Reading lists
From the people we read about, and the topics worth reading deeply.
Compiled by the Superbook team from public sources — interviews, blog posts, and published lists. Each list links its sources at the bottom.
Data study
The books top founders & investors recommend most
We counted across the lists of Naval, Thiel, Bezos, Munger, Buffett, Gates & more to find the canon. See the ranking →
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Aaron Levie
6 books
Levie's most concrete recommendations come from his Stanford "How to Start a Startup" (Startup Class) lecture, where he …
Andrew Wilkinson
14 books
Wilkinson recommends books regularly on Twitter/X and in interviews, often with strong superlatives ("better than any MB…
Balaji Srinivasan
14 books
Balaji recommends books constantly on Twitter and in long-form interviews, often with a one-line rationale; many are com…
Barack Obama
15 books
Obama's reading lists arrive twice a year — summer picks around July, year-end roundups in December — and they have beco…
Ben Horowitz
12 books
Horowitz publicly shared a detailed reading list with Fast Company and has repeatedly cited specific books in interviews…
Bill Ackman
8 books
Ackman's recommendations surface in interviews (he told Lex Fridman "The Intelligent Investor" was the first investing b…
Bill Gates
15 books
Gates's reading list grew out of his GatesNotes blog, where he has written hundreds of book reviews since 2010. The list…
Bill Gurley
13 books
Gurley is unusually public about his reading, tweeting endorsements with reasons and naming must-reads on CNBC and Tim F…
Brad Feld
12 books
Brad Feld's reading list reflects two largely separate intellectual lives that occasionally cross. In the first, he is a…
Brené Brown
13 books
Brown draws from a wide intellectual tradition — trauma research, existential philosophy, developmental psychology, and …
Brian Chesky
7 books
Chesky reads to solve specific problems — he leans on a small set of operating texts and business-hero biographies (Stev…
Chamath Palihapitiya
10 books
Chamath has named favorites on Twitter/X and in interviews with brief, blunt verdicts. His recommendations cluster aroun…
Charlie Munger
12 books
Munger organized his intellectual life around what he called 'big ideas'—the handful of core concepts from each major di…
Chris Dixon
12 books
Dixon contributed personal picks with commentary to a16z's published reading lists (notably Winter 2018) and has tweeted…
Daniel Ek
10 books
Ek curated an official "top ten" list for One Grand Books and discussed his reading habits at length with Tim Ferriss. H…
Daniel Gross
7 books
Gross shared book picks with reasons on YC's 2018 Summer Reading List and on his personal site (dcgross.com), favoring l…
David Heinemeier Hansson
12 books
DHH surfaces books mainly through Twitter/X threads and his writing, often tied to a political or economic argument he's…
David Perell
12 books
Perell publishes a curated reading page (perell.com/reading) listing all-time favorites, current reads, and books "on th…
Derek Sivers
14 books
Since 2007 Sivers has posted public notes and a numeric rating for every book he finishes at sive.rs/book, openly statin…
Drew Houston
8 books
Houston discussed his reading at length on the Tim Ferriss Show and in a CNBC segment on his favorite business books. Hi…
Elon Musk
12 books
Musk's recommendations cluster around two poles that turn out to be the same thing viewed from different angles: how the…
Fred Wilson
12 books
Wilson has written explicit "Books for Entrepreneurs" posts on AVC and frequently reviews books in his "Books" category,…
Garry Tan
8 books
Tan's recommendations appear in his essays (e.g., "I'm an engineer, how do I learn design?"), his YouTube channel for fo…
Guy Spier
12 books
Spier maintains a categorized recommended-books page on guyspier.com spanning investing, mentors/role models, psychology…
Howard Marks
8 books
Marks repeatedly points to a small set of "foundational" books on markets, cycles, and randomness rather than a sprawlin…
Jack Dorsey
12 books
Dorsey's recommendations are heavily documented through his own tweets — usually short, dated "finished reading / incred…
Jason Fried
12 books
Fried surfaces books on the 37signals/Signal v. Noise blog, in interviews, and on Twitter, usually tied to running a com…
Jeff Bezos
12 books
Bezos's reading list resists easy categorization. It covers business strategy, science fiction, biography, and managemen…
Joel Greenblatt
11 books
Greenblatt has named a tight set of "all-time favorite" books in interviews and writings, and assigns a documented readi…
Josh Wolfe
10 books
Wolfe discusses books across podcasts (North Star, Ritholtz's MiB), Lux's Medium writing, and Twitter, and explicitly cr…
Keith Rabois
14 books
Rabois published a long reading list (originally on Medium) and recommends books constantly on Twitter and Quora, often …
Li Lu
15 books
Himalaya Capital published Li Lu's recommended book list, organized into categories — value investing/finance/capitalism…
Marc Andreessen
27 books
Andreessen's reading list has a through-line that isn't immediately obvious: it's a theory of who controls the future an…
Marc Benioff
8 books
Benioff's recommendations appear across his X/Twitter, public talks, and numerous book blurbs he's written. A spiritual …
Maria Popova
14 books
The Marginalian began as a weekly email to seven friends and grew into one of the most widely read literary blogs on the…
Mark Zuckerberg
