Over the years, I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of great books. Clearly, I cannot recommend them all. The following is a short selection of the better books on investing and general interest. I’ve put ** next to the ones that I most highly recommend.
You’ll notice that there aren’t many pure investment books–this is because investing is rather easy. You buy the best companies that you can with the strongest macro tailwinds at the lowest possible prices. That sums up every investment book ever written. The key instead is to figure out what the macro trends are. This booklist is designed to help you to discover the trends before anyone else has and get positioned for future booms.
I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have.
Investing Books
**You Can Be a Stock Market Genius (Even if you’re not too smart!) by Joel Greenblatt
**Tomorrow’s Gold by Marc Faber
**Riches Among The Ruins: Adventures in the Dark Corners of the Global Economy by Robert P. Smith
Accounting & Knowlege Books
Gold Production From Beginning To End by Mariusz Skonieczny
Quality Of Earnings by Thornton O’Glove
The Financial Numbers Game by Charles Mulford and Eugene Comiskey
Creative Cash Flow Reporting by Charles Mulford and Eugene Cominskey
Financial Shenanigans by Howard Schilit
Great Books Utilizing In-Depth Research and Critical Thinking
**The Grand Strategy Of The Roman Empire From The First Century A.D. To The Third by Edward Luttwak (This is by far my favorite book about finance, portfolio composition and economics. If you do not read this, you are a seriously missing out on one of the greatest finance books of all time).
**Coup d’Etat, A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak
**Lost Triumph, Lee’s Real Plan at Gettysburg and Why It Failed by Tom Carhart
**The Wages of Destruction, the Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze
**Poor Charlie’s Almanac by Charlie Munger
The Discovery Of King Arthur by Geoffrey Ashe
Interesting Thought Books
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace by Gore Vidal
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
**On War by Carl Von Clausewitz
The Vintage Mencken, compiled by Alistair Cooke
**1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Great Books On Travel
In The Footsteps of Alexander The Great by Michael Wood
Investment Biker by Jim Rogers
**Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers
Great History Books
Financial History
The Penniless Billionaires by Max Shapiro
**The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494 by Ramond de Roover
**Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White
**The Economics of Inflation by Costantino Bresciani-Turroni
The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997 by Piers Brendon
**For Good and Evil (The Impact of Taxes on the Course Of Civilization) by Charles Adams
The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith
A Brief History of Panics by Clement Juglar
The Great Silver Bubble by Stephen Fay
The Match King (Ivar Kreuger) by Frank Partnoy
**Dark Genius of Wall Street (The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould) by Edward Renehan
Tariffs, Blockades and Inflation, the Economics of the Civil War by Mark Thornton and Robert Ekelund
**The History of the Standard Oil Company by Ida Tarbell
Greenspan’s Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve, by William Fleckenstein
A Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal by Robert Murphy
The Forgotten Man a New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
The Big Score, Robert Friedland and the Voisey’s Bay Hustle by Jacquie McNish
**The Great Crash by John Kenneth Galbraith
Classics
**The Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
The Agricola and Germania by Tacitus
**The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar
The Civil War by Julius Caesar
The Rise of the Roman Empire by Polybius
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Julian’s Against the Galileans, translated by Joseph Hoffmann
The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
New Books
April 1865 The Month That Saved America by Jay Winik
1776 by David McCullough
The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather (Kuppy Note: These two books offer great contrasting views of the fall of the Empire. They should definitely be read in conjunction with The Fall first.)
The Ruin of the Roman Empire by James O’Donnell
The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World by Adrian Murdoch
Aurelian and the Third Century by Alaric Watson
A World Undone (The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918) by G.J. Meyer
The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie
Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta by Roger Crowley
Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War Of Independence by John Ferling
Great Biographies
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre
From Third World to First, the Singapore Story by Lee Kuan Yew
**My Own Story, by Bernard Baruch
Made In America by Sam Walton
The Reichmanns (Olympia and York) by Anthony Bianco
Call Me Ted by Ted Turner
The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time (About Andy Beal) by Michael Craig
Howard Hughes: The Untold Story by Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske
Howard, the Amazing MR. Hughes by Noah Dietrich
**The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
The First Tycoon, the Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest by John Wyeth
Stop Shorting “Project Zimbabwe”