Best Trading Books for Entrepreneurs, CEOs and Freelancers

Here are some of the guests and some of their books, in no particular order. I recommend all of the below books. If I didn't like a book, I wouldn't have them on the show.

James Altucher

Founder/StockPickr

"Collins briefed Amazon executives on his seminal management book before its publication. Companies must confront the brutal facts of their business, find out what they are uniquely good at, and master their fly wheel, in which each part of the business reinforces and accelerates the other parts," Stone writes.

Jeff Bezos

CEO/Amazon

It's important that we make this transformation, because of what Clayton Christensen calls "the innovator's dilemma," where people who invent something are usually the last ones to see past it, and we certainly don't want to be left behind.

Steve Jobs

Founder/Apple

Gladwell is not the first person to come up with the 10,000 hour rule. Nor is he the first person to document what it takes to become the best in the world at something.

But his stories are so great as he explains these deep concepts.

How did the Beatles become the best? Why are professional hockey players born in January, February and March?

And so on.

James Altucher

Founder/StockPickr

Google co-founder Larry Page has listed this book as one of his favorites.

Larry Page

Co-Founder/Google

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

This book is built around the brilliant insight that your prospect doesn't care nearly as much about what you do as you do, and thus you must boil down your offering into a unique slot that repositions the competition.

Seth Godin

Author & Entrepreneur

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

CEO Marilyn Hewson recommends this book because it helped her to trust her instincts in business.

Marillyn Hewson

CEO/Lockheed Martin

Bill McDermott has had a hugely successful career—from Xerox to SAP. In this very human book, he describes the secrets that led to this success.

Jack Welch

CEO / General Electric

Gotta say, I'm pretty flattered every time asks me if I've read @AdamMGrant book Give and Take. Good guy. Good book

Simon Sinek

Best-selling Author

My professional path – copywriting – somehow intertwines with my unprofessional (hahaha) path – writing so I would recommend reading literature for both. Somehow reading and writing are two ways of doing the same thing: storytelling (even when you read you tell yourself a story in your own voice, bringing your personal emotion and empathy to the story you’re reading). The only difference is that when I’m reading, panic is far away from me, in a safe place. Nevertheless, the words below helped me rewrite and think twice before adding an exclamation point: On Writing by Stephen King.

Alina Varlanuta

Creator/The Hole in Your Head

To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must provide the emotional discipline.

Warren Buffett

CEO/Berkshire Hathaway

This book makes artificial intelligence easier to understand by recasting it as a new, cheap commodity--predictions. It's a brilliant move. I found the book incredibly useful.

Kevin Kelly

Co-Founder/Wired

Recommended by Ola Olusoga (Co-founder/Populum)

Source: Interview with Ola Olusoga: How Books Have Guided His Path To Self-Discovery

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Suggested by Daymond John on page 324 in Tools of Titans.

Daymond John

Founder/FUBU

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

For too long, stat geeks like me ignored the 'development' side of 'scouting and development.' The MVP Machine is the book that's going to change that. Travis Sawchik and Ben Lindbergh persuasively and entertainingly demonstrate that a baseball player's success is less about God-given talent and more about innovation, hard work, and the willingness to take a more scientific approach to the game. Read it, and you won't think about baseball in quite the same way again.

Nate Silver

Founder & Editor-in-Chief/FiveThirtyEight

Of the five books I finished over vacation, the one that impressed me the most – and that is probably of broadest interest – is Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by science writer Joshua Foer. This is an absolutely phenomenal book that looks at memory and techniques for dramatically improving memory. Foer actually mastered these techniques, which led him to the finals of the U.S. Memory Championship. His book gives fascinating insights into how the mind works.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Recommended by Ola Olusoga (Co-founder/Populum)

Source: Interview with Ola Olusoga: How Books Have Guided His Path To Self-Discovery

Jack Schwager simply writes the best books about trading I've ever read. These interviews always give me a lot to think about. If you like learning about traders and trading, you'll find that reading this book is time well spent.

Richard Dennis

Trader, President/The Dennis Trading Group, Inc.

It’s incredible how he almost single-handedly took a third world country and built it into a first-world country in one generation.

Will Shu

Founder/Deliveroo

In my opinion this book is one of the best investment books ever and I highly recommend it to everyone who is interested in stock and commodity trading. The book is a biography of Jesse Livermore who is such an interesting character and the book is full of insights and advice while you learn about the crazy life of Jesse Livermore.

