Reading List

I’m reading David Brook’s “Second Mountain.”

We spend the majority of our lives – we get out of school, we build a career, we save and invest – climbing the first mountain with the goals that our culture endorses. We seek success and personal happiness. We get to the top of the first mountain, as the story goes, to discover the unsatisfying nature of personal achievement. We discover there is another, bigger, mountain to climb. And thus begins the real journey of a lifetime.

Our personal happiness and the significance of our lives depends on our surrendering our natural self-centeredness and adopting an other-centeredness. We must embrace interdependence and commit to something… not ourselves.

Mindful Money – broadly sharing basic financial education and presenting the simple actions that enable and inspire wealth-building – is my second mountain. This is the purpose of the reading list below. These are the core books that have helped me establish my own set of financial beliefs and behaviors that can work for anyone who is climbing their own mountains.

Personal Finance:

• The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Roadmap to Financial Independence and a Rich Free Life – JL Collins
• The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness  – Morgan Housel
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program That Works – Ramit Sethi
• Tipped: The life changing guide to financial freedom for waitresses, bartenders, strippers, and all other service industry professionals – Barbara Sloan
• Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life – John C. Bogle & Bill Clinton (forward)
• The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds – Michael Lewis

Investing:

• Little Book of common sense investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns – John C. Bogle, L.J. Ganser, et al.
• The Investment Answer: Learn to Manage Your Money & Protect Your Financial Future – Gordon Murray, Daniel C. Goldie, et al.
• The BogleHeads Guide to Investing – Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer and Michael LeBoeuf
• The FAMA Portfolio: Selected Papers of Eugene F. Fama (very technical) – Eugene Fama, John H. Cochrane, et al.
• Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long-Term Investment Strategies – Jeremy Siegel
• The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book On Value Investing – Benjamin Graham & Jason Zweig

Money History:

• Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929 – Maury Klein
• Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1938 – John Brooks
• The Go Go Years: The Drama and Crashing Finale of Wall Street’s Bullish 60s – John Brooks
• Dot.con: How America Lost It’s Mind in the Internet Era – John Cassidy
• American Sucker – David Denby
• When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management – Roger Lowenstein
• A History of the United States in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation – Scott Nations
• Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation – Edward Chancellor
• An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power – John Steele Gordon
• The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy – Daniel Yergin & Joseph Stanislaw

Money Biography:

• Morgan: American Financier – Jean Strouse
• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. – Ron Chernow
• The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life – Alice Schroeder
• Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist – Roger Lowenstein

Money in the context of life:

• Mindful Money: Simple Practices for Reaching Your Financial Goals and Increasing Your Happiness Dividend – Jonathan DeYoe
• Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life – Laura Nash & Howard Stevenson
• Money and the Meaning of Life – Jacob Needleman
• The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources – Lynne Twist
• Natural Capitalism – Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins, & L. Hunter Lovins

Family and Money:

• Family Wealth: Keeping In in the Family – How Family Members and Their Advisors Preserve Human, Intellectual, and Financial Assets for Generations – James E. Hughes Jr.
• Preparing Heirs: Five Steps to a Successful Transition of Family Wealth and Values – Roy Williams & Vic Preisser
• Wealth in Families – Charles W. Collier
• Silver Spoon Kids: How Successful Parents Raise Responsible Children – Eileen Gallo, Jon Gallo, et al.
• Raising Financially Fit Kids – Joline Godfrey

Long-term positive trends:

• The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves – Matt Ridley
• Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future – Johan Norberg
• Abundance: The Future is Better Than Your Think – Steven Kotler & Peter H. Diamandis

Thinking/Writing:

• Poor Charlie’s Almanac: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger – Peter D. Kaufman & Warren E. Buffet
• The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles  – Steven Pressfield
• Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life’s Work – Steven Pressfield
• Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us – Seth Godin
• The Practice: Shipping Creative Work – Seth Godin
• Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur – Derek Sivers
• Hell Yeah or NO: What’s Worth Doing – Derek Sivers
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action – Simon Sinek