Benjamin Graham

A clear introduction to value investing and one of my all-time favorites.

Turney Duff

A crazy rise, fall and rise again story that highlights how the sell-side (brokers) pampers the buy-side (hedge funds) for their business.

Victor Niederhoffer

Victor Niederhoffer has a unique data-driven way of looking at markets. Even though nowadays we can process a lot more data this book still provides inspiring examples of analysis.

Victor Niederhoffer

Great autobiography of Victor Niederhoffer. Niederhoffer has a very interesting background as a top athlete, high level chess player and worked for George Soros. He has a very creative and open minded way of looking at finance.

Andrew Kemp

Great overview of value investing principles and why it's hard for humans to stick to them.

Sven Carlin

Practical guide to value investing.

Mark Spitznagel

Spitznagel captures the essence of investing as long-term compounding. The ideas of the roundabout can be quite counter-intuitive, but its definitely worth it to carefully read and think about what Spitznagel talks about here.

Mark Spitznagel

Another gem by Spitznagel and definitely a must read! Thinking about geometric vs. arithmetic effects goes way beyond finance and is essential to understand for intelligent decision making.

Seth Klarman

Great common sense approach to value investing. More focused on catalysts.

Charles Kindleberger

Kindleberger is a master storyteller. Great book if you like reading financial history. Else one might find it too dry and detailed.

David Carey

Good biography of Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman.

George Soros

Thre core topic of this book is Soros's explanation of reflexivity. A very important concept to understand for every investor. This allowed him to ride bubbles and panics with extraordinary success. Also contains a diary-like account of his turbulent portfolio and bold decisions. These serve to further illustrate Soros's investing thought process.

Benoit Mandelbrot

The popular account of Mandelbrot's work on fractals. Mandelbrot was a unique thinker. Great book to start with to understand Mandelbrot's work.

Paul Wilmott

Two tomes covering fundamentals of quantitative finance. Worth to revisit now and then and use as reference. Wilmott is also very funny! You definitely wouldn't expect a textbook on quantitative finance to be this funny.

Nassim Taleb

I haven't seen any book on options theory that explains things better than this book by Taleb. Taleb comes from a lot of practical experience as an option trader and is one of the most clear thinkers I know. Covers things I haven't seen anywhere on the Internet. Not only covers the mathematics, but also how to think about them and their limitations.Seeking out old books like this definitely pays off. Would recommend just reading everything written by Taleb.

Benjamin Graham and David Dodd

Some of the fundamental books on value investing. Parts of it can feel outdated, but still would recommend checking it out if you take value investing seriously.

Marcos Lopez de Prado

Nice overview of financial ML techniques. The mathematics is fascinating, especially if you are familiar with ML. For implementing these techniques in the real world I would make sure to also research the limitations of these techniques, especially on the portfolio construction side.

Marcos Lopez de Prado

A cool overview of how we can make an attempt to train models that have actual causal relevance. I'm personally more excited about innovating in Machine Learning explainability versus trying to force causality on models. Still a great read and I'm sure you'll learn something new from it.

Liaquat Ahamed

This book follows 4 of the most important central bankers in the 20th century and the crucial misjudgment that were made in the 1920s and 1930s. Good book if you are interesting in macroeconomics, else it will probably feel too dry.

Joel Greenblatt

Funny book which stunningly pinpoints the essence of value investing. Features a lot of fun personal stories and is a quick read.

David G. Luenberger

Good gentle textbook on quantitative finance. Used this when I first started with mathematical finance.

Marco Da Rin and Thomas Hellmann

Good textbook to have as a reference when starting a business or studying entrepreneurship. Among other things covers valuation, fundraising, IPOs, debt. Important things to get right with lots of pitfalls to avoid.

Jack Schwager

Interviews and stories from some of the most successful fund managers. Not all are well known, but all are pioneers and Schwager does a great job at asking essential questions. Would recommend checking the table of contents and start with the interview that resonates the most with you.

Michael Lewis

A history of High Frequency Trading and its impact on markets. It's important to note that Michael Lewis is not a financial or technical expert so his views can be taken with a grain of salt. Still this is an essential book to read if you are interested in HFT.

Jim Paul

Very interesting book where Jim Paul recounts his rise and fall as a fund manager. A lot of important lessons here on how hubris and excessiveness lead to undesirable outcomes.

David Einhorn

Very cool autobiographical story by David Einhorn. The book is centered around own on his greatest shorts on Allied Capital. Reads like a thriller if you are interesting in finance, else it might feel very dry. The book goes into a lot of detail about what was wrong with Allied Capital and how he approached the situation.