Michael Hebenstreit

Founder/MH Themes

You might think you don’t want to read a whole book about shipping containers. And Levinson is pretty self-aware about what an unusual topic he chose. But he makes a good case that the move to containerized shipping had an enormous impact on the global economy and changed the way the world does business. And he turns it into a very readable narrative. I won’t look at a cargo ship in quite the same way again.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

This novel is the second book in a great saga detailing the intense competition between two shipping magnates and their battle over the gateway to China: the very lucrative island of Hong Kong. Set in the tumultuous period during which the British had seized Hong Kong before it was known as England’s crown jewel, it is an exciting and fun ride detailing Hong Kong as a melting pot of political and economic interests with no shortage of intrigue. It’s a must read for sure.

Alan Pierce

CEO/Ansuz Balder Magni Investments

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

This insightful book blends academic rigor with practical, step-by-step tools that can help you design innovative business models for the Networked Age. Connected Strategy shows how to leverage continuous connectivity and emerging AI to make deep relationships that benefit customers and businesses alike. Read this book if you want to build a business model of the future.

Reid Hoffman

Co-Founder/LinkedIn

Chaos Monkeys was a fun one that I read recently. About kind of M&A, and growing a business in Silicon Valley over the last five years.

Mike Dudas

Co-founder/Button

A copy from 1903 of this book is my most prized possession.

Andra Zaharia

Freelance Content Marketer/The Content Habit

Ruimin cites Shirky's book as another example of contemporary thought leadership influencing Haier's direction. In the book, Shirky offers examples of companies which have thrived in the absence of traditional organizational structures. The ideas have clearly influenced Ruimin. He tells strategy business: We used to have a pyramid-style structure for our sales in China. The people in charge of sales had to manage business at the national, provincial, and city levels. After the arrival of the internet age, we realized that under this triangular hierarchical structure, people had a difficult time adapting to the requirements of the times. So we reorganized ourselves as an entrepreneurial platform. We flattened everything out, taking out all the middle management. We decentralized the structure to one with more than 2,800 counties. Each county organization has seven people or fewer.

Zhang Ruimin

CEO/Haier Group

I recently read “The Book of Joy”. It’s a series of dialogues between Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu (beautifully narrated in the audio version). They share their view on living a happy life in the face of adversity. The book brought profound clarity on topics like compassion, gratitude, generosity, and it deeply resonated with my worldview. If there’s one book you end up reading from my list, I hope it’s this one.

Bogdan Lucaciu

CTO/Adore Me

Not exactly a business related book but to me the concepts and lessons highlighted within are highly relatable in the business world such as the value of patience in striking at the right market timing and also reading the price tape which equates to understand the flow of the market your business is in in order to better deal with it and grow as a business.

Aviers Lim

CEO/Gashub

Options Volatility Trading by Adam Warner also had a major impact on me because I have always been into investing and until this book I never quite understood the specific strategies behind making money when the market goes up OR down. I was familiar with short selling but wanted to explore option contracts so right after college a good friend gave me this book. I read it immediately and began putting what I learned into practice.

James Murphy

Marketing Manager/Live Nation

I remember reading this shocking book and thinking, holy shit. This book will make you sick.

Charlie Munger

Vice Chairman/Berkshire Hathaway

Recommended by Fabrice Grinda (Serial Entrepreneur, Investor)

Source: Serial Entrepreneur & Investor Fabrice Grinda Reads Almost 100 Books Each Year

As a speculator I learned to take the best from books and ideas without arguments (many readers seem to be training to be shallow critics)--good insights are hard to come by. One does not find these in the writings of a journalist. There are some things personal to the author that might be uninteresting to some, but I take the package. The man is one of the greatest traders in history. There are a few jewels in there.

The man did it. I'd rather listen to him than read better written but hollow prose from some journalist-writer.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Flaneur

If you want to get into stock trading or in case you want to become an investor, then I definitely would recommend to read the book I already mentioned and in addition: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel.

Michael Hebenstreit

Founder/MH Themes

For those interested in the stock markets ~G.C Selden's 1912 (yes 1912!!) The Psychology of the Stock Market. Human emotions and thought processes remain the same. Greed and fear. Even though my business is in fitness and wellness most of the books are pretty awful and I haven't been influenced by individuals in this sphere. i keep hearing younger trainers talking about bodybuilders and their online presence, videos, etc but that doesn't interest me. No I haven't watched Pumping Iron. There are some very good marketers to be sure such as Pat Rigsby and Ryan Lee who I have bought material from but no book per se has influenced this career.

