100 books like 24 Essential Lessons for Investment Success

Think and Grow Rich is one of the best books of all time – a true class for achieving super success and wealth.

Napoleon Hill shows you how to get ahead and build wealth. The idea is that successful, wealthy people found the way and we can too. Hill believes that how you think and use the knowledge and experience you accumulate along your journey drives your success.

He explains the importance of desire and faith and gaining specialized knowledge. He emphasizes organized planning, making decisions and taking action, and sticking with it. Hill shares stories based on his interviews with leaders including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and many other millionaires. 

I enjoyed reading Tobias’ book as a young adult because it was entertaining and engaging and focused on the big-picture concepts. His lighthearted tone and humor help to remove the stress involved with money and investing.

I appreciate the way in which the author communicates important themes concisely and with confidence. He’s a talented writer and a smart guy.  

One of my favorite personal finance classics. The core principle to getting rich is the choices you make.

Author Robert Kiyosaki emphasizes the importance of taking control of your finances and investing today to build wealth for tomorrow. Anyone can apply these principles and techniques in their life. The author explains growing up with two Dads – his real father and his best friend’s father. Essentially, his blood father spent all his money. His friend’s father budgeted and invested for his family’s future.

He presents ways to earn income—real estate, stocks, bonds, or businesses. With effort and prudence, you can implement this model. He emphasizes that ‘street smarts’ and common sense must be added to school education. Readers will gain a solid understanding of assets, liabilities, and net worth, which is essential to building wealth. 

Chuck Jaffe knows personal finance and especially mutual funds. He’s spent a lifetime mastering personal finance including from his early days with The Boston Globe newspaper.

This guide is a comprehensive roadmap to understanding and investing in mutual funds. Jaffe’s A to Z resource helps readers get started and create a long-term investing plan with mutual funds. He explains asset allocation to help design an investment portfolio. He reveals the characteristics of winning and losing mutual funds.

Two great chapters are "Seven Steps to Buying a Fund" and "Twelve Questions to Ask Before You Buy". He helps us avoid pitfalls that cost investors money. Designed for seasoned and new investors alike. While other books are ‘cloudy’ Jaffe writes in plain English and explains it all.  

As head of the Yale University endowment fund, the late David Swensen was one of the foremost innovators and most successful practitioners of institutional investing. Remarkably, he also wrote one of the best books ever for individual investors. Unconventional Success shows why on average, mutual fund investors significantly underperform the funds they own: They trade excessively, buying at the highs and selling at the lows, creating tax inefficiencies in the process. Swensen also valuably details hazards to avoid in fund selection. 

As a loyal Princeton University alum, Jack Bogle often visited us and participated in discussions at the Bendheim Center for Finance, at our investment workshops, and at reunions, as well as lectures in my and others’ courses at Princeton. Jack had a remarkable ability to take a complicated problem and distill it into simple, intuitive, and understandable terms.

This highly readable book provides several topics worth studying for individuals interested in improving their wealth and risk management activities. It shows Jack’s philosophy and his direct attitude to managing money to minimize costs; it provides an excellent starting point for establishing sound investing steps.  

William O’Neil’s How To Make Money In Stocks is great for anyone looking to learn how to trade stocks part-time.

It gives you a framework of what actually causes stocks to make the big moves of 300%, 500%, 1,000% or more over the span of a few months to a few years along with a historical perspective of why they move the way they move and a strategy of how to take advantage of it that doesn’t require tuning into the news or being glued to a PC all day.

One of the big things you’ll learn in O’Neil’s book is that modeling success is key. The book starts out with over 100 pages of annotated charts of the biggest winning stocks in history. What you’ll quickly notice is that history repeats itself, over and over again.

I liked reading Jane Bryant Quinn’s book as a young adult because it was comprehensive, and it seemed that she didn’t have a bias or axe to grind. Some of the popular financial writers at the time were pitching products in which they had a vested financial interest, which made a strong negative impression on me. 

Rich Dad Poor Dad is the book that changed the trajectory of my life forever.

It is a parable that explains the difference between the traditional way of thinking “Go to school, get a good job, work hard, retire” with the entrepreneur mentality, and the concepts of utilizing passive income to replace your job at an earlier age.

I love this book because it takes the normally boring subject of finance and investing and breaks it down in a fun and easy way to learn so that you will actually finish the book and have the ability to experience that light-switch moment! 

Without a doubt this is the most commonly mentioned book that I hear referenced on podcasts as “the book that started it all”.

As a financial coach, I have met many women who feel alone with their financial challenges, or unable to talk openly about their finances. Women With Money includes the voices of women Chatzky interviewed about their money challenges and goals, and their comments help to humanize the subject. Chatzky’s discussion of our money beliefs is very solid, as is her advice about putting our money to work. Some topics, like investing in real estate, won’t be applicable to all readers, at least not right away. But overall, Chatzky, a longtime personal finance journalist, deftly communicates core personal finance topics in a clear and accessible way.