David Kesmodel

Fascinating biography about some of the earliest domain name 'investors' and how domain names evolved as a commodity. I love how informed the author is and how it conveys the excitement of how the early commercial Internet evolved.

Robert G. Hagstrom

One of those classic gems on value investing. Must read for any value investor.

Lawrence Cunningham

This book is an underappreciated gem! It goes into detail how Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have been so successful from a more human perspective. Berkshire Hathaway's unique management style and deicision making is often brutalized and misunderstood. This book is enlightening and gives you a new perspecitve on what Berkshire Hathaway is.

John Rolfe and Peter Troob

One of the funnies and entertaining books I've ever read on finance. Rolfe and Troob tell their stories about working in investment banking with its upsides and downsides. The stories are hilarious!

Michael Nielsen and Isaac Chuang

Definitive text book on quantum computing and quantum information. If you are new to quantum computing I advice to 1st read the essays on quantum.country before picking up this book. You will already be familiar with much of the notation and will be less confused by it.

Sheelah Kolhatkar

History of Steve Cohen and S.A.C. Capital Advisors. Controversial trades and the story of an insanely successful fund manager. He survived one of the largest criminal cases against a hedge fund, paid $1.8B in fines and is nowadays active under Point72 Asset Management. He is also still a majority owner in the New York Mets.

Thornton O'Glove

Very underrated little classic on pitfalls of accounting. Reading this and taking it seriously will save you a lot of money. Thornton also has a fascinating story of his own.

Edwin Lefevre

Partly fictionalized autobiography of Jesse Livermore. An essential read if you are in finance.

John Kenneth Galbraith

History of the crash of 1929 and The Great Depression. Galbraith is a great storyteller and the book is easy to read.

James Owen Weatherall

Fun history of how physicists revolutionized finance and stories about some of the early funds that used physic models in finance. Nice as a basic overview. For more in-depth insights I would recommend 'My Life as a Quant' by Emanuel Derman.

Gregory Zuckerman

Biography of John Paulson and his legendary trade on the 2008 financial crash. Reads like a great drama with suspense, betrayal and enormous payoffs. Also provides context on other that were involved in the same trade, like Michael Burry.

Peter Lynch

A classic gem on common sense investing. You will definitely not regret reading this as a value investor. There also some great anecdotes about Lynch's time at Fidelity in here.

Connie Bruck

History of Michael Milken and the story of Drexel Burnham Lambert. Reads like a crime thriller story and Connie Bruck tells the story like a master.

Emanuel Derman

Fascinating autobiography of Emanuel Derman. One of the legendary quants who went from a PhD in physics to working at Goldman Sachs. Emanual is an admirable man who continued to stay true to himself and developed legendary models like Black-Derman-Toy. Derman is also very funny and down to earth!

Emanuel Derman

Very cool book by Derman on the limitation of models in finance. Emanuel Derman is amazingly knowledgeable so definitely worth a read if you are into quantitative finance.

Maria Schuld and Francesco Petruccione

The most up to date and comprehensive book on quantum machine learning. The authors make sure that the book is approachable from both the physics and ML side. I came from the ML side and the book goes into some quantum computing basics, but there is less hand holding compared to the ML side in this book. If you are new to quantum computing would recommend checking out quantum.country and the Quantum Computing in Practice course by IBM first.

Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky

Introduction to classical Newtonian physics. Starts out pretty gentle with refreshers on Calculus, but already gets heavy at the end with Lagrangian mechanics. If you regret not studying more physics in college, reading Susskind's books is one a the best ways to get going again!

Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman

Introduction to quantum mechanics. I personally found this book easier compared to classical mechanics. If you are proficient in probability theory and have a creative mind, I'm sure you will be able to enjoy this book and follow along with the concepts.

Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman

Introduction into Einstein's special relativity and classical field theory. Had a hard time getting through this, but fascinating and solid introduction into Einstein.

Leonard Susskind and Andre Cabannes

One of the most recent Susskind books on General Relativity. I would recommend first reading about special relativity. Fascinating if you are serious about physics.

George Gamow

Interesting overview of that small period of time in the 20th century when quantum physics was born and insane breakthrough after breakthrough occurred within a short time. Definitely worth a read if you are new to quantum physics. The author George Gamow was himself a theoretical physicist so he is able to give a lot of context.

Richard Feynman

Amazingly funny and entertaining autobiography of Richard Feynman. Would definitely recommend checking out this book even if you are not interested in physics.

Henry Stapp

Stapp is one of the most clear thinkers I know on interpreting quantum mechanics. This book goes into the role of measurement in quantum mechanics. Amazing interpretations of core concepts like Zeno's paradox. Also features replies to critics of his work.

