Great Books Distilled: Books by History's Greatest Innovators, Founders, and Investors

The page is a reading list sharing the best books written by history's greatest innovators, founders, and investors. This is a reading list for people who don’t have time for unimportant books—which should be everyone. I only list the best books I've read and recommend.

All Book Summaries

For the best books that I read, I go through the painstaking effort to put together and publish my personal notes including highlights, excerpts, and takeaways. You get the best 5% of the ideas in these books in a form that takes 20 minutes at most to read.

Great Books by Category

These are the best books to read, listed by category. Along with a few collections of rare and hard-to-find speeches, lectures, talks, interviews, letters, and memos that are a great way to go deeper.

30 Days to Better Traction & Results: A simple step-by-step guide for achieving more each day.

  • Take the guesswork out of achieving more. 11 email lessons walk you through the first 30 days of peak performance practices step-by-step, so you know  exactly what to do.
  • Get the tools and strategies you need to take action. The course includes a 20-page PDF workbook (including templates and cheatsheets), plus new examples and applications that you won’t find elsewhere.
  • Learn a framework that works for any goal. You can use this course to help you achieve any goal — from getting fit to daily meditation. Everything I share is time tested and science backed.

Enroll in the free email course.
Get your first lesson today.

SUBSCRIBED

Thanks for subscribing! You’re all set.

You’ll be notified every time I share a new post.

Something went wrong while submitting the form. Please try again.

You will get one short email every three days for a month.
You can unsubscribe any time.

Daniel Scrivner

Best Investing Books

Looking for good books on investing? This is my list of the best investing books of all-time. If you only have time to read one or two books, I recommend looking at the Top Investing Books section below.

You can also find recently released books that are worth your attention in the New and Notable section. I try to carefully curate all of my reading lists and you can be sure that any investing book on this page is worth your time. Enjoy!

On This Page


New and Notable

This section features recently released books that are worth your attention.

Security Analysis, Seventh Edition: Principles and Technique
by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd
Print | eBook | Audiobook

The Art of Execution: How the World's Best Investors Get It Wrong and Still Make Millions
by Lee Freeman-Shor
Print | eBook | Audiobook


The Top Investing Books

This section features the all-time best books written about venture capital.

The Science of Hitting
by Ted Williams
Print | Audiobook
Read book summary →

Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World
by Mark Spitznagel
Print | eBook | Audiobook

The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
by Benoit Mandelbrot
Print | eBook | Audiobook

Security Analysis, Seventh Edition: Principles and Technique
by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd
Print | eBook | Audiobook

The Art of Execution: How the World's Best Investors Get It Wrong and Still Make Millions
by Lee Freeman-Shor
Print | eBook | Audiobook

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
by Peter D. Kaufman
Print Edition

The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
by Lawrence Cunningham
Print | eBook | Audiobook
Read book summary →

Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor
by Seth Klarman
Print Edition

Delivering Alpha: Lessons from 30 Years of Outperforming Investment Benchmarks
by Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg
Print | eBook | Audiobook

Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment
by David Swensen
Print | eBook | Audiobook

Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment
by David Swensen
Print | eBook | Audiobook

Related Reading Lists

Or browse all book recommendations →

About the author

Daniel Scrivner is an award-winner designer turned founder and investor. He's led design work at Apple and Square. He is an early investor in Notion, Public.com, and Good Eggs. He's also the founder of Ligature: The Design VC and Outlier Academy. Daniel has interviewed the world’s leading founders and investors including Scott Belsky, Luke Gromen, Kevin Kelly, Gokul Rajaram, and Brian Scudamore.

Last updated
Sep 16, 2023

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in my popular email newsletter. Each week, I share 5 ideas, quotes, questions, and more to ponder this weekend. Over 25,000 people subscribe. Enter your email now and join us.

SUBSCRIBED

Thanks for subscribing! You’re all set.

You’ll be notified every time I share a new post.

Something went wrong while submitting the form. Please try again.