I’m a voracious consumer of literature on investing, finance, leadership, management, and self-improvement. Below, I’ve listed some of my favourite books and a brief thought on most books. If you’re looking for something to read or would like to discuss any of the books below, I welcome you to contact me.

 

Note:

• The most recent book I've read is listed first. 
• I'm always a little shocked at how many books are on the list below. If you are looking for a specific book, I'd recommend using the search function in your browser (usually Ctrl+F).

 

Delli’s Top Eleven List​​​​​

1. Abundance, by Peter Diamandis
2. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond
3. The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders, by Jack Schawager
4. Atomic Habits, by James Clear
5. The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success, by William Thorndike
6. Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini
7. Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side, by Howard Marks
8. A Gift to my Children, by Jim Rogers
9. The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness, by Morgan Housel
10. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein
11. Reminiscent of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefever

Inside the Box
Author: David Epstein
The author argues that constraints are the primary drivers of innovation. True breakthroughs arise from working within structured, predictable patterns rather than waiting for inspiration with boundless freedom.

 

Rule Breaker Investing
Author: David Gardner
A buy-and-hold growth investment process that focuses on finding innovative companies with first-mover advantages that are exposed to trends that can persist for a long time. Gardner also suggests strategies — like a sleep number (the maximum concentration an investor is comfortable with) — to help deal with the volatility of this investment approach. All expressed with a lighthearted writing style.

 

Your Perfect Portfolio
Author: Cullen Roche
A data-driven look at twenty asset allocations used by modern investors, including the "Buffett Portfolio," which is 90% equities and 10% treasuries. The Ulcer Index is an interesting concept that ranks the volatility or downside/sequence risk of a given asset allocation.

 

Supercommunicators
Author: Charles Duhigg
Ask questions, be genuinely interested in what is being said (listen actively), and match the speaker's mood and energy. Sharing and asking deep questions, once a bond is established, are critical.

 

The Making of a Permabear
Author: Jeremy Grantham
A manifesto on mean reversion in markets. Grantham rarely gets credit for the intellectual flexibility he has shown over a sixty-year career. His reflections on the firing of growth managers in the 1980s and value managers in the 1990s are relevant for today's investors. The biggest curveball is a chapter extolling the virtues of venture capital investing.

 

Den of Thieves
Author: James Stewart
The story of the junk bond boom and DLJ highlights the ineptitude of regulators, the proficiency of journalists in the 1980s, and the chance events that led to evidence. The story leaves me wondering how much regulators missed in the largest insider trading litigation in US history.

 

100 Baggers
Author: Christopher W. Mayer
Let your winners run. If the thesis used when the stock was purchased is still valid, the stock should not be sold.

 

1929
Author: Andrew Ross Sorkin
The book reads like a screenplay that ties together many of the events of the era, culminating in the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Labelling the crash a 'depression' might have been one of the worst marketing blunders ever. The most significant takeaway was that the events leading up to 1929 had closer parallels to the lead-up to the Global Financial Crisis than today's AI-fuelled market.

 

The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life
Author: Morgan Housel
The focus of this book is less on spending money and more on directing your spending toward things that truly matter to you. The author defines wealth as what you have minus what you want, positioning managing your expectations as the key to a richer life.

 

Apple in China
Author: Patrick McGee
An interesting look at China as an end market for Apple and the incredible supply chain investments that the company made in the country. Apple created some fantastic capabilities for itself and for China as a country.

 

Coming into View
Author: Joseph Davis
The author does an excellent job of examining trends, such as AI, assigning probabilities to potential outcomes, and assessing the potential impact on both occupations and professions. The author, an economist, makes many tangible recommendations about investing and preparing for the future.

 

The Wealth Ladder
Author: Nick Maggiulli
The author does an excellent job of presenting a framework for addressing the complexity created by increased wealth. On the positive side, the book helps readers think about spending. The author also acknowledges his last book "Just Keep Buying" (review below) wasn't ideal advice for everyone, but stops short of addressing asset allocation at the highest levels of the wealth ladder — a topic we addressed in Why Experts Recommend Passive Investment Strategies.