David Sisk

Founder/David Sisk Fitness

There are lots of books on aspiring to something. Very little are from actual people who aspired, achieved, and lost it. With each and every successful move that he made, Jim Paul, who made it to Governor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was convinced that he was special, different, and exempt from the rules. Once the markets turned against his trades, he lost it all — his fortune, job, and reputation. That’s what makes this book a critical part in understanding how letting arrogance and pride get to your head is the beginning of your unraveling. Learn from stories like this instead of by your own trial and error. Think about that next time you believe you have it all figured out. (Tim Ferriss recently produced the audiobook version of this, which I recommend.)

Ryan Holiday

Founder/Brass Check

I’m currently reading Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture: What the World's Wildest Trade Show Can Tell Us About the Future of Entertainment by Robert Salkowitz. I want to learn more about how I can create a diehard fan base that loves and is passionate about our brands and will support us all the way. During our latest IT’S THE SHIP 2017 festival, we had 8 guests that got our IT’S THE SHIP tattoos on their bodies – this shows that this festival has and will continue to impact people’s lives. I want to try and implement similar things like this for all of our events.

Iqbal Ameer

Co-Founder/Livescape Group

I am relieved to finally find a book that deals with Black Swan Events in a new way. Ayache brings a reverse-probabilistic perspective: instead of considering that a price is the result of probabilistically derived expectation, he reverses the issues and investigates these artificial constructs as "probabilities" and "expectations" as secondary, derived, fictitious concepts that we bring about to explain prices, decisions, and other things.

This, of course, is just the beginning, so one has to be understanding about the speculative aspect of the effort --so view this as a gutsy look at the "end of probability" and how we will need to envision the world once we get rid of this artificial, antiquated tool. I am also glad to see that those of us trained in the trading of options can have views original enough to influence the philosophy of probability and the philosophical understanding of contingency.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Flaneur

"[The book is] a collection of memos to employees by the chairman of the now defunct investment bank Bear Stearns," Stone writes. "In his memos, Greenberg is constantly restating the bank's core values, especially modesty and frugality."

Jeff Bezos

CEO/Amazon

Recommended by Audrey Russo (President & CEO/Pittsburgh Technology Council)

Source: Audrey Russo, President & CEO of Pittsburgh Technology Council, Has an Active Reading List of 20 Books at a Time

If you want to get into stock trading or in case you want to become an investor, then I definitely would recommend to read the book I already mentioned and in addition: The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett.

Michael Hebenstreit

Founder/MH Themes

With deep reporting and narrative flair, Leonard has rendered a revealing portrait of the Koch family as ruthless businessmen and savvy political operatives who quietly built an empire and defined the face of American capitalism and its hold on Washington over the last fifty years.

William Cohan

Author of House of Cards

Sam Anderson is a visionary artist who sees what others can’t; he’s a master wordsmith who creates beauty and light from confusion and plunging darkness; he's our tour guide to a better tomorrow because he understands a complex and foundational history that is our launching pad to new and unexplored universes.

Bill Walton

Basketball Player/TV Sportscaster/Author

Brian Gunia is an expert on negotiating, and he does something unusual here: he offers insights about bargaining that are both novel and useful.

Adam Grant

Author

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

The entire company has organized around "Playing to Win" which is a book written by A.G. Lafley and a colleague of his.

Listen, there are many ways to deploy strategy in companies. This is one I found to be particularly helpful because organizations have a lot of trouble making decisions, particularly at our scale.

So this notion of where to play, what countries, what market segments, what products, and where not to play because we can't do it profitably, has been a very good discipline. ...

And then once you determine where you're going to play, how to win. That is through a combination of where you are going to excel versus competitors.

It's actually been a really good common framework that we can apply across HP. It's easily understandable and actually forces the tough trade-offs.

Meg Whitman

CEO/HP

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

When the history of the climate crisis is written, Hansen will be seen as the scientist with the most powerful and consistent voice calling for intelligent action to preserve our planet's environment.

Al Gore

Founder/Alliance for Climate Protection

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

John Bogle's The Clash of the Cultures is another recommendation from the 2012 [Buffett's] shareholder letter.

Warren Buffett

CEO/Berkshire Hathaway

Recommended by Francisco Perez Mackenna (CEO/Quineñco)

Source: Books CEOs Will Be Reading This Summer

I read this book after completing my exposition of overcompensation, how a stressor or a random event causes an increase in strength, in excess of what is needed, like a redundancy. I was also looking for evidence of convex reaction to stressor, or the effect of a mathematical property called Jensen's inequality in domains and found it exposed here (in other words, why a combination low dose (most of the time) and high dose (rarely) beats medium dose all the time. The authors presents the evidence for the phenomenon in the following: 1) acute stressors cum recovery beat both absence of stressors and chronic ones (this includes thermal variations); 2) stressors make one stronger (post traumatic growth); 3) risk management is mediated by the deep structures in us, not rational decision-making; 4) winning causes an increase in strength (the latter are more complicated effects of convexity/Jensen's Inequality).