15 books
In January 2015, Zuckerberg announced a personal challenge: one new book every two weeks for the year, with each pick sh…
Mel Robbins
12 books
Robbins assembles her reading picks from episodes, listener Q&As, and the resources she cites when coaching guests throu…
Michelle Obama
13 books
Michelle Obama's reading life shows up in interviews, her Higher Ground podcast, and in the authors she has championed a…
Mohnish Pabrai
13 books
Pabrai publishes an extensive investing bookshelf on chaiwithpabrai.com where he annotates specific titles with personal…
Morgan Housel
12 books
Housel's recommendations are unusually well documented in his own words — across his Collaborative Fund essays, his twee…
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
12 books
Taleb maintains a categorized reading list on nassimtaleb.org and is a prolific Amazon reviewer, so most of his recommen…
Naval Ravikant
15 books
Naval's reading recommendations surface through a handful of recurring venues: his appearances on the Joe Rogan Experien…
Oprah Winfrey
15 books
Oprah's Book Club has operated in several phases since 1996: the original club on The Oprah Winfrey Show, a hiatus, a re…
Patrick Collison
15 books
Collison's reading taste is shaped by a single sustained question: why does rapid progress happen when it does, and why …
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
14 books
O'Shaughnessy surfaces books through "Invest Like the Best" episodes, his "Reading" recommendations, and frequent Twitte…
Paul Graham
12 books
Graham's book recommendations surface mainly through his essays — he cites titles to make a point, not to make a list, s…
Peter Thiel
12 books
Thiel's list coheres around a single anxiety: that Western civilization may be stuck—technologically, politically, and s…
Ray Dalio
15 books
Dalio has described his reading practice in interviews, on LinkedIn, and in the bibliographies of his own books. The com…
Reed Hastings
8 books
Hastings' recommendations come from interviews, an audiobook-era reading habit, his own book's bibliography, and public …
Reese Witherspoon
15 books
Reese Witherspoon started Reese's Book Club in 2017 as a formal extension of something she'd been doing informally for y…
Reid Hoffman
12 books
Hoffman's recommendations cluster around two obsessions: the mechanics of scale and the ethics of how technology reshape…
Sahil Bloom
14 books
Bloom recommends books constantly via his newsletter, Twitter/X, and a downloadable "favorite books" list, and frequentl…
Sahil Lavingia
12 books
Lavingia posted a public "books I recommend reading most" list (originally via Notion, shared on Twitter) and discusses …
Sam Altman
12 books
Altman's reading recommendations surface through his blog (samaltman.com), occasional Twitter threads, and interviews wi…
Satya Nadella
10 books
Nadella's recommendations surface in interviews (Fast Company, Davos remarks via Quartz, on-stage Q&As) and in book blur…
Seth Klarman
11 books
Klarman's recommendations come from interviews and talks (widely circulated via MarketFolly and GuruFocus) and from his …
Shane Parrish
12 books
Parrish publishes a yearly "best books I read" roundup on Farnam Street and tracks his full reading on Goodreads, plus r…
Stewart Brand
12 books
Brand's list reflects someone who has spent decades at the hinge between counterculture and technology. The Whole Earth …
Stewart Butterfield
7 books
Butterfield's recommendations are unusually well-documented because most come straight from his own X/Twitter posts, oft…
Tim Ferriss
15 books
The Tim Ferriss Show has produced hundreds of book recommendations across more than 700 episodes. This list draws primar…
Tobi Lütke
12 books
Lütke reads widely and recommends often — Shopify even published his curated list of 14 startup books. His strongest end…
Tyler Cowen
15 books
Cowen's reading recommendations emerge from three main sources: the Marginal Revolution blog (running since 2003), his C…
Vinod Khosla
15 books
Khosla publishes book recommendations with one-line takes (widely aggregated and traceable to his lists and tweets), fav…
Warren Buffett
12 books
Buffett has said he reads 500 pages a day and has been doing so for most of his adult life, but his recommended reading …
By topic
Essential AI safety and alignment reading list
10 books
The canonical entry point is Bostrom's Superintelligence, which laid out the formal case for existential risk from advan…
Essential Architecture reading list
10 books
The books on this list form an argument, not a survey. They begin with the radical empiricism of Jane Jacobs, who watche…
Essential Coding in the age of AI reading list
10 books
There is no canonical book on vibe coding yet. That is not a gap to apologize for — it is an honest description of where…
Essential Cognitive biases and decision flaws reading list
10 books
The literature on cognitive biases has a clear founding moment — the collaboration between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tver…
Essential Filmmaking reading list
11 books
The books on this list move from structure to execution. McKee and Snyder map the grammar of screen story from opposite …
Essential Graphic design & typography reading list
10 books
The books here trace a path from fundamentals to history to practice. Start with Bringhurst and Lupton — one gives you t…
Essential Investing reading list
12 books
The list starts with Benjamin Graham, whose Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor established the vocabulary th…