 

Richer, Wiser, Happier
Author: William Green
A distillation of the lessons learned by interviewing professional money managers over more than three decades. The first chapter focuses on Cloning — emulating the behaviours and actions of successful money managers. The chapter on Charlie Munger is full of value.

 

7 Powers
Author: Hamilton Helmer
A framework used to evaluate the sustainability of competitive advantages and corporate strategy. Netflix is used as a case study.

 

Careless People
Author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
The most constructive takeaway would be that Facebook/Meta Platforms has been and remains relentlessly focused on engineering and growth.

 

Common Stocks and Common Sense
Author: Edgar Wachenheim
Excellent insight, with helpful case studies, into the process of a successful value manager.

 

Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make it Better
Author: Lyn Alden
A surprisingly engaging overview of the history of money. The analysis of the intent and the actual outcomes of monetary interventions over time is insightful. There is also an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of cryptocurrencies.

 

The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security
Author: Scott Galloway
A practical approach to achieving financial security for higher earners. Galloway's approach involves focusing on your professional strengths (not passions), disciplined spending and savings, and using diversification to mitigate risk.

 

The Price of Time
Author: Edward Chancellor
An exploration of interest rates throughout history, shedding light on their unexpected consequences, including detrimental effects on economic growth, inequality, and financial stability.

 

Big Money Thinks Small: Biases, Blind Spots, and Smarter Investing
Author: Joel Tillinghast
Tillinghast walks through the lessons he learned, or the tuition he's paid, over an investing career that spanned decades.

 

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
Author: Charles T. Munger, Peter D. Kaufman
Munger delivers gems of pragmatic wisdom in a very candid manner. There is a significant focus on the impact of psychology in investing and decision-making.

 

Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect
Author: Will Guidara
An insightful perspective for a deep dive on customer service and leadership. The difference between okay and exceptional lies in the details at the margin.

 

The Intelligent Quality Investor
Author: Long Equity
A straightforward system for identifying high-quality companies by examining the quantified results driven by their comparative advantages over time.

 

Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes
Author: Morgan Housel
Expectations need to be balanced by perspective and historical context. There is measurable improvement in the world, but our expectations are increasing faster than the pace of improvement. Risk is what's left over after everything you've already thought about.

 

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
Author: Michael Lewis
A testament to the effectiveness of time as a filter.

 

Start with Why
Author: Simon Sinek
A deep dive on the importance of organizations having a purpose and vision — a 'why'. The focus should be on 'why' before the more tactical 'whats' or 'hows'.

 

The Dealmaker
Author: Guy Hands
A case study of the benefits of being pragmatic in investing. The most succinct breakdown of how private equity creates value that I've ever heard.

 

How Will You Measure Your Life?
Author: Clayton Christensen
Illustrates the importance of incentives and how focusing on short-term goals can impede progress towards longer-term objectives.

 

Chinese Rules
Author: Tim Clissold
Provides an understanding of the factors that influence decision-making in modern China.

 

The Box
Author: Marc Levinson
A complete history of the shipping container. The Box is steeped in the three pillars of cost reduction: standardization, utilization, and automation.

 

Lessons from the Titans
Author: Scott Davis
An exploration of the lessons learned from industrial giants, like Boeing, Danaher, and TransDigm, that can be applied in other industries. History rhymes and there are many practices to look for in the companies we follow and invest in. The GE celebrity CEO stories are spectacular. Capital structure arbitrage is often underappreciated.

 

How the World Works
Author: Vaclav Smil
An interesting comparative analysis of things we interact with daily, like the energy required to produce various proteins, or the cost of generating energy from various sources.

 

What's Our Problem?
Author: Tim Urban
The author tackles a lot of tough subjects that are making society more tribal, like short-term thinking and selectively applying today's social norms to historical persons and events. There are lots of vivid examples of how lower-rung behaviours may be impacting tolerance and productivity in our society. Suggestions are in the last chapter.