Great book. I ignored the connection to financial markets while reading it. But I learned that when under stress, one should seek the familiar.

Bravo!

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Flaneur

It is unbelievably riveting. It does that thing where at the end of every chapter it leaves you just enough we're like "aah!" and you have to read the first paragraph of the next chapter and then before you know it is a downward spiral and you end up finishing this book. Took me four days to get through this.

Casey Neistat

Founder/368 Creative Space

Barton's interest in this book is clear, given the recent political turmoil in the European Union (EU), which threatens trade and global integration. Identifying the commonalities in culture and heritage among Europeans, Green argues that Europe's peoples should see each other as countrymen rather than rivals; yet citizens of the different countries still cling to their national identities, and across the continent, there are growing nationalist movements (as suggested by Brexit) which rejects involvement with the European Union and seeks to reestablish borders and protectionist trade policies.

Dominic Barton

CEO/McKinsey

Niall Ferguson's The Square and the Tower brilliantly illuminates the great power struggle between networks and hierarchies that is raging around the world today. As a software engineer steeped in the theory and practice of networks, I was deeply impressed by this book's insights. Silicon Valley needed a history lesson and Ferguson has provided it.

Eric Schmidt

CEO/Google

My professional path – copywriting – somehow intertwines with my unprofessional (hahaha) path – writing so I would recommend reading literature for both. Somehow reading and writing are two ways of doing the same thing: storytelling (even when you read you tell yourself a story in your own voice, bringing your personal emotion and empathy to the story you’re reading). The only difference is that when I’m reading, panic is far away from me, in a safe place. Nevertheless, the words below helped me rewrite and think twice before adding an exclamation point: Self-editing for Fiction Writers.

Alina Varlanuta

Creator/The Hole in Your Head

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

I've always believed that students should learn their trade from the masters--but there are times when you can't just follow what's come before. Marc Ecko designed his future while putting his own spin on history. He's fearless, and he built his brand out of his love of art and pop culture, without being seduced by nostalgia. Marc may have been inspired by Star Wars, but he made it his own – and no one has made Star Wars cooler than Ecko. His unique vision became a global force in fashion. For art and execution, this is the text book I wish I could have bought in college.

George Lucas

Founder/Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic

This is an immense science fiction space opera which came out in 1992. It covers a lot of themes including AI, aliens, love, betrayal, genocide, and racism. I found the book spectacular in its scale and detail, and original in its ‘zones of thought’ concept, where the galaxy is split into four zones, each with their own laws of physics. There's also the unusual ‘Tines’ race, where each animal is comprised of a group mind of 3 – 5 members.

Benjamin Humphrey

CEO & Co-Founder/DoveTail

Recommended by Marvin Liao (Partner/500 Startups)

Source: Book-Talk with Marvin Liao, Partner at 500 Startups, Avid Reader & Tsundoku

If Seth Godin didn't exist we'd need to invent him.

Alan Webber

Founder/Fast Company

Wall Street"-esque battle between Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn over unlikely target Herbalife. Sip a delicious Herbal Aloe Shake while reading.

Marc Andreessen

Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz

These are sources I found fascinating and useful. Not ALL of them, but a bunch. First up, obviously... Svetlana Alexievich's Voices From Chernobyl. Absolutely essential, and heartbreaking, reading. There's a reason Ms. Alexievich has a Nobel Prize.

Craig Mazin

Creator, Writer, Producer/Chernobyl TV Series

Recommended by Vincent Pugliese (Author & Professional Photographer)

Source: The Books that Helped Vincent Pugliese, Author & Professional Photographer, Turn from Employee to Business Owner

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Iain Robertson takes a deep dive into the international art market, in an account that is both impressive in its depth and breadth. He explains the processes by which art is created and valued within the socio-economic context of post-war consumerist society, with a painstakingly curated choice of art and artists from around the world and across the centuries. This is a must-read for anyone involved in the art trade, as well as the casual reader curious about how a single painting can be valued at more than $250 million

Sundaram Tagore

Owner/Sundaram Tagore Galleries

Fun though older book.

Vinod Khosla

Co-Founder/Sun Microsystem

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

I just finished reading The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention by William Rosen. It focuses on the Industrial Revolution basically from the Newcomen atmospheric engine in 1712 to the Stephen Rocket Locomotive in 1850. It does a great job of explaining how thousands of innovations were driven during this period by many elements coming together: increased literacy, patents, societies, scientist/tinkerers, the cotton industry, trade/shipping, measurement, etc. It is a great book although its helps to have an interest in how steam engines actually work since it chronicles how they changed over time in some depth. This book is very worthwhile, and I’ll have more to say about it also in a longer review.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

James O’Toole’s clear-eyed assessment of the history of ‘enlightened capitalism’ is a must-read for any business leader serious about shaping its future--and thus our own.

