Below is a categorized list of books that have helped us think about companies and investments over the years. Micawber may receive a commission on purchases made through these links.
- INVESTING
- STRATEGY
- BEHAVIOR/RISK/PSYCHOLOGY
- ACCOUNTING/SHORTSELLING
- BIOGRAPHIES/COMPANY HISTORIES
- HISTORY/MARKET HISTORY
- GENERAL
| Investing | |
|---|---|
| Security Analysis | Benjamin Graham |
| The Intelligent Investor | Benjamin Graham |
| Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits | Philip A. Fisher |
| The Little Book That Beats the Market | Joel Greenblatt |
| The Little Book That Builds Wealth | Pat Dorsey |
| Value Investing | Bruce Greenwald |
| The Essays of Warren Buffett | Lawrence Cunningham |
| Capital Returns | Edward Chancellor |
| Capital Account | Edward Chancellor |
| Margin of Safety | Seth Klarman |
Price is what you pay, value is what you get.
Warren Buffett
| Strategy | |
|---|---|
| Competitive Strategy | Michael Porter |
| Understanding Michael Porter | Joan Magretta |
| The Innovator’s Dilemma | Clayton Christensen |
| Competition Demystified | Bruce Greenwald |
| Billion Dollar Lessons | Paul Carroll |
| Business Adventures | John Brooks |
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
Michael Porter
| Behavior/Risk/Psychology | |
|---|---|
| More Than You Know | Michael Mauboussin |
| The Success Equation | Michael Mauboussin |
| Fooled by Randomness | Nassim Taleb |
| The Black Swan | Nassim Taleb |
| Antifragile | Nassim Taleb |
| Influence | Robert Cialdini |
| Thinking in Bets | Annie Duke |
| Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman |
We are busy surviving, herding, fixating on what just happened, and being overconfident!
Joel Greenblatt
| Accounting/Shortselling | |
|---|---|
| Financial Shenanigans | Howard Schilit |
| Quality of Earnings | Thornton O’Glove |
| Dead Companies Walking | Scott Fearon |
| The Art of Profitability | Adrian Slywotzky |
| The Art of Shortselling | Kathryn Staley |
| Financial Warnings | Charles Mulford |
| Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less | Bob Fifer |
| Fooling Some of the People All of the Time | David Einhorn |
Aggressive accounting does not mean illegal accounting.
Ken Lay, former CEO and Chairman of Enron
| Biographies/Company Histories | |
|---|---|
| Cable Cowboy | Mark Robichaux |
| The Outsiders | William Thorndike, Jr. |
| Dream Big | Cristiane Correa |
| The Snowball | Alice Schroeder |
| Damn Right! | Janet Lowe |
| Made in America | Sam Walton |
| Shoe Dog | Phil Knight |
| A Man for All Markets | Edward Thorp |
| Am I Being Too Subtle? | Sam Zell |
| The Everything Store | Brad Stone |
| How Google Works | Eric Schmidt |
| Bitter Brew | William Knoedelseder |
| Quench Your Own Thirst | Jim Koch |
For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.
Seneca
| History/Market History | |
|---|---|
| Washington | Ron Chernow |
| Hamilton | Ron Chernow |
| The House of Morgan | Ron Chernow |
| Lords of Finance | Liaquat Ahamed |
| Einstein | Walter Isaacson |
| The Big Short | Michael Lewis |
| Liar’s Poker | Michael Lewis |
| When Genius Failed | Roger Lowenstein |
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
| General | |
|---|---|
| Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field | Nancy Forbes |
| Weapons of Math Destruction | Cathy O’Neil |
| How to Read a Book | Mortimer Adler |
| Maritime Economics | Martin Stopford |
| The Business of Media Distribution | Jeffrey Ulin |
| Moonwalking with Einstein | Joshua Foer |
| The Master Algorithm | Pedro Domingos |
| Bad Blood | John Carreyrou |
You have to learn all the big ideas in the key disciplines in a way that they’re in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life
Charlie Munger