 

E-Myth Mastery
Author: Michael Gerber
I prefer the original book. There are more anecdotes in this book, but the central theme remains: to have a successful business, you must work on your business and not work in your business. Entrepreneurs must focus on strategic planning and long-term growth rather than the daily tasks that need to be performed.

 

Just Keep Buying: Proven Ways to Save Money and Build Your Wealth
Author: Nick Maggiulli
Another bible preaching the benefit of having an investment plan and a long-term focus. Quantitative answers to questions including: 1) Should I invest my cash all at once or feather it in over time? 2) How much should you save? 3) How much of your raise should you save? …

 

The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley
Author: Jimmy Soni
The book provides a play-by-play of the founding of x.com, PayPal, the merger of x.com and PayPal, and the acquisition by eBay. The lesson here is that smart people, working together, can achieve incredible things.

 

7 Mistakes Every Investor Makes (And How to Avoid Them)
Author: Joachim Klement
Identify your investment philosophy, document your investment process, and work to iteratively improve it; play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. Leave forecasts directional.

 

The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower
Author: Michael Pillsbury
An interesting and insightful perspective on China, its ambitions, its actions, and how China has successfully managed Western perceptions.

 

An Economist Walks into a Brothel
Author: Allison Schrager
Interesting anecdotes that look at strategies for managing risk used in many professions — like surfing or paparazzi photography — that we don't typically think about from a risk perspective. Our instinctual wiring wasn't designed to help us manage financial risks.

 

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Author: Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein
Become a Choice Architect and practise setting up defaults that help guide people to decisions that are in their best interest without restricting freedom of choice.

 

Influence, New and Expanded
Author: Robert Cialdini
The most recent update to an old favourite. The 'new' principle explored in this book is Unity — the shared identity that the influencer shares with the person being influenced. This is a must-read user manual for your brain.

 

Thinking in Bets
Author: Annie Duke
Just because something is unlikely doesn't mean it won't happen. Focus on process, reflect on outcomes, and be pragmatic in attributing a result to yourself or others and determining the impact of good or bad luck.

 

What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars
Author: Jim Paul, Brendan Moynihan, and Jack Schwager
One of the few investing books that focuses on when to sell and highlights how investors talk themselves into staying in trades that aren't working.

 

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Author: Walter Isaacson
The Code Breaker examines the history, application, and potential of CRISPR. CRISPR is a platform that will continue to enable significant advances in life science and will be the subject of intense ethical debates. If you're looking for a silver lining from COVID, it's likely the pace, scale, and recurring benefits of global scientific collaboration to help deal with the pandemic.

 

Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity
Author: Scott Galloway
Post Corona is a rapid-fire survey of current events, social issues, corporations, and market structure with many opinions on what needs to be addressed and occasionally how problems should be addressed. Galloway argues that the virus has acted as a catalyst accelerating trends that were already underway.

 

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
We are all familiar with fragile (easily harmed) and resilient/robust (difficult to harm), but antifragile is less intuitive. Antifragile organisms, things, and systems benefit from harm (think of a muscle fibre that grows stronger after being placed under stress). Taleb discusses barbell strategies and provides frameworks for better understanding investment risk and opportunities.

 

You Weren't Supposed to See That
Author: Joshua Brown
A walk through the investment lessons learned over a lifetime observing markets. The book is written from the perspective of a market historian who focuses on both data and psychology.

 

How to Trade Stocks
Author: Jesse Livermore
The book chronicles the investment lessons learned trading over a lifetime. The most salient comment: keep your own records, and "It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!"

 

Investing Amid Low Expected Returns: Making the Most When Markets Offer the Least
Author: Antti Ilmanen
A detailed and thoughtful analysis of alternative risk premia and the potential challenges in creating well-diversified portfolios, especially when traditional asset classes offer historically low returns.

 

How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviours That Destroy Wealth — and How to Avoid Them
Author: Barry Ritholtz
A compendium of investing insight acquired over a lifetime. The approach is pragmatic, thoughtful, and actionable, with a couple of brief detours that confirm the author's core investment beliefs.