Essential Making music reading list
11 books
The books on this list were chosen to address music-making at three levels simultaneously: the scientific (how does soun…
Essential Personal finance reading list
10 books
This list is organized as a journey rather than a greatest-hits collection. It begins with the foundational case for low…
Essential Philosophy for beginners reading list
13 books
The list opens with three books that remove the initial friction. Sophie's World uses a coming-of-age novel as a frame f…
Essential Product & UX design reading list
12 books
This list is organized as a working shelf rather than a canon. It starts with the foundational perceptual and cognitive …
Essential product management reading list
12 books
The books on this list form a rough argument with each other. Start with Cagan's Inspired, which establishes what great …
Essential Stoicism reading list
12 books
The reading order here matters. The ancient sources come first not out of reverence but because the modern explainers ma…
Essential Writing reading list
12 books
The books on craft cluster into two camps that turn out to be the same argument. The first camp — Strunk and White, Zins…
The best books on abstract painting
10 books
The books on this list do not agree with each other, and that disagreement is the point. Kandinsky believed abstraction …
The best books on Artificial Intelligence
14 books
The books here are arranged to build understanding in layers. Start with the history — Cade Metz's Genius Makers puts fa…
The best books on behavioral economics
12 books
The reading arc here starts with the empirical foundation: Kahneman's slow unpacking of System 1 and System 2 thinking, …
The best books on career navigation
10 books
The books on this list build on each other in a specific way. Cal Newport opens the argument: passion is a poor guide, a…
The best books on climate change
10 books
This list traces a specific arc. It begins with the science — not the models but the evidence already written into the f…
The best books on creativity
10 books
The literature on creativity pulls in two directions at once. One strand is practical — Anne Lamott telling you to write…
The best books on death and mortality
8 books
These eight books form a progression rather than a survey. They begin where most people first encounter mortality — in c…
The best books on decision making
12 books
This list traces an arc through three distinct traditions that have converged on the same problem.…
The best books on Design history
11 books
This list moves roughly chronologically by intellectual lineage rather than publication date. It opens with two books th…
The best books on founding a startup
12 books
The canon of startup books didn't emerge at once. Eric Ries and Steve Blank built the vocabulary of customer discovery a…
The best books on free markets & human progress
12 books
This list is built as an argument, not a syllabus. It moves through three phases: the foundational ideas that explain ho…
The best books on habits and behavior change
10 books
The literature on habits and behavior change has earned a coherent shape over the past twenty years. It begins with the …
The best books on Leadership
12 books
The books on this list trace an argument across several decades of research and practice. It begins with the hard operat…
The best books on learning how to learn
10 books
The books here trace an arc from the laboratory to the practice floor. It starts with the science: Make It Stick distill…
The best books on long-term thinking
10 books
This list builds an argument across ten books. It starts with the longest possible lens — the full sweep of human and pr…
The best books on marketing and growth
12 books
This list moves through the field roughly chronologically by intellectual era. Ries and Trout laid the conceptual founda…
The best books on meaning and purpose
10 books
Viktor Frankl anchors this list. Man's Search for Meaning emerged from the most extreme conditions imaginable — the Nazi…
The best books on meditation and mindfulness
10 books
The books on this list form a rough arc rather than a flat collection. It begins with Eckhart Tolle and Jon Kabat-Zinn, …
The best books on Memory
8 books
The books on this list trace a single arc: from the ancient art of memory palaces through the modern neuroscience of syn…
The best books on Modern parenting
10 books
The thread running through the best writing on parenting is a confrontation with control. Parents want to shape outcomes…
The best books on money and psychology
10 books
The arc of this list moves from behavior to belief to system.…
The best books on Negotiation
8 books
The negotiation canon starts with a clean thesis: most people treat bargaining as positional warfare, haggling over numb…
The best books on productivity and focus
12 books
The books on this list trace an arc from problem to prescription to pushback. The story begins with attention itself: Ni…
The best books on public speaking and communication
10 books
The books on this list treat communication as a discipline, not a talent. They start from different angles — neuroscienc…
The best books on relationships and marriage
10 books
The list begins with the science of what makes relationships work or fail—Gottman's decades of observing couples in his …
The best books on strategic thinking
10 books
The books on this list form an argument about strategy as an evolving practice. Sun Tzu's compact aphorisms establish th…