Jay Coen Gilbert

Co-Founder/B Lab

If you live in San Francisco or have interest in the city, you have to read this book. It's non-fiction that reads like fiction and covers the city's most radical period of change in the 60s and 70s.

Lynn Perkins

CEO/Urbansitter

The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin had the biggest impact on my thinking and viewpoint towards decision making.

Among many other themes, the book stressed the idea that successful leaders (the top 10%) had one distinguishing characteristic: they took traditional two-option decisions (both with pros and cons) and found a winning alternative, we’ll call it C. The winning alternative (C) comes from creative thought and generally minimizes the cons while maximizing the pros of any option. This kind of thinking had a profound impact on my decision making outcomes.

Boban Dedovic

Serial Entrepreneur

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

One of the shorter, fun books I read this summer is A Nation of Wusses: How America’s Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great. It’s by Ed Rendell, who was district attorney, mayor of Philadelphia and then two-term governor of Pennsylvania. If you’ve heard him speak or seen him on TV, you know he’s a colorful and outspoken observer of political life in the U.S. No surprise, then, that this book is colorful too,with lots of great stories. His theme is that leaders shouldn’t just tell people what they want to hear. But because politics has become so intensely partisan, too often our political leaders seem to be afraid to tell us the truth and to actually lead us in making the hard choices we need to face up to, on issues like education reform and the federal deficit. As a mayor and governor, Rendell faced up to some very messed-up budget situations and made some smart trade-offs. I thought his point of view was really refreshing. He makes a good point about how politics has changed in ways that make it harder for leaders to emerge and to truly lead.

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Recommended by Bogdana Butnar (Head of Strategy/Poke)

Source: Bogdana Butnar - The Ultimate Books to Read List

Can't wait to start reading Niall Ferguson's new book, Civilization, The West and the Rest. Bet lots to think about.

Rupert Murdoch

CEO/News Corporation

Just because I didn’t want this list to be all stuffy old classics, I thought I’d put this interesting (and unofficial) biography of Jay-Z on here. This is a biography that also functions as a business book. It shows how Jay applied hustling techniques to the music business and eventually built his empire.

Ryan Holiday

Founder/Brass Check

For those interested in starting their career as investment bankers like I did, I’d highly recommend reading Young Money by Kevin Roose before joining. There are tons of people who go into the industry and truly hate it, but I’d argue that reading this book and/or talking with others in the industry beforehand will prepare you for the reality of what life can be like

Deepak Chhugani

Founder/The Lobby

"My father recommended this book long ago,” says Nadella of the 1944 classic by a Hungarian-American writer who chronicles the development of England’s market economy and argues that society should drive economic change.

Satya Nadella

CEO/Microsoft

Booker T. Washington’s memoir Up from Slavery [is] incredibly moving and inspiring as well.

Ryan Holiday

Media Strategist, Author, Founder/Brass Check

Recommended by Eric Weinstein (Managing Director/Thiel Capital)

Source: Eric Weinstein on Twitter

Recommended by Bryan Callen (Co-Host/The Fighter and the Kid)

Source: Top Three Must Reads: Bryan Callen

Recommended by Noah Kagan (Founder/Sumo)

Source: The 18 Books That Changed My Life

Recommended by Ryan Holiday (Founder/Brass Check)

Source: 24 Books To Hone Your Strategic Mind

In his 2014 shareholder letter, Buffett recommended reading this book over listening to the advice of most financial advisers.

Warren Buffett

CEO/Berkshire Hathaway

Re-reading a classic :)

Ovidiu Drugan

Owner/Set Sail Nautic School

One of the very few books I think about all the time is Robert Wright’s Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.

Nonzero is an intriguing lens through which to view current events (which is why it’s often in my thoughts). As Chopra notes, cooperation isn’t always the norm…Trumpist Republicans and Brexit proponents are both veering towards the zero sum end of the spectrum and I don’t think it will work out well for either country in the long run.

Jason Kottke

Blogger & Designer

In this hyper networked world remade fresh every day, with new perils and new opportunities, there is one book to be sure to read: Joshua Ramo's new book, a masterpiece, The Seventh Sense. To understand the tsunami of the networked age, you need history, biography, tech, philosophy, politics--and you want a book that has a depth beyond whatever else you could be streaming, podcasting, or wiki-ing. This is that book.

Reid Hoffman

Founder/LinkedIn