 

What Went Wrong with Capitalism
Author: Ruchir Sharma
The author argues and quantifies decades of expanding government intervention that have distorted financial markets, entrenched inequality, and reduced economic dynamism. He traces how well-intentioned policies intended to stabilize economies have had the opposite impact and concentrated political power.

 

How Countries Go Broke
Author: Ray Dalio
The book is largely a summary of Ray's earlier books (reviewed below — search for Dalio). The new content is in Chapter Sixteen, where Ray provides pragmatic advice for the US. If deficits are reduced to less than 3% of GDP, expect a growth dividend and lower borrowing costs. Red flags would be another round of quantitative easing or the US government taking control of the Fed.

 

Shareholder Yield: A Better Approach to Dividend Investing
Author: Meb Faber
A brief and easy-to-follow analysis of using Shareholder Yield (= dividend yield + net share buyback yield + net debt reduction yield) to screen and identify shareholder-friendly firms for investment.

 

The End of the World is Just the Beginning
Author: Peter Zeihan
A thought-provoking analysis of an unwinding of globalization that could lead to a more fragmented world. Human ingenuity could contribute to positive surprise relative to the author's perspective. The book is a welcome reminder of how structurally advantaged North America, and the US in particular, is relative to the rest of the world.

 

Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order
Author: Saleha Mohsin
An interesting and detailed analysis of how US dollar policy has evolved over time, the impact of America's strong dollar policy on global order, and the role of economic sanctions.

 

How to Make a Few Billion Dollars
Author: Brad Jacobs
Jacobs reinforces the importance of compensation and incentives to drive success across the companies he has started. The story about paying attention to your internal reaction to an employee's resignation is brilliant and insightful.

 

Die With Zero
Author: Bill Perkins
The mantra here is to maximize life experiences and give your children money when they are young enough that it will make a material difference in their lives, rather than accumulating wealth.

 

Prosperity in the Age of Decline
Author: Alan Beaulieu
Beaulieu's content and forecasts have held up incredibly well for a book that was published in 2014. Alan, an economist, is a unicorn who gives business owners pragmatic and actionable recommendations to deal with and prepare for business cycles.

 

The Singularity is Nearer
Author: Ray Kurzweil
An interesting examination of the pace of development of many technologies, including AI. The author spends a significant portion of the book praising the accuracy of predictions in his previous books.

 

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
Author: David Epstein
In an increasingly specialized world, generalists can add value by solving problems by drawing upon seemingly unrelated analogies and outside knowledge. The book is full of eloquent solutions that appear obvious in retrospect. Chapter Four looks at learning strategies and is a must-read for parents with school-age children.

 

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
Author: Morgan Housel
Another trip to the altar of compounding. Notably, the author focuses on the time horizon for investment rather than the annual rate of return, which investors tend to fixate upon. It's not intuitive, but over a long enough time, a portfolio's return will converge with the return of the best investments in that portfolio. Humans don't have a lot of wiring for investing, since the concept of saving for a dignified retirement has only been with us for about two generations.

 

Aftermath: Seven Secrets of Wealth Preservation in the Coming Chaos
Author: James Rickards
Jim discusses the coming crisis that will be caused by excess leverage in financial systems, the potential fall of the US dollar as the global reserve currency, and the virtues of gold. Jim has banged this drum for more than a decade, and there is very little insight into when events will occur, which makes the book read like a sermon. There is some interesting discussion about the ascent of the USD to reserve currency status. The last chapter is a spoiler for Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles.

 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
An unexpectedly entertaining read that spans all of human history to help understand who we are and how we have evolved. The language is straightforward, and the mirror we gaze into isn't always kind, but the perspective is useful and often counterintuitive.

 

The Price of Tomorrow
Author: Jeff Booth
Deflationary pressures from current and evolving technologies, like artificial intelligence, are underappreciated. These pressures will cause enormous structural changes in industries, economies, and how we live our lives. Technology-related deflation may also hold the key to alleviating the financial stress of social programs like universal basic income.