J. J. Sakurai and Jim Napolitano

One of the more challenging textbooks on quantum mechanics. Still have a long way to go to form a solid understanding. Great reference for quantum mechanics.

Graham Farmelo

Biography on legendary physicist Paul Dirac. Gave me a lot of respect for Dirac and his genius. Fascinating if you are interested in quantum physics, else really dry.

Ben Goertzel & Cassio Pennachin

A collection of research papers on AGI, published in 2006. Many of these approaches are not popular anymore, but there are definitely great and ignored ideas in here for building AGI. Many of these approaches are more holistic compared to the narrow approaches that are popular today.

Ben Goertzel

Partly autobiographical book about Ben Goertzel's work. Ben Goertzel is credited with writing the first book on AGI and popularizing the term 'Artificial General Intelligence', which I believe was suggested by Shane Legg.

Richard S. Sutton and Andrew G. Barto

Still the most important book on reinforcement learning. Read if you want to understand the fundamentals.

Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville

Popular textbook on deep learning. It has been a while I've read this, but its still a good reference. Written before transformers and has a lot of material on computer vision.

Douglas Hofstadter

Must read for anyone seriously interested in AI. Some may say this book is outdated, but I think these ideas are more relevant than ever. Among other things, Hofstadter goes into great detail on Godel's incompleteness theorem. Its essential to understand this and what it means for limitations of computing and AI systems.

Alfred Sloan

Unique mix between an autobiography and educational book on business. A lot of Sloan's insights are still highly relevant today. Highly recommend reading if you are interested in management!

John D. Rockefeller

Autobiographical stories and musings of John D. Rockefeller. A fascinating look into the mind of a legend. Retired early to focus on a long career of philanthropy.

David Ogilvy

Practical approach to Ogilvy's approach to advertising. While the platforms of advertising has changed, the principles explained by Ogilvy are still the same. Also check out his autobiography 'Confessions of an Advertising Man'.

Ben Horowitz

Great book with autobiographical insights on running startups.

Tony Fadell

Tony Fadell worked with Steve Jobs on the iPod and iPhone. He was also CTO of Philips. Great book if you are figuring out how to build something worth building or feel that itch to become a startup founder.

Jeff Bezos

Collection of Amazon shareholder letters by Jeff Bezos and transcripts of some of his talks. Gives a cool overview of how Amazon evolved and how they reasoned about crucial decisions like AWS and Amazon Prime, before they wildly succeeded. Gave me a lot of respect for Bezos as an entrepreneur.

Roger Lowenstein

Definitive biography on Warren Buffett. Lowenstein does a great job approaching Chernow's biography of Rockefeller. Reading this will give a renewed respect of Buffett, his insane early track record and work ethic.

Marianne Jennings

Very solid book on how to spot ethical collapse in companies and its consequences. Interesting if you are an investor, manager, business owner or interested in ethics. As a value investor it will help you greatly to avoid investing in companies that will go out of business due to silly behavior.

Pat Gelsinger

Pat Gelsinger is the current CEO of Intel. He was previously CTO of Intel and CEO of VMWare. This has a kind of autobiography feel. Goes into how he balances business, family and faith.

Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

Biography of Bill Campbell, who coached most of the successful founders and executives in Silicon Valley, but also was a successful football coach and CEO of Intuit. You will not regret reading this book.

Sam Walton

Amazing autobiography by Walmart's founder Sam Walton. There are many great lessons in here! You will not regret reading this book.

Andy Grove

Excellent book by Intel CEO Andy Grove on inflection points. He goes into detail how Intel made the transition from a memory chip company to a microprocessor company. Really solid!

Andy Grove

Another amazing instructional book by Intel CEO Andy Grove. It's best to just go and read all of Andy Grove's writings. You will not regret it.

Peter Thiel

A mandatory read if you are into startups. Thiel explains different kinds of businesses and why the most successful startups create monopolies.

David Ogilvy

Autobiography of David Ogilvy, one of the greatest advertising executives who ever lived. Ogilvy's self-confidence rubs off on you and there is some interesting practical advice in there. Obviously you have to translate some of it the context of modern times.

David Clark

Fun overview of Charlie Munger's philosophy. Generally a compilation of quotes. Great book for a Charlie Munger fan!

George Foreman

One of the most impactful books I've read on business. Foreman explains how he went from a heavyweight boxing champion. George Foreman has a fascinating integrity and work ethic that is admirable.

Girolamo Cardano

Autobiography of Girolamo Cardano, who contributing to a wide variety of fields including science, algebra, probability and medicine.

