Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Elon Musk, the billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX, is often praised for his brilliance, bold vision, and problem-solving approach. After meeting him, people often say, “He’s the smartest guy I’ve ever met.” Charlie …
Eccentric billionaire Peter Thiel’s book Zero To One should be required reading for Farnam Street readers. Like The Hard Thing About Hard Things, it’s nice to see another business leader come out and write about life in the …
Here is what happened when I asked twenty-seven thousand people “What is page for page the book with the most wisdom you’ve ever read?” My thinking was, and still is, that you need to filter what you read. Reading, I mean …
Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur and investor who co-founded PayPal and Palantir, made the first outside investment in Facebook, and was an early investor in companies like SpaceX and LinkedIn, also wrote a book titled Zero to One: Notes on …
I read Guy Spier’s book, The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment, in a single sitting. The section of the book I was most interested in reading was on his charity lunch with …
If you’re looking for something to read that will improve your ability as an investor, I’d recommend any of the books below. All 12 of them are deeply informative and will leave an impact on you. 1. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin …
“You know that I voluntarily communicated this method to you, as I have done to many others, to whom I believed it would not be unacceptable.” In 1685 English physician and philosopher John Locke published “Méthode …
Bill Gates is out with his annual summer reading list and, while shorter than last year’s, it’s nonetheless full of interesting reads. I ended up ordering two of them, one of which is considered to be “the best business …
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 reads—and how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think …
Reading is important. It is a way to fill in the gaps left by formal education and a meaningful way to better ourselves. Reading is the raw material of the mind. What you put in shapes what you see and what you think. Reading what everyone …
Max Bazerman, the author of the best book on general decision making that I’ve ever read, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, came out with 7 book recommendations1. I hadn’t heard of two of these, which I picked up. 1. …
I’ve read almost 30 books so far this year. Here are five that expanded my mind. Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making A lot of books talk about the what and how in decision-making. This book also …
Rebecca Mead has written a book like no other I’ve come across. My Life In Middlemarch is an irresistibly creative story about how her favorite book, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, changed her and perhaps more importantly, changed …
In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain looks at how our lives are shaped by personality. The book explores how where we land on the introvert-extrovert spectrum influences our choices, friends, …
From philosophy and friendship to idea creation and building daily routines. While I never had any doubt that Farnam Streeters are the smartest people on the internet, the data once again tells that story too. 1. Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin …
Economist Tyler Cowen, who was named one of the top 100 influential thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, offers some interesting picks: Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschmann. A History of Future Cities. Going Clear: …
Little differences over a long lifetime create big disparities. Making decisions slightly better than your cohort translates into a big difference over a long life. This is the nature of compounding. Here are seven books that I think …
Here is a short list of books that literally changed the way I see the world. 1. Man’s Search For MeaningA gift from a friend. As hard as you think your life is, it pales in comparison to Auschwitz. I took two big things away from …
We all want to read more. If reading older books is exponentially more beneficial for acquiring knowledge than reading newer things, then reading the great books is a good place to start. These books build the foundation of knowledge. One …
I really enjoyed Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. Anyone who wants to better understand the dynamics of disruption or just gain a better understanding of the website we’ve come to love must …
The back of Brad Stone’s excellent new book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, contains a list of a dozen books “widely read by executives and employees that are integral to understanding” Amazon. We …
In an interview that aired on CNBC1, Jeff Bezos shared some of the details about books that he’s shared with Amazon’s top executives. These books, it turns out, are frameworks for shaping the future of the company. Here they …
What happens when you ask 15,800+ smart people what the best book they’ve read this year is? That’s exactly what I recently did on Twitter. Here is what people said. Fiction Hunger — A true classic of modern literature that has …
Much like last year, the 2013 edition of Bill Gates summer reading list is full of interesting non-fiction. 1. The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? Gates writes: “It’s crazy that I haven’t read this …