Farnam Street
This might surprise you but I was never a big reader as a kid. In fact, I wouldn’t be caught dead with a book. This lasted all the way to university. While never lazy, I was ignorant to the infinite possibility that books opened up. …
The best thing about Elon Musk is that he makes us dream big again. Musk, of course, is the billionaire and brilliant mind behind Tesla and SpaceX. Charlie Munger was asked a question about him at the 2014 Daily Journal Meeting and he …
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 is an entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded PayPal and Palantir. He also made the first outside investment in Facebook and was an early investor in companies like SpaceX and LinkedIn. And now he’s written a book, Zero …
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 …
In Book Recommendations from Billionaire Charlie Munger That will Make you Smarter, we covered off some of the books that he’s recommended to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders over the years. As a voracious reader himself, however, …
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. Not only is it one way to fill in the gaps left by formal education but it is a meaningful way to better ourselves. Reading alone, however, isn’t enough. What you read and how you apply it matters. Reading what …
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 …
Bill Gates presents his 7 top reads in 2013. Commenting on the lack of novels on the list, Gates writes: It’s not that I don’t enjoy fiction. I’ve read The Catcher in the Rye a bunch of times—it’s one of my favorite books ever (and I …
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. This is the nature of compounding. If you make decisions only a little better than your cohort that should translate into a big difference over a lifetime. Someone who saves …
Here is a short list of books that literally changed the way I see the world. 1. Man’s Search For Meaning A 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 …