William Poundstone

The original history book on advantage play. Covers Edward Thorp, Claude Shannon and John Kelly (Kelly Criterion), among others.

Edward O. Thorp

Essential reading if you are interested in decision making and gaining an edge. This book is legendary and unsettled a lot of casinos in the 1960s. Even though some rules sets, like one deck blackjack don't exist anymore, this is the fundamental book to teach you how to gain an edge in blackjack.

Stanford Wong

Stanford Wong is one of the original legendary blackjack card counters. He wrote a series of books on blackjack card counting. They offer a great mix of math theory and practical advice.

Stanford Wong

One of the more technical books on blackjack card counting. Fascinating if you like probability theory and figuring out how to gain an edge in games.

Nassim Taleb

Beautiful book on fat tailed distributions and their implications. Taleb goes into great detail here on both the mathematics and implications. To be honest when I first read this I had to Google terms every couple of pages, but it was more than worth it!

Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman

Technical book on Poker. Wouldn't start with this if you are new to poker. Read if you like diving into mathematics and probability theory. It will definitely give you a deeper understanding of balance and exploitability.

Geoffrey Grimmett and David Stirzaker

Solid book for studying stochastic processes. Your typical tough math textbook with mostly proofs and exercises in it.

Chris Moorman

Cool autobiography of online poker legend Chris Moorman with stories about its ups and downs.

Chris Moorman

Cool overview of poker situation with commentary from Chris Moorman. Was released in 2014, so the effictiveness of some of the reasoning might be outdated, but still a great collection.

Jonathan Grotenstein

Very cool biography about a group of poker players that are some of the original online crushers like Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond and Andrew Robl. Very entertaining read if you are into poker.

Nolan Dalla

Biography on one of the most legendary poker players of all time, Stu Ungar. Unfortunately its mostly a tragic story, but Nolan Dalla tells it really well.

Matthew Janda

Matthew Janda is one of the great poker educators. This book is one of his most recent and advanced books. Also discusses AI tools that you can use to study and provides ranges derived with PokerSnowie.

Matthew Janda

Great introductory textbook on No-Limit Hold'em. A few thins might have become stale, but still provides a solid foundation from where you can tackles Janda's more advanced books.

Gus Hansen

Cool recount of Gus Hansen's win at the Aussie Millions. He goes through every hand of that tournament and discusses his decision making. Some strategies may not work as well anymore, but the reasoning is definitely still interesting to study.

Mike Caro

Fun little book on spotting poker tells. Already quite old, but still great if you are studying poker.

James McManus

Extensive history of poker from the origins of cars to the present day of online poker. Its a large book, but fascinating and seems to cover all the important development of the game.

Gareth James

Solid introduction to essential data science and statistics concepts, though code examples are written in R.

Lillian Pierson

No kidding one the 1st books I've read on data science before starting formal study. Provides an interesting overview on setting up your 1st data science projects, platforms, skills and pitfalls to avoid. There are definitely some parts that have become stale and outdated. Would recommend taking an introductory course on coursera.org, kaggle.com, udacity.com, serrano.academy if you are starting out with Data Science.

Sebastian Donadio et al.

Good introduction to the basics of high-frequency trading. Doesn't really talk about HFT algorithms, but mostly about how to write fast C++ code and network infrastructure.

Carson Gross et al.

The best introduction into hypermedia and HTMX. It also gives great historic context on how the web evolved and why hypermedia is still insanely powerful. You can read the book online for free here.

Paul Graham

Awesome collection of timeless Paul Graham essays! These can also be found on https://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html.

Andrew Hodges

Definitive biography on Alan Turing. Kind of a must read as an AI researcher. This is the book that the movie 'The Imitation Game' is based on.

Steve Wozniak

An an Apple nerd really enjoyed this autobiography of Steve Wozniak. Really cool to see how Wozniak kept playing and experimenting with new ideas after Apple became successful.

Brian Kernighan

Awesome biography of the UNIX operating system. There couldn't have been a better person to write this than Brian Kernighan. He was there at Bell Labs when computing history was written. Very fun book.

Apostolos Syropoulos

Some of the most unique Computer Science concepts I have ever encountered. Hypercomputation is about looking at computation beyond the limitations of Turing machines. These are machines that as of the time of writing don't have, but could potentially build in the future. Not for the faint of heart!

Steve Klabnik and Carol Nichols

Definitive textbook on Rust. As programming languages tend to evolve would recommend checking out the online version instead of the book.

Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick is one of the greatest hackers and social engineers of all time. This book talks about some techniques that are used by hackers and how to protect against them. Would also recommend reading his autobiography 'Ghost in the Wires'.

