Rule #1

Phil Town, a former river guide who says he grew $1,000 into a million dollars within five years, lays out a stock-picking method built on Warren Buffett's first rule: do not lose money. The idea is to buy a company's shares only when its numbers and its intangibles favor the buyer. Town explains five key figures for choosing stocks, shows how online tools shorten the research, and argues that individual investors have advantages of their own. He aims to buy businesses for about half their worth, targeting annual returns of 15 percent or more for roughly 15 minutes of work a week. Released through Random House's Crown imprint, it climbed to number one on the New York Times best-seller list.

Trail Running Academy founder Robert Hajnal included it among his favourite books in an interview about his reading as an ultrarunner.