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't | Nate Silver | 2012 | 3.97 · 53k | Bayesian forecasting across weather, politics, markets and more |
| 4 | The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | Leonard Mlodinow | 2008 | 3.95 · 25k | How chance shapes everyday outcomes, and the history of probability behind it |
| 5 | The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable | Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 2007 | 3.96 · 125k | Rare, high-impact events and the limits of prediction; the 2nd ed. (2010) adds the essay "On Robustness and Fragility" |
| 6 | Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions | Gerd Gigerenzer | 2014 | 4.01 · 1.9k | Risk literacy and simple heuristics under uncertainty |
5. Behavioral Economics & Decision-Making
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | 2011 | 4.16 · 619k | System 1 vs. System 2, heuristics and biases, prospect theory |
| 2 | Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts | Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson | 2007 | 4.04 · 30k | Cognitive dissonance and self-justification |
| 3 | Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions | Dan Ariely | 2008 | 4.11 · 133k | Experiments showing that irrational choices are systematic and predictable |
| 4 | The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations | James Surowiecki | 2004 | 3.82 · 25k | When aggregated independent judgments beat experts |
| 5 | Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition | Michael J. Mauboussin | 2009 | 3.93 · 1.3k | Common decision errors for investors and managers |
6. Markets, Bubbles & Wall Street
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine | Michael Lewis | 2010 | 4.31 · 175k | The traders who bet against subprime mortgages |
| 2 | A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing | Burton G. Malkiel | 1973 | 4.14 · 42k | Efficient markets and the case for index investing; revised many times since |
| 3 | Liar's Poker | Michael Lewis | 1989 | 4.14 · 116k | Salomon Brothers bond trading in the 1980s |
| 4 | Irrational Exuberance | Robert J. Shiller | 2000 | 3.98 · 8.6k | Stock valuations and speculative bubbles; the 2nd ed. (2005) added housing |
| 5 | A Short History of Financial Euphoria | John Kenneth Galbraith | 1990 | 4.05 · 2.6k | Recurring speculative manias from tulips to the 1980s |
| 6 | The Little Book of Market Myths: How to Profit by Avoiding the Investing Mistakes Everyone Else Makes | Ken Fisher with Lara Hoffmans | 2013 | 3.54 · 250 | Tests popular investing beliefs against data |
7. Value Investing
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing | Benjamin Graham (commentary by Jason Zweig) | 1949 | 4.23 · 159k | Margin of safety and Mr. Market; the 2003 revised edition adds Zweig's commentary |
| 2 | The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life | Alice Schroeder | 2008 | 4.16 · 55k | Authorized biography of Warren Buffett, based on years of interviews with him |
| 3 | Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings | Philip A. Fisher | 1958 | 4.14 · 17k | Growth investing, the fifteen points, and "scuttlebutt" research; adds Conservative Investors Sleep Well and Developing an Investment Philosophy |
| 4 | You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits | Joel Greenblatt | 1997 | 4.22 · 9.5k | Special situations: spinoffs, restructurings, mergers |
| 5 | Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond | Bruce C. N. Greenwald, Judd Kahn, Paul D. Sonkin & Michael van Biema | 2001 | 4.22 · 5.6k | Columbia framework: asset value, earnings power, franchise value |
| 6 | The New Buffettology | Mary Buffett & David Clark | 2002 | 3.97 · 902 | Buffett's approach to buying durable businesses in down markets |
8. Stock Analysis, Moats & Valuation
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | The Little Book That Builds Wealth: The Knockout Formula for Finding Great Investments | Pat Dorsey | 2008 | 4.29 · 3.3k | Economic moats and how to spot them |
| 2 | The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing: Morningstar's Guide to Building Wealth and Winning in the Market | Pat Dorsey | 2004 | 4.37 · 2.0k | Moats, financial statements, valuation, sector-by-sector guides |
| 3 | The Little Book of Valuation: How to Value a Company, Pick a Stock and Profit | Aswath Damodaran | 2011 | 3.97 · 2.9k | Intrinsic and relative valuation primer |
| 4 | Why Stocks Go Up and Down: The Book You Need to Understand Other Investment Books | William H. Pike & Patrick C. Gregory | 2013 | 4.36 · 388 | Primer on financial statements, bonds and stock valuation; the year is the 4th edition's |
| 5 | The Art of Profitability | Adrian Slywotzky | 2002 | 3.94 · 1.0k | 23 business profit models taught as mentor–student dialogues |
| 6 | Super Stocks | Kenneth L. Fisher | 1984 | 3.44 · 98 | Growth stocks and the price-to-sales ratio, which the book popularized |