Kevin Mitnick

Solid overview of offensive cybersecurity. All of Mitnick's books are great reads.

Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick on privacy and how to protect yourself online.

Robert Cialdini

A must read to become more aware of your own decision making and to protect yourself against manipulation. If you haven't read this book, stop what you're doing (if it's not urgent) and go read this book.

Sun Tzu

A timeless book on strategy. Still very relevant today. Might take multiple reads to really get the core message.

Carl Gustav Jung and Wolfgang Pauli

Letters between Psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli. A Fascinating real-time look at two geniuses trying to figure out the interwovenness between the mind and the physical world. If you are interesting in these interactions, I can recommend to check out David Bohm's books, who was a genius quantum physicist and also explored physical abstractions beyond reductionism.

Carl Gustav Jung

Carl Jung was the first to write about introvert vs. extravert types. Basically all of Myers-Briggs work on personality types can be traced to Jung's work on psychological types. Good place to start if you want to get into Jungian psychology. Caveat Emptor: It can be surprisingly confronting to read Jung expanding on your personality type in this book.

Carl Gustav Jung

Volume 15 of Jung's Collected Works. An overview of Jung's essays related to art and literature.

Carl Gustav Jung

Volume 16 of Jung's Collected Works. Jung's work on psychotherapy. More practical and educational compared to other volumes. It's little known that Jung's work as a psychotherapist played a major role in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. Before AA's founding by Bill Wilson and its success, alcoholism was regarded as an incurable disease. For more information: https://aeon.co/ideas/how-jungs-collective-unconscious-inspired-alcoholics-anonymous

Carl Gustav Jung

Volume 17 of Jung's Collected Works. Jung's writing on education and development of personality.

Carl Gustav Jung

Volume 9 (part 1) of Jung's Collected Works that features much of his work on archetypes and the collective unconscious. These writings are unique to Jung and really push the limits of what psychoanalysis can describe.

Carl Gustav Jung

Light and brief introduction into Jung's work from a 1925 seminar. Great introduction together with his (partial) autobiography 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'.

Carl Gustav Jung

Autobiographical book of Carl Jung. Features some of the last interviews of Jung before his death. Amazing book!

Edward Tufte

One of the most important books you'll read as a data scientist. Tufte goes into the history and most important aspects of data visualization. I wish I read this book earlier. Tufte has a strong preference towards focusing on data density and removing distractions. 'Above all else, show the data.'

Jared Tendler

Nice book to improve your mental poker game. Contains lots of practical advice and examples of how players improved their mental game.

Jared Tendler

Compared to Part 1, this book is more focused on endurance and keeping a flow state when playing poker. Would recommend to first read part 1.

Sigmund Freud

Obscure and short book on man's struggle to combine social behavior with unconscious desires. Translation by A. A. Brill.

Sigmund Freud

Gentle introduction into Freud's work. I'll leave it up to you to decide on how helpful Freud approach to psychoanalysis is to you.

Daniel H. Pink

Interesting practical advice on how to time things and how you can benefit from scheduling some things differently. It's a quick read and helps you give awareness on some habits that might not work well.

Carl Gustav Jung

Jung's 1912 lectures where he lays out his own views on psychoanalysis which differed from Freud. Interesting if you want to get a better understanding why Jung is so unique.

Carl Gustav Jung

An odd book by Jung focusing on individuation and symbolism. Not sure how to explain this one. Read if you are a fan of Jung.

John Diamond

One of the originals on applied kinesiology.

Carlo M. Cipolla

Great short book about how human stupidity arises. With foreword by Nassim Taleb.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Historically important book on flow states and how to cultivate flow. Important read, though at times can be a bit reductionist.

Ryan Holiday

Fascinating autobiographical insights into manipulation and the dark side of marketing. Be aware that Holiday is using these same techniques nowadays for selling courses and pushing Stoic merchandise. Reading books like Cialdini's 'Influence' can serve as protection against this type of manipulation.

Scott Young

Essential book for learning to learn. Read this and Josh Waitzkin's 'The Art of Learning'. People often forget learning compounds exponentially so even becoming a little smarter about how you learn has a huge impact on your life over time.

Josh Waitzkin

A very important book to read. Josh Waitzkin develop into both a chess and Tai Chi master. Josh Waitzkin was also the main subject of the movie 'Searching for Bobby Fisher'. He goes into deeper fundamentals of learning compared to Ultralearning. The Art of Learning might resonate more if you first read Ultralearning.

Dave Grohl

Fun autobiography by Dave Grohl. How he came from nothing into the punk scene, Nirvana, Foo Fighters and developing as a family man.