 

The Mandibles
Author: Lionel Shriver
The first work of economic fiction I've read — I didn't even know it was a genre. I'm flagging it here since the book provides an interesting thought experiment about how the US dollar could lose its status as the global reserve currency, the implications for American society, how the US could recover, and what the potential implications would be from settling debts and introducing a new currency.

 

The 4-Hour Workweek
Author: Timothy Ferriss
I've been skeptical of the title of this book but found many of Tim's suggestions useful, like doing the highest priority activity first (it's usually the activity you fear doing the most) and thinking through your actual worst-case scenario. I firmly believe that "success can be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you've had." The second half of the book consists of case studies, a how-to guide for building an automated direct-to-consumer business, and travelling in a minimalist fashion. Tim and Ray Dalio appear to share a love for systematizing their lives.

 

The Future is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Changing Business, Industries, and Our Lives
Author: Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
The book is the third collaboration between the authors and an extension of their work in Abundance (on my top ten list above). The book provides a helpful update on advances in technology that have the potential to significantly change the world, industry structures, and investment returns.

 

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It
Author: Chris Voss
Negotiating starts with no. Avoid the empty yes. Treat people the way they want to be treated. Ask calibrated questions — who, how, what — to invite others to pause and solve your problem. Learn to say no without saying no. Use your soothing late-night DJ voice to get your counterpart from "you're right" to "that's right."

 

Billion Dollar Whale
Author: Tom Wright & Bradley Hope
It's incredible how little conviction people have in situations where they know they are correct when there is both uncertainty and a potential economic penalty. I never appreciated the role that art and jewelry could play in financial malfeasance.

 

Talking to Strangers
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
People see and hear what they expect or want to see and hear, and not necessarily what is right in front of them.

 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Author: Mark Manson
To be happy and successful, you need to make big bets on yourself, and when you fail, fail forward. The density of profanity is unnecessarily high. The Picasso story in chapter seven is excellent.

 

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
Author: Gregory Zuckerman
An interesting read that reinforces the amount of persistence that is required to build and refine a trading system. Even the most successful trading firm in history struggles to adhere to its own system at times.

 

Atomic Habits
Author: James Clear
Changing habits and behaviours to drive consistent small incremental improvements (+1%) can lead to extraordinary results due to positive compounding over time. Habits are most sustainable when they are aligned with your identity; the easiest way to change who you are is to change what you do. Create environments that make good habits more attractive.

 

Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side
Author: Howard Marks
Forecasting is incredibly difficult, but careful study can help an investor achieve an understanding of cycles. Investors can tilt the odds in their favour by investing (or building cash) when cycles are at extremes.

 

A Gift to My Children
Author: Jim Rogers
Shockingly, my girls enjoyed listening to this book when they were twelve and eight years old. Question everything, decide what is important to you before consulting others, never follow the crowd, travel and see things for yourself, and don't trust boys (Jim also has two girls).

 

The E-Myth Revisited
Author: Michael Gerber
Work on your business and not in your business, and remember, the purpose of a business is to attract and retain clients.

 

How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad
Author: William O'Neil
Very focused on technical analysis. One of the few investment books that dedicates significant effort to providing investors with a process for selling stocks.

 

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Author: John Carreyrou
Be suspicious of companies that are very secretive. You need to do your own due diligence.

 

The Family Board Meeting: You Have 18 Summers to Create a Lasting Connection with Your Children
Author: Jim Sheils
It's amazing what one four-hour one-on-one meeting with each of your children every 90 days can do to build a lasting connection. The key rule: schedule it in your calendar.

 

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Author: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
People may be their most honest selves when typing into a search bar.

 

How to Be a Great Boss
Author: Gino Wickman
A set of tools, processes, and cadences for improving employee engagement and remaining focused on goals.

 

Big Debt Crises
Author: Ray Dalio
Ray created archetypes for categorizing and analysing debt crises. The level of detail is incredible. The perspective provided in the case studies was particularly helpful.