9. Quantitative & Rules-Based Investing
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | The Little Book That Still Beats the Market | Joel Greenblatt | 2010 | 4.04 · 10k | Update of the 2005 original; the "Magic Formula" (ROC + earnings yield) |
| 2 | Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors | Wesley R. Gray & Tobias E. Carlisle | 2012 | 4.20 · 574 | A systematic value model that builds on and tests the Magic Formula |
| 3 | What Works on Wall Street: A Guide to the Best-Performing Investment Strategies of All Time | James P. O'Shaughnessy | 1996 | 3.99 · 925 | Decades of back-tested factor strategies; 4th ed. 2011 |
| 4 | The Big Secret for the Small Investor: A New Route to Long-Term Investment Success | Joel Greenblatt | 2011 | 3.71 · 1.5k | The case for value-weighted over market-cap-weighted index funds |
10. Business, Leadership & Personal Finance
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers | Ben Horowitz | 2014 | 4.19 · 116k | Candid lessons on running a startup through crises |
| 2 | The Richest Man in Babylon | George S. Clason | 1926 | 4.23 · 254k | Personal-finance parables: pay yourself first, live below your means |
| 3 | The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses | Eric Ries | 2011 | 4.11 · 376k | Build–measure–learn loops, MVPs and validated learning |
| 4 | Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter | Liz Wiseman with Greg McKeown | 2010 | 3.98 · 17k | Leaders who amplify vs. diminish their teams' intelligence |
11. Physics, Cosmology & the History of Science
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character | Richard P. Feynman (as told to Ralph Leighton) | 1985 | 4.26 · 224k | Anecdotal memoir: Los Alamos, safecracking, bongo drums, Caltech |
| 2 | We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe | Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson | 2017 | 4.28 · 7.1k | Illustrated tour of physics' open questions: dark matter, dark energy, gravity |
| 3 | The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe | Steven Weinberg | 1977 | 4.10 · 14k | The physics of the early universe after the Big Bang |
| 4 | A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing | Lawrence M. Krauss | 2012 | 3.94 · 31k | How a universe can arise from empty space under quantum physics |
| 5 | Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science | Lawrence M. Krauss | 2011 | 4.06 · 3.8k | Scientific biography focused on Feynman's physics |
| 6 | Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature | Steven Weinberg | 1992 | 4.07 · 3.5k | The search for a unified theory of the fundamental forces |
| 7 | The Greatest Story Ever Told — So Far: Why Are We Here? | Lawrence M. Krauss | 2017 | 3.79 · 3.2k | History of the Standard Model and the symmetries behind it |
| 8 | To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science | Steven Weinberg | 2015 | 3.79 · 2.3k | History of science from ancient Greece to Newton, judged by modern standards |
12. Philosophy & Human Nature
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | A History of Western Philosophy | Bertrand Russell | 1945 | 4.13 · 42k | Survey from the pre-Socratics to the 20th century, set in social context |
| 2 | The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature | Steven Pinker | 2002 | 4.09 · 26k | Case that human nature is partly innate, and the politics of denying it |
| 3 | The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance | Anthony Gottlieb | 2000 | 4.08 · 2.1k | Readable history of early Western philosophy |
13. Habits, Nutrition & the Brain
| # | Title | Author(s) | Year | Goodreads ★ · ratings | Notes |
|---|
| 1 | How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease | Michael Greger with Gene Stone | 2015 | 4.41 · 52k | Whole-food, plant-based diet framed around the leading causes of death |
| 2 | The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business | Charles Duhigg | 2012 | 4.13 · 579k | The cue–routine–reward habit loop |
| 3 | Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us | Michael Moss | 2013 | 4.02 · 33k | How processed food is engineered for craving |
| 4 | Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health | Gary Taubes | 2007 | 4.17 · 10.0k | Challenges the dietary-fat hypothesis; argues refined carbs drive obesity |
| 5 | Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School | John Medina | 2008 | 4.01 · 35k | Neuroscience findings applied to learning and work |
| 6 | The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living | Jeff S. Volek & Stephen D. Phinney | 2011 | 4.21 · 2.2k | Clinical science of carbohydrate restriction |
| 7 | Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar — Your Brain's Silent Killers | David Perlmutter with Kristin Loberg | 2013 | 3.90 · 25k | Argues grains and sugar harm the brain; claims widely disputed by researchers |
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