Don Randi

Fascinating autobiography of Don Randi who was a legendary piano and keyboard player part of the Wrecking Crew.

Sting

Autobiography of Sting. Calming, brilliant, solid and poetic!

Keith Richards

A whirlwind of an autobiography by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Amazing!

Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin on creativity and how to cultivate it.

Larry Gara

Cool biography on one of first 'drumset' players.

Phil Collins

Fascinating autobiography of Phil Collins. Great insights and stories from a true music industry veteran.

Mel Tormé

Definitive biography of Buddy Rich, one of the greatest drummers of all time. Told by legendary singer and friend of Buddy Rich Mel Tormé.

Kent Hartman

Great history of the Wrecking Crew, a group of session musicians who played on most of the hit songs of the 1960s and 1970s. Told by the son of one of the original members.

Chris Smith

Really enjoyed this biography of legendary jazz drummer Mel Lewis. Also contains actual sheet music of his iconic parts. Highly recommend this book for drummers!

Gary Tillery

An Elvis Presley biography with a focus on Elvis' spiritual journey and struggles. Gary Tillery has written some extraordinary biographies on Elvis Presley, John Lennon and George Harrison. All with a depth I haven't seen anywhere else.

Gary Tillery

A biography of John Lennon that explores his struggles with fame and view of life.

Gary Tillery

Extraordinary biography of George Harrison. Gary Tillery has a great way of writing biographies from the perspective of musicians' internal perspective and spirituality. This lead to an extraordinary biography of Elvis Presley, but resonates most when writing about George Harrison.

Jake Brown

A biography of Rick Rubin, one of the most legendary music producers of all time. Great stories behind for example some of Red Hot Chili Peppers' albums.

Victor Wooten

This is a unique book. It reads like a fiction novel and feels weirdly autobiographical. At the same time it conveys crucial concepts to focus on as a musician. I definitely became a better musician after reading this book. Also check out his book 'The Spirit of Music' book.

Victor Wooten

Victor Wooten's follow up to 'The Music Lesson'. One of the most inspiring books on music you will ever read.

Peter Pettinger

Beautiful biography of Jazz Pianist Bill Evans. Bill Evans' life reads like a novel with big ups, downs and astonishing beauty.

George Martin

Autobiography of George Martin, one of the most legendary music producers of all time who worked with the Beatles and pioneered much of modern music production.

Steve Lukather

Very entertaining autobiography of Steve Lukather, the legendary session guitarist who played with Michael Jackson, Toto and many others. Lukather is a great and open storyteller.

J.C. Thomas

Definitive biography of John Coltrane. Fascinating and must read if you are a (Jazz) musician.

Duff McKagan

Autobiography of legendary Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan. Some crazy rise, fall and rise stories. Good overview of what happens when alcoholism is pushed to its limits and the insights gained from becoming sober.

George Harrison

Autobiographical stories and lyrics by George Harrison. Beautiful raw collection of writings from a legend! Also a nice collector's item.

Max Bolleman

Great autobiography of legendary Jazz engineer and producer Max Bolleman. A lot of fascinating stories about Jazz recording in this book.Unfortunately this book is only available in Dutch.

Wendy Leigh

As the name says, a biography of David Bowie. The book is well written.

Tommy Lee

One of the most crazy autobiographies you will ever read! Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee has some wild wild stories!

Kenny Aronoff

Amazing autobiography of legendary session drummer Kenny Aronoff. It's an astonishing story how he went from being inspired by The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and ended up playing with all Beatles except for John Lennon. At the moment of writing Kenny Aronoff is still rocking and playing in the top of the session world in his 70s!

Steven Levy

Essential history of the early computer pioneers and how computing evolved from universities into businesses. Naturally a lot of the history plays itself out in California.

Charles MacKay

A must read to understand how large groups of people can get caught up in manias and start to exhibit silly behavior. Especially for investing its essential to read and understand accounts of the South Sea Bubble and Tulip Mania. The exact same dynamics are still happening today in markets.

Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman

The definitive biography of Claude Shannon, the father of information theory. Not only are Shannon's story and achievement fascination, but it also give you and understand and appreciation of how much you can accomplish by playing and keeping a childlike attitude towards learning and creating.

Greg Steinmetz

Biography on Jacob Fugger, a merchant and financier from the 15th century. Really enjoyable and insightful read as Fugger's story is not as well known as Rockefeller's or Carnegie's.

Rory Smith

Fun book on the history of football analytics and prediction. Great read if you are interested in sports analytics and sports betting.

