While a key goal of the blog is to talk in depth about particular books and ideas, I want to start with some very quick surveys. These are intended simply to mention books that I’ve found particularly insightful, thought-provoking, or interesting. I’m organizing them by topic into what I call the Renaissance Reader’s Library, playing off the concept of the Renaissance Man as a scholar whose interests bridge multiple disciplines. These posts will be different from my usuals in that they will be “living” documents, with new books added periodically.
In Finance & Economics, we can find books ranging from investment and industry overviews to more general concepts that apply tangentially to the business world. Note: most recently read books can be found at the top of the list.
Brandes on Value: The Independent Investor
Charles Brandes
Investor and entrepreneur Charles Brandes offers this book, which is not dissimilar from that of Brandes’ friend and mentor, Benjamin Graham. Graham, who first wrote The Intelligent Investor in the 1930s, is considered the godfather of “value investing”. Brandes’ book endorses many of the same positions, although it benefits particularly from charts (Graham died before Excel could be invented) and is written in a more accessible style. For those curious about value investing but intimidated by Graham, The Independent Investor is a great contemporary starting point.
Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics
Nicholas Wapshott
This book is a fine narrative summary of the 20th-century economic debates between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek, both during their lifetimes and after. For me it was a fantastic springboard that led me down a rabbit hole of works by both these economics titans (and gave me inspiration for future pieces).
The Road to Serfdom
Friedrich Hayek
I started my economics readings in earnest with Hayek’s best-known work. The Road to Serfdom is a comprehensive denunciation of socialism and centralized economic planning. Hayek openly admitted the book was “a political book”, but he was well-qualified to write it given his upbringing in Austria (then part of Hitler’s Third Reich). Written in the early 1940s, the book equally condemns fascist and communist systems, and finds little distinction between them, all while warning that many of the same ideas and impulses are equally found in the great democratic countries.
The Means to Prosperity
John Maynard Keynes
A pamphlet-length work written in the Great Depression, The Means to Prosperity addressed the world’s financial policy-makers, rather than Keynes’ fellow economists. As such, it is light on academic theory and heavy on policy prescriptions—including an alternative to the gold standard that would have expanded the global money supply.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
John Maynard Keynes
Intended as Keynes’ magnum opus, the work disappointed its own author, who admitted to as much in the preface. Nevertheless, it is a (mostly) clearly-stated foundation of basic macroeconomics as we know it. From whole cloth, Keynes derives concepts now required for most business students: aggregate demand and supply, the money multiplier, interest rates and their effects, etc.
Price & Production and other works
Friedrich Hayek
This collection of Hayek’s economic writings includes Prices & Production and The Paradox of Saving. Hayek’s complex economic framework is largely incompatible with that of Keynes, and he rejects many of Keynes’ presumptions. Hayek’s familiarity with economic literature shows through—while Keynes builds many of his concepts from scratch, Hayek clearly builds upon concepts advanced by other, less well-known economists.
The Fund
Rob Copeland
This book is about hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and its founder, Ray Dalio. It is highly critical of Dalio, who has become a sort of guru on finance and economic topics through his series of “Principles” and related books. The Fund describes the Principles as a myopic, self-referential system created by a single person, designed to reward assent with Dalio rather than the “radical transparency” that Dalio often touts. It suggests at sociopathic or delusional roots for Dalio’s behavior, and sheds a fascinating light on what Bridgewater was like to the people who worked there.
You Can Be a Stock Market Genius
Joel Greenblatt
We already have a few Greenblatt books on this list. As with the others, it is written in a brief and easy style, with plenty of examples from Greenblatt’s own investing experience. The theme of this book is “special situations” investing, covering corporate actions like restructuring, spinoffs, mergers, and the like.
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
Zeke Faux
Bloomberg reporter Zeke Faux gets deep into crypto in this book. He covers the shadowy institutions upon which the crypto-verse rests, the appalling crimes crypto made possible, and the extent of the hype that propped up the system. In many ways it reads like a mystery thriller, and it’s an outstanding piece of investigative journalism. Crypto skeptics will surely read it with a healthy feeling of schadenfreude.