 

Principles: Life and Work
Author: Ray Dalio
Ray has documented most elements of his work and personal life. These frameworks allow for decisions to be evaluated and incrementally improved. The discipline is incredible. The story on page 193 is terrifying and worth taking a moment to read. Think of the resources Dalio has at his disposal as you read it.

 

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
Author: Brad Stone
I can't believe how much money I cost myself, and could have made for my clients, by reading this book in 2013 instead of 2018.

 

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade
Author: Robert Cialdini
It's incredible how subtle changes in language can impact the effectiveness of our communication.

 

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World
Author: Peter Diamandis
This book is focused on providing instructions for entrepreneurs on how to raise capital to support their exponential and disruptive ventures.

 

Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think
Author: Peter Diamandis
This is one of the most feel-good books I've ever read. The world is becoming a better place for humans. This book does an excellent job of helping investors identify structural changes that can drive outsized returns for extended periods of time.

 

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Author: Jared Diamond
Structural changes are important to understand and can create significant and durable competitive advantages. These changes are often counterintuitive. For example, growing row crops can support a standing army and increase the pace of innovation, making life significantly more difficult for nomads.

 

You Can Be a Stock Market Genius
Author: Joel Greenblatt
The book highlights the importance of having a system and illustrates the importance of valuation and return on capital.

 

Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
Author: Geoff Colvin
Just like compounding in investing, the benefits of years of deliberate practice can be seen in elite performers.

 

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
Author: William Thorndike
While roll-up stories get a bad reputation, they have created an incredible amount of wealth (Capital Cities/ABC/Disney is a great example) and drive structural change in industries.

 

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
Author: Michael Lewis
Wholesale and retail markets are appropriate, and individuals wishing to purchase more of a good are entitled to a discount. When an asset trades on multiple venues simultaneously, individuals will work very hard to exploit the arbitrage opportunities.

 

The Demographic Cliff: How to Survive and Prosper During the Great Deflation of 2014–2019
Author: Harry Dent
The impact of demographics takes longer to materialize than most expect.

 

Civilization: The West and the Rest
Author: Niall Ferguson
The success of western civilization can be attributed to competition, science, the rule of law, consumerism, modern medicine, and the work ethic.

 

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
Author: Ron Chernow
I had no idea how prominent J.P. Morgan was in North American and European banking.

 

The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supercompany
Author: Charles Morris
It is incredible how much capital North American railroads destroyed before the industry's market structure improved. Few people remember.

 

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don't
Author: Nate Silver
The effectiveness of communication should be evaluated by whether it elicits the desired response from its audience.

 

This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
Author: Carmen Reinhart
It's never different.

 

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
Author: Chris Hedges
Society is increasingly losing perspective and the ability of individuals to draw well-informed, pragmatic conclusions.

 

The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How Not to Be Your Own Worst Enemy
Author: James Montier
Our mentality and psychology were not designed for investing, and the instincts that kept our ancestors alive in the wild are unlikely to help you beat the market.

 

Steve Jobs
Author: Walter Isaacson
As smart as Steve Jobs was, it is truly incredible how intellectually inflexible he was with respect to his illness until it was clearly too late. The maniacal focus on product quality was consistent with my expectations.

 

Confidence Game: How Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Called Wall Street's Bluff
Author: Christine Richard
The level of conviction that Ackman had in his short call was incredibly impressive and scary. The risk management around the single position was equally scary.

 

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Author: Edwin Lefèvre
The market has a knack for making every investor feel like they are the absolute epicentre of the universe. It's unfortunate that we no longer describe large positions as "swinging a big line."

 

The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders
Author: Jack Schwager
There are several ways to make money in financial markets. Investors must find an approach that is consistent with their mentality and iteratively improve their process over time.

 

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story
Author: David Einhorn
Shorting stocks is difficult, requires an incredible amount of conviction, and can have large social consequences, even if your thesis is ultimately proven to be correct.

 

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
Author: Peter Bernstein
Risk management and probability-weighted outcomes have made the world a significantly better and more sophisticated place. After all, risk is in the eye of the beholder.