Ron Chernow

The definitive biography on John D. Rockefeller Sr. It's a big book, but definitely worth it. Rockefeller is still a unique figure in history who built one of the largest empires of all time almost from scratch and gave most of his wealth away. He can still be felt in the largest oil companies on the planet, the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller Foundation and Rockefeller Centre.

Tim Wu

Intriguing history of networks, from telegraph, telephone, Internet, blockchain and beyond. Tim Wu did great research and this makes the book very insightful. You can bet people like Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong and other people focusing on networks got some great inspiration from this book.

Ananyo Bhattacharya

Fascinating biography of John von Neumann. It's astonishing how much we have to thank von Neumann for modern science. Also an extraordinary intelligent man that was interested in and pioneered many fields, like probability theory, game theory, quantum mechanics, computer science and economics.

Walter Isaacson

The definitive biography on Steve Jobs. The biography is obviously great, but I would also recommend checking out some of the lesser known biographies like 'Becoming Steve Jobs'.

Evan Ratliff

Riveting story of Paul Le Roux, who used to be one of the most notorious cyber criminals. You will be stunned by how long Paul Le Roux was able to evade authorities and how large his empire became.

Brian Cruver

There is so much to learn from Enron's story. Also watch the documentary 'The Smartest Guys in the Room'.

Gregory Zuckerman

Biography of Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies. Renaissance Technologies' Medallion fund is one of the most successful hedge funds of all time. It was very hard for Zuckerman to get access to sufficient material to write this biography as the fund is so secretive.

Edward O. Thorp

Autobiography of Ed Thorp. A must read! Ed Thorp is one of those people that mastered wordly life. He pioneered blackjack card counting and option theory before Black-Scholes published their equation. He ran one of the first succesful quantitative hedge funds. He is also still a very clear thinker in his 90s. Would recommend also listening to podcasts of him.

Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

One of the best biographies I've read on Steve Jobs!

Charles Seife

Usage of the number 0 is more recent than you think. This book recounts the history of the number 0, its significance and resistance to its acceptance. Way more interesting than it initially sounds!

Peter Bernstein

Great history on how humans have dealt with uncertainty and risk over the past thousands of years. A really fun read if you are interested in risk, finance and human decision making.

Garry Kasparov

A large chunk of the book is Kasparov recounting his games against IBM's Deep Blue and his view on AI. Fascinating book which also shows that IBM kind of played dirty against Kasparov in these matches. One could argue at the time Kasparov was the better player and would have won those famous matches against Deep Blue in a fair setup.

Michael S. Malone

Essential biography on Intel, focusing on Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove. It's easy to understand these men and their contributions to the world. Essential if you would like to understand what the modern world is built on and the culture that is still core to what Intel is today.

Steven Levy

Solid biography of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

Benjamin Franklin

Autobiography of one of the most extraordinary human beings of the modern world. Studying Benjamin Franklin will make you a better human being.

Michael Moritz

Biography on Steve Jobs and Apple by venture capitalist Michael Moritz. Has a focus on Steve Jobs' legendary return to Apple when Apple bought his company NeXT.

Jean Strouse

Great biography on J.P. Morgan, but can get quite dry at times. Unfortunately did not captivate my attention like Chernow's 'Titan' did. Still would consider this the definitive biography on J.P. Morgan.

Scott Patterson

History of quantitative finance in general and central figures in this realm, like Jim Simons, Cliff Asness and Nassim Taleb. This was one of the first books that inspired me to learn more about quantitative finance. Along with Patterson's 'Dark Pools'. Also check out Patterson's 'Chaos Kings'.

Scott Patterson

Books about obfuscated trading and usage of AI in finance. Fascinating book and in my opinion more substantial compared to a book like 'Flash Boys'. Also check out Patterson's 'Chaos Kings'.

Scott Patterson

Biography on tail risks, Mark Spitznagel and Nassim Taleb. Love all of Patterson's books, but this one is special to me because it's about Taleb and Spitznagel. The book is not easy to summarize, so just go and read it.

Daniel Ammann

Biography about Marc Rich, who is credited of inventing the spot oil market and became one of the biggest oil traders of all time. Fascinating character with high stakes and controversial stories.

John Carreyrou

Thrilling biography on Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. Carreyrou broke the story of Theranos and fought years to expose the fraudulent activities. Carreyrou is a great storyteller and one of the most knowledgeable person on what happened. What a story!

Aaron Swartz

Beautiful collection of Aaron Swartz's writings and blog posts. Aaron Swartz was a genius and pioneer of open source, having build tools like RSS and Markdown. He is also a cofounder of Reddit. A great writer, communicator, thinker, builder and human being. He got crushed by FBI prosecution and took his own life at the age of 26. 'The Internet's Own Boy' is a great documentary on his life.

