Books

Investment makes for some great books. Below is our (current) top 20

Book	Year	Comment
The Great Crash, Galbraith	1955	​​A classic (and short) account of the 1929 stock market crash
Manias, Panics and Crashes, Kindleberger	1978	A narrative and analysis of financial bubbles throughout history
Liar's Poker, Lewis	1989	There has to be a Michael Lewis book. He makes arcane business topics readable
Barbarians at the Gate, Burrough & Helyar	1989	Basically a thriller masquerading as a takeover guide to mergers and acquisitions
​Titan, Chernow	​1998	​​An extraordinary portrayal of a time in history using Rockefeller's life as narrative structure
​Simple but Not Easy, Oldfield	2007	​A really thoughtful, unpretentious and holistic book about investment
​The Snowball, Schroeder​	​2008	​There are lots of good books about Warren Buffett; this beats the Lowenstein biography by a nose
​​Return of Depression Economics, Krugman	​2008	​A Nobel prize winning Economist who writes well - a rare and winning combination
Lords of Finance, ​Ahmed	2009​	A behemoth narrating the history of global economies 1920-1938. Emerges that Keynes wasn't thick...
​​​Too Big to Fail, Sorkin	2009	Frenzied narrative account of the Financial Crisis ​​​
Steve Jobs, Isaacson	2011	​An account of Apple's rise and study of an extraordinary/odd bloke for the price of one
The Outsiders, Thorndike	2012	Cracking read profiling a successful CEO per chapter and analysing their success
​Private Empire, Coll	2012	Not a light read but worth it. Charts oil exploration over a half century with Exxon as the villain
The Everything Store, Stone	2013	Biography of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. It's premature but will do until a seminal tome appears
Dear Chairman, Gramm	2016	​A delightful book featuring different historic business episodes each chapter
The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Gordon	2016	​Not light reading, but stimulating piece of scholarship whether you agree or disagree
Black Edge, Kolhatkar	2017	Account of insider dealing at the SAC hedge fund. A "mini" version appeared in the New Yorker here
Crashed, Tooze	2018	Sorkin's book on the financial crisis is great and readable. This is a dense, grown-up version
Invisible Women, ​Criado	2019	This isn't a perfect book at all, but some jaw-dropping passages
Shortest History of Economics, Leigh	2024	Not one for the snobs, but remarkably concise and entertaining.

Honourable mentions to:

Book	Year	Comment
Grinding it Out, Kroc	1977	​- The story of McDonald's by founder, Ray Kroc, who launched it aged 52.
Andrew Carnegie, Nasaw	2007	Similar book to Titan. Will take a year of your life to read both
The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, Augar	2008	​Cracking tale/study that's part history, part culture and part business
This Time is Different, Rogoff & Reinhart	2011	A "grown-up" book getting underneath the data of global debt through the ages
Shoe Dog, Knight	2016	​Memoir by founder of Nike. Very, very good. Something just missing. Not sure what
Capitalism in America, Greenspan & Woolridge	2018	Half history, half polemic. The history half is mesmeric
What It Takes, Schwarzman	2019	Top business memoir with an amusing lack of self-effacement
The Great Demographic Reversal, Goodhart & Pradhan	2020	Compelling prediction on "the future." It might turn out to be nonsense...if not, goes in the top list!
The World for Sale, Blas & Farchy ​	2021	​A "rip-snorter" detailing some jaw-dropping commodity transactions over time
The Power Law, Mallaby	2022	History of the venture capital industry. They got a bit lucky on Apple...
For Profit: A History of Corporations, Magnuson	2022	Each chapter is a profile of a different corporate through the ages - hits and misses.
​Bad Blood, Carreyrou	2018	​A rattling good yarn. It's "The Way We Live Now" but this actually happened