Red Notice
Bill Browder
Red Notice is the last book that I read in virtually one sitting—starting at 1pm and putting it down around 9:30. I expect other readers will find it equally hard to put down, as Browder tells his extraordinary story in a vibrant and engaging style. The story itself is fascinating—detailing Browder’s work in Russia as an investor and his eventual conflict with high powers in the Putin regime. The sequel, Freezing Order, is also a great read.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
Burton Malkiel
Malkiel’s central point is a reality check for any would-be stock market sleuth: the surest path to investment success is from passive, not active strategies. Unpleasant as this is to ambitious ears, it still serves as a critical warning that the game we play is one with long odds.
The Price of Time
Edward Chancellor
British journalist Edward Chancellor takes a long view in examining interest rates, going back to Mesopotamia. He endorses the view that recent (2008-2021) rate policies in developed markets like the U.S. were dangerous, especially if continued for long periods of time. His holistic approach is a fascinating challenge to conventional monetary policy, drawing heavily on historical examples and unsung economists from across time and geography. It’s a well-written book that can inspire some level of indignation without itself appearing indignant.
21st Century Monetary Policy
Ben Bernanke
This was especially fascinating on the heels of reading The Price of Time. Bernanke, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, writes a recent history of monetary policy while taking for granted many of the tenets of modern monetary theory without much acknowledgement of the challenges posed by Chancellor’s work—even though Chancellor isn’t shy at mentioning Bernanke by name. The focus goes beyond Bernanke’s coverage of his own career in The Courage to Act, but still focuses significantly on responses to the financial crisis of 2008-09 and how monetary policy has evolved to become more transparent and more active over time.
Chip War
Chris Miller
This book is a fascinating overview of the challenges facing the semiconductor industry, but it starts at the beginning—with “what is a semiconductor, really?” This first-principles start helps catch up to speed industry novices (like me), and takes them through the history of chips from the Cold War onward. It’s a fascinating look at industry lifecycles, competition in action, successful and failing government involvements, and the geopolitical tensions that shape this industry today, especially around Taiwan.
Why Moats Matter: The Morningstar Approach to Stock Investing
Heather Brilliant/Elizabeth Collins
Full of sector-specific examples, this book details Morningstar’s unique “economic moat” methodology to assess competitive advantages. A helpful primer in thinking about what competitive advantages mean and how/where to find them.
Competition Demystified
Bruce Greenwald/Judd Kahn
This book gives a similar framework for competitive advantages as does Michael Porter’s Five Forces model, deconstructing the model to its simplest form and giving plenty of examples and case studies across several industries. I leaned on this work in my piece on competitive advantages, and found it an excellent resource.
When Genius Failed: The Rise & Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
Roger Lowenstein
LTCM failed in the late 1990s due to a “series of unfortunate events” related to their arbitrage strategies in several different markets. The book is a warning against excessive arrogance and aggressiveness, detailing the over-levered nature of LTCM’s investments, the personalities of the founders, and the over-reliance on complex mathematical models that delivered good returns—until they suddenly didn’t.
Never Split the Difference
Chris Voss
Former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss takes lessons from his career and distills them into the book on negotiation strategy. Whether in personal or professional conflicts, the tactics and tips in this book are thought-provoking and help to define negotiation as more emotional than purely dispassionate rationality would like to admit.
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
David Epstein
Across sports, music, science, and other fields, this book explores the trade-offs inherent between specialization at an early age and remaining a jack-of-all-trades. Its thought-provoking takes are applicable to raising children, planning a career, and thinking about what strengths you want to develop and hone.
The Most Important Thing
Howard Marks
I’ll be honest: after so many books by well-known and successful long-term investors, they start to all sound the same—after all, it’s the doing that is hard, not the knowing. The Most Important Thing isn’t immune from that, but the way Marks couches his thinking is still interesting, so this one merits a mention.
The End of the World is Just the Beginning
Peter Zeihan
Self-described “professional gist-er” Zeihan integrates demographic, agricultural, geographic, and geopolitical factors into this book, which ends up representing virtually a series of thought-out predictions. While his thinking is clear, some of his calls, like the expectation of a regime collapse in China, may feel a bit far-fetched. It’s still a fascinating read and helps give some framework for evaluating macro factors when thinking about the world.
Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order
Ray Dalio
This was an especially interesting one right on the heel’s of Zeihan’s book. Hedge fund founder Ray Dalio takes a different approach to forecasting the future, by looking at long-term financial and economic cycles that play out over centuries. His takes are often highly dissimilar from Zeihan’s, especially concerning China.