Book shelves · Emotional Truth Diaries

30 books on money and business

How money really works, how to start something of your own, and how others did it. Books that entrepreneurs, investors and creators keep on the nearest shelf.

30 books 3 shelves money · business · stories

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Our own selection, not financial advice. Years are of first publication.

How money works

Investing, risk and the economics of everyday life.

1
Warren Buffett’s favourite book on value investing.
2
Why most people can’t beat the market, and why index funds work.
3
A legendary fund manager on finding great companies in everyday life.
4
Buffett’s letters to shareholders, arranged by topic.
5
Pay yourself first, and make saving automatic.
6
Tony Robbins asks top investors about financial freedom.
7
A Nobel prize winner on why people make irrational money decisions.
8
Economics applied to unexpected questions, from cheating teachers to drug dealers.
9
How rare, unpredictable events shape our lives and markets.
10
The book that founded modern economics.

Your own business

From the first idea to a company that lasts.

11
Test ideas quickly and cheaply before you invest everything.
12
Why the best businesses create something new instead of copying.
13
Why most small businesses fail, and how to work on your business, not just in it.
14
Automation, outsourcing and mini-retirements instead of waiting for retirement.
15
Short, provocative rules for running a business without corporate nonsense.
16
Real stories of people who started a business with very little money.
17
How to create a market with no competition instead of fighting in a crowded one.
18
What made good companies great, based on years of research.
19
Honest advice on the hardest moments of running a company.
20
The rules one of the world’s biggest investors lives and works by.

Stories and marketing

How others did it, and how to be noticed.

21
Nike’s founder on starting out selling sneakers from the boot of his car.
22
The biography built on dozens of interviews with Jobs himself.
23
Warren Buffett’s life, from a boy selling gum to the world’s best-known investor.
24
How Musk built Tesla and SpaceX, and what it cost.
25
Why some ideas and products spread by word of mouth.
26
Marketing as serving the people you want to help, not shouting at everyone.
27
In a world full of ordinary, only the remarkable gets noticed.
28
How small things make ideas spread like epidemics.
29
Ten short lessons on creativity: nothing is completely original.
30
How to share your process so people can find you.