Kevin Mitnick

Captivating autobiography of one of the most notorious early hackers of all time. Reads like a thriller and provides a lot of insight of how hacking and social engineering worked at the time.

Robert McKee

One of the most amazing books I've ever read on storytelling. McKee is a master screenwriting and breaks down how great stories are built. It has a systematic approach, but at the same time is exciting, creative and fun to read. Like taking a peek behind the curtain of why the great stories and movies you see are so great.

Susan Blackmore

Comprehensive textbook on the science of consciousness. Unfortunately sticks mostly to western academic theories of consciousness.

Charles T. Munger and Peter Kaufman

One of the most important books you'll ever read. Charlie Munger is one of the clearest thinkers I know. It offers plenty to learn for investors, but goes way beyond that.

Nassim Taleb

Would recommend reading everything Taleb has written. It would not be fair to summarize these books, but I can tell you it will make you a better decision maker.

Nassim Taleb

One a Taleb's 1st books.

Nassim Taleb

The 1st book I read by Taleb. Wish I read it earlier.

Nassim Taleb

Collection of aphorisms by Taleb.

Nassim Taleb

Crucial book to understand if you want to become a better decision maker.

Nassim Taleb

Incerto is the name for the collection of Taleb's non-technical books. Can highly recommend reading every single book in this collection. There is also the technical Incerto, which includes the great book 'Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails'.

Viktor Frankl

A book that illustrates how humans are able to recover and thrive from even the most extreme adversities. Viktor Frankl was an extraordinary human being. A very important book to read and learn from.

Nick Bostrom

Interesting philosophy book about existential risk of AI and hypotheticals, although perhaps a bit outdated. Even Nick Bostrom himself changed his views on topics discussed in the book.

Michael Clark

Very cool overview of human paradoxes. Fun to revisit once in a while.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Kind of a unique book going through decision making as a dictator. Some of it is academic and hypothetical, but it definitely gives you an interesting perspective and makes you aware of how politics can operate, especially in struggling countries.

Steven Pressfield

A kind of unique little book on creativity and the obstacles to great creative expression. Really enjoyed this one, but may hit different for different people.

Suellio Almeida

Awesome book on (sim)racing. Suellio is a great teacher. The core concepts of mastering car-track combos are explained well in this book.

Valerie Roebuck (Translation)

Some of the most powerful writings available on earth. These are additions to the Hindu Vedsas and lay the foundation for Hinduism. For English translations also look for 'Dr. Max Müller'.

Dr. Max Müller (Translation)

Great unabridged translation of the Dhammapada. Probably one the purest ways to read the Dhammapada without having to learn Sanskrit.

St. John of the Cross

Classic Christian text.

David Godman

Q&A's with Indian teacher Ramana Maharshi. Questions are from casual conversations and mostly from Western visitors.

Maurice Frydman (Translator)

Transcripts of conversations with Indian teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj. He has a certain head-on, direct and abrupt way of teaching spiritual concepts. More akin to Zen.

Lao Tzu

The classic Taoist text.

Eknath Easwaran (Translation)

Translation and notes on the Dhammapada. The Dhammapada is a classic Buddhist text that collects sayings of the Buddha. Easwaran translates well and the book is accessible if you have no background in Buddhism.

Eknath Easwaran (Translation)

Translation and notes on the Upanishads. Like with the other books, Easwaran translates well and his books are accessible if you are not familiar with the texts.

Eknath Easwaran (Translation)

Translation and Easwaran's notes on the Gita. Written in a way that is accessible if you are not familiar with the Gita.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Autobiography of Paramahansa Yogananda.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.

William Buck (Translation)

Retelling of the Mahabharata. Probably a bit popularized, but accessible if you want to get a sense of classic Hindu texts.

William Buck (Translation)

Retelling of the Ramayana. Like with Buck's telling of the Mahabharata probably a bit popularized, but accessible if you want to get a sense of classic Hindu texts.

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

3 part series on the history of Zen Buddhism. Also contains many stories of Zen masters interacting with students.

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

3 part series on the history of Zen Buddhism.

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

3 part series on the history of Zen Buddhism.

John Blofeld (Translation)

Translation of a classic Zen teaching. Huang Po has a very direct approach that might be hard to get if you are not familiar with Zen.

Edwin Arnold (Translation)

One of the most powerful and fundamental books in Hinduism.

Red Pine (Translation)

English translation of Bodhidharma's teachings. Bodhidharma brought Zen Buddhism to China.