Sunday, October 22, 2017

Books

Amazon is retiring the aStore feature on October 27th. So I'll be adding as many titles as I can between now and then to this page, which will serve as the new recommended reading page once the aStore is retired. While I may not have time to get them all moved over in time, I'll at least add some of my favorites from each discipline, as well as all the business biographies, and then add and update everything else over time.

As of now, the order of the categories listed below are:

  • Investing
  • Thinking - Mental Models
  • Leadership
  • Business Biographies
  • Industry Books
    • Insurance
    • Banking
    • [more to come]
  • Psychology and Behavioral Economics
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Probability - Math - Statistics
  • [more to come]


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Investing

The Intelligent Investor

The Intelligent Investor (Revised Edition)

Security Analysis: The Classic 1934 Edition

Security Analysis: Sixth Edition


Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders (Kindle)

















100 to 1 in the Stock Market

100 Baggers

Creative Cash Flow Reporting


Financial Shenanigans

The Art of Short Selling

Fooled by Randomness





Thinking - Mental Models




A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes



Leadership

It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy


Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick

The Carolina Way: Leadership Lessons from a Life in Coaching




Business Biographies

Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep It Going

Men and Rubber: The Story of Business

Sam Walton: Made In America

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Andrew Carnegie

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist


Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

The Everything Store


Delivering Happiness


Creativity, Inc.

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire


Steve Jobs

In The Plex

A Curious Discovery

Be My Guest

Half Luck and Half Brains: The Kemmons Wilson, Holiday Inn Story

The Spirit to Serve Marriott's Way

Without Reservations: How a Family Root Beer Stand Grew into a Global Hotel Company

Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy

Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It


Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business

The King of Cash

Dream Big

Leading By Design: The Ikea Story

Sol Price Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator


Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace

I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford

My Years with General Motors

On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors: John Z. DeLorean's Look Inside the Automotive Giant


Once Upon a Car: The Fall and Resurrection of America's Big Three Automakers--GM, Ford, and Chrysler



Shaw Industries: A History

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It

Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism

Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's

McDonald's: Behind The Arches

In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules



Minding the Store

The Making of Harcourt General: A History of Growth Through Diversification 1922-1992

Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

A. P. Giannini: Banker of America

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs

American Express: The Unofficial History of the People Who Built the Great Financial Empire

Citibank, 1812-1970

What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett

Jim Clayton: First a Dream

The Pampered Chef

The Man from Zara

Confessions of an Advertising Man

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

Aiming High - A Biography of Masayoshi Son

Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty

Y. K. Pao: My Father

The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune

The Warburgs

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.

Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?: How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire

Mellon: An American Life

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

James J. Hill & The Opening of the Northwest

The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM

Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance

The Farmer from Merna: A Biography of George J. Mecherle and a History of the State Farm Insurance Companies of Bloomington, Illinois

Simon Marks: Retail Revolutionary

Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success

Ryanair: How a Small Irish Airline Conquered Europe

The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company

Comic Wars: Marvel's Battle For Survival

Ling: The Rise, Fall, and Return of a Texas Titan

King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone

The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America

Skygods: The Fall of Pan Am

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

Conspiracy of Fools


Beam, Straight Up: The Bold Story of the First Family of Bourbon


Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two

The Beer Monopoly: How brewers bought and built for world domination

The John Deere Way: Performance that Endures

Good to Great to Gone: The 60 Year Rise and Fall of Circuit City

Morgan: American Financier

The Rise and Fall of the Conglomerate Kings

The Making of a Blockbuster

Flameout: The Rise and Fall of Burger Chef

The King Of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of A Secret American Empire

Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion

Invisible Giants: The Empires of Cleveland's Van Sweringen Brothers

Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick

Against the Odds: An Autobiography - By James Dyson

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built

Habit of Labor: Lessons from a Life of Struggle and Success

Leadership Lessons from a UPS Driver: Delivering a Culture of We, Not Me

The HP Way

Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company

The Wawa Way: How a Funny Name and Six Core Values Revolutionized Convenience

Made to Order:: The Story of Sheetz

From Lucky to Smart: Leadership Lessons from QuikTrip

Daring to Succeed: How Alain Bouchard Built the Couche-Tard & Circle K Convenience Store Empire





Better Way to Build: A History of the Pankow Companies

Kiewit: An Uncommon Company

The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

Spark: How Old-Fashioned Values Drive a Twenty-First-Century Corporation: Lessons from Lincoln Electric's Unique Guaranteed Employment Program

Junk to Gold: From Salvage to the World’s Largest Online Auto Auction

Let My People Go Surfing

Broadlooms and Businessmen: A History of the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Company

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech

1,000 Dollars and an Idea: Entrepreneur to Billionaire

Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure

Limping on Water: My 40-Year Adventure with One of America's Outstanding Communications Companies




Industry Books

Insurance

Understanding the Insurance Industry (A.M. Best)

Invisible Bankers: Everything the Insurance Industry Never Wanted You to Know

Theory and Practice of Insurance

Financial Statement Analysis for Non-Financial Managers: Property and Casualty Insurance

Basic Concepts of Accounting and Taxation of Property/Casualty Insurance Companies

Fundamentals of Risk and Insurance (Vaughan)

Insurance Theory and Practice (Thoyts)

Insurance and Behavioral Economics: Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry


Banking

The Bank Director's Handbook

A History of Banking in the United States (Sumner)

A Blueprint for Better Banking: Svenska Handelsbanken and a proven model for more stable and profitable banking

Biography of a Bank: The Story of Bank of America 

Analyzing and Investing in Community Bank Stocks 

The Principles of Banking (Choudhry)



Psychology and Behavioral Economics

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo- Scientists, Lunatics, And The Rest Of Us Systematically Fail To Think Rationally

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious

Thinking and Deciding

Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences



Biology and Evolution

For an intro to all of biology, as opposed to the evolutionary focus of the majority of the books below, I recommend checking out The Great Courses, and the course Biology: The Science of Life.

From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books (Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals)

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution


The Selfish Gene

The Extended Phenotype

The Blind Watchmaker

River Out of Eden

The Ancestor's Tale

Climbing Mount Improbable

Unweaving the Rainbow

The Social Conquest of Earth

Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

The Gene: An Intimate History

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

Genetics: A Conceptual Approach
(Pierce)

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction


I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life



Physics

VIDEOS: Lectures by Walter Lewin

Mr Tompkins in Paperback

Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time

The Character of Physical Law 

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

The Feynman Lectures on Physics

E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation

Get a Grip on Physics

Basic Physics: A Self-Teaching Guide

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction

Thermodynamics For Dummies

Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life

Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics

Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down



Chemistry

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements



Probability - Math - Statistics

Taking Chances: Winning with Probability

Probability: A Very Short Introduction 

Probability: For the Enthusiastic Beginner

The Drunkard's Walk

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

How to Lie with Statistics

Naked Statistics

Math, Better Explained: Learn to Unlock Your Math Intuition

The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy