Here are 99 books that Tap Dancing to Work fans have personally recommended if you like
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My first job after college was at The Wall Street Journal, working evenings as a copyreader. It was thrilling to enter a big-league newsroom, but torture to be confined to putting tiny headlines on even tinier stories. Then at age 23, after a whirlwind staff shuffle, I started writing the paper’s premier stock-market column, “Heard on the Street.” Daylight had arrived. For the next 11 years, I covered finance. I met billionaires and people en route to prison. It wasn’t always easy to tell them apart! My writing career has widened since then but sizing up markets – and the people who rule them – remains an endless fascination.
There have been newer books on Warren Buffett since this 1995 gem, but this one goes the deepest into the mechanisms that have brought Buffett a $124 billion fortune. Plus it’s the best on Buffett’s quirky personality. I’ve known Roger from our days at The Wall Street Journal together, and it was exciting seeing him research this project over a three-year span – even if Buffett never officially helped him. The finished book made me feel I “knew” Buffett as if he were a long-time neighbor.
Since its hardcover publication in August of 1995, Buffett has appeared on the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Newsday and Business Week bestseller lists.
Starting from scratch, simply by picking stocks and companies for investment, Warren Buffett amassed one of the epochal fortunes of the twentieth century—an astounding net worth of $10 billion, and counting. His awesome investment record has made him a cult figure popularly known for his seeming contradictions: a billionaire who has a modest lifestyle, a phenomenally successful investor who eschews the revolving-door trading of modern Wall Street,…
I’m an investor from three perspectives or dimensions. First, I manage money for individuals and institutions as Chief Investment Officer of Beacon Trust, a $4 billion registered investment advisor based in NY/NJ. Second, I teach MBA classes in investing at Rutgers Business School, Columbia Business School, London Business School, and Hong Kong University (HKU) Business School. Third, I write articles and books on investing, including The Art of Investing: Lesson’s from History’s Greatest Tradersand Buffett’s Tips: A Guide to Financial Literacy and Life. I’ve personally met Warren Buffett on four separate occasions and think he is an excellent role model from both investing and personal perspectives.
Buffett is probably not thrilled with this book, written by his ex-daughter-in-law, but I think it provides the best insight into his investment process. Mary Buffett was married to Buffett’s son Peter, and David Clark is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) that skillfully explains some of the more technical aspects of investing. For example, the book discussed how Buffett values a stock. He primarily considers companies with a “moat” so he has confidence in forecasting their cash flows. He then projects these cash flows out at least ten years and discounts them back to the present to estimate their value. He will only buy at a significant discount to this estimated or “intrinsic” value.
Here at last is a book that reveals what the public really wants to know about this legendary investor: how he determines where he puts his money. From a team with privileged insight, Mary Buffett, a savvy CEO and Warren Buffett's former daughter-in-law, and David Clark, a successful portfolio analyst, comes Buffettology, the most detailed explanation ever of the billionaire's unique investment techniques. Using Warren Buffett's system to access a company's potential economic excellence and the right price to pay for its stock, Buffettology demonstrates the actual mathematical models and equations, revolving around three variables: the yearly per share earnings…
I am an investor who happens to love writing, music, and simply life in general. I was born in Murmansk, Russia, where I spent my first 18 years. My family moved to Denver in 1991, and I have lived there since. I’m CEO of IMA, a value investing firm where I have creative freedom to focus on things I love. I was so fortunate to stumble into writing; it has completely rewired my mind by providing a daily two-hour refuge for focused thinking. I am constantly on the lookout for new stories and fresh insights. Writing is what keeps me in student-of-life mode, and there is so much to learn!
This is an authorized biography of Warren Buffett. I am not sure this is the best book to read if you want to learn to invest like Mr. Buffett, but it gives a fascinating view of his life. There are many great lessons we can learn from Mr. Buffett that go far beyond investing, for example about honesty and treasuring one’s reputation. But I thought this book was important for a very different reason: it shows that Warren Buffett is not a perfect human being and that we can also learn from the maestro by not repeating his mistakes. He achieved his unparalleled success in his business life at the expense of his personal life.
I find myself wanting to work 24/7. I bring my laptop home, or start reading The Wall Street Journalon my iPad at the dinner table – and my work life starts pushing out my…
The personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha”—for fans of the HBO documentary Becoming Warren Buffett
Here is the book recounting the life and times of one of the most respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom.
Although the media track him constantly, Buffett himself has never told his full life story. His…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
As an investor and a professional business valuation specialist, I have a passion for understanding the true intrinsic value of both publicly-traded and closely-held (private) companies. There’s no denying that Warren Buffett, emulating the example of his mentor Benjamin Graham, applied a private company valuation approach to the selection of publicly-traded stocks and the results speak for themselves. Furthermore, given my somewhat technical educational and vocational background, I am more comfortable than most valuators with highly technical and IP-weighted businesses. That is why I consider IP valuation to be an integral element of business valuation.
While Graham is the pioneer of value investing, there’s no question that his student, employee, and, ultimately, close friend Warren Buffett is its most successful practitioner. Although the essence of their respective approaches is similar, there are some important differences to understand. As the best book about Buffett’s investing style that I’ve encountered thus far, Hagstrom’s TheWarren Buffett Way highlights some of Buffett’s most astonishing investment coups and the logic behind them. Upon reading both of those books, the reader will have gained a nuanced understanding of how Buffett took the Graham approach to business valuation/security selection and improved upon it.
Warren Buffett is the most famous investor of all time and one of today s most admired business leaders. He became a billionaire and investment sage by looking at companies as businesses rather than prices on a stock screen. The first two editions of The Warren Buffett Way gave investors their first in-depth look at the innovative investment and business strategies behind Buffett s spectacular success. The new edition updates readers on the latest investments by Buffett. And, more importantly, it draws on the new field of behavioral finance to explain how investors can overcome the common obstacles that prevent…
I’ve been a professional investment advisor for over 50 years and it took me that long to figure out the best way for individuals to retire with a decent size multi-million dollar fortune. The books I recommend speak to this topic from some fascinating and different points of view. But why did it take so long? I don’t know. I suppose the obvious answers aren’t so obvious at first, especially in a business as complex as the securities industry. But I think I finally figured it out and the solution is so elegantly simple. My professional life’s work!
The book features the ideas of some of the most successful investors of all time, including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, and John Bogle. What was it that made these investors so successful, and why are there so few of them? Money Masters was one of the first in a series of books about the success of some of Wall Street’s greatest investors and it is still relevant today. These books are especially useful in preserving the thinking of great investors after they pass on. The book adds fuel to the fire of the “Efficient Market Theory” which holds that the market is highly efficient and the only way you can beat it is through luck! Try telling that to some of these great investors!
An expert reviews the experts - new and updated appraisals of the winning investment strategies of the greatest financial wizards. Money Masters of Our Time is a reappraisal and revision of those money masters who have stood the test of time plus a look at new money masters. Train emphasises the parts of their various business careers that illuminate their investment techniques focusing on notable individuals whose decisions to buy and sell have actually made money grow. How do they reason? Where do they get their information? How much do they depend on fact and how much on psychology? What…
From our very beginning, Americans have stood out from all other people on earth in one odd habit: We have a powerful reflex to fix problems ourselves—directly, locally, as individuals—instead of waiting for nobles or experts or government officials to save us. Between the volunteer hours and money we donate, our philanthropic efforts total close to a trillion dollars of organic problem-solving every year. It’s a wellspring of our national success. Struck by the effectiveness of our grassroots charitable action, I spent several years compiling the authoritative reference book that documents exactly how private giving bolsters U.S. prosperity, the Almanac of American Philanthropy. Then, I produced a historical novel portraying some great givers.
Many of us know that philanthropists have been central to eradicating disease, that charitable groups are powerful forces against hunger and poverty, and that philanthropy is behind many of our greatest educational successes. But did you know that private donors were largely responsible for making America the world leader in rocketry? That they willed the fields of aeronautics and biomedical engineering into existence.
During World War II, it was not a government agency but rather a philanthropist who jumpstarted the rollout of radar and then rescued the effort to create atomic weapons after it had bogged down in our defense bureaucracy. With this book, you can marvel at the WWII heroics accomplished by entrepreneur and generous giver Alfred Loomis.
In the fall of 1940, as German bombers flew over London and with America not yet at war, a small team of British scientists on orders from Winston Churchill carried out a daring transatlantic mission. The British unveiled their most valuable military secret in a clandestine meeting with American nuclear physicists at the Tuxedo Park mansion of a mysterious Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis. Powerful, handsome, and enormously wealthy, Loomis had for years led a double life, spending his days brokering huge deals and his weekends working with the world's leading scientists in his deluxe private laboratory that was…
I'm an American writer who lives in Switzerland, in the vineyards outside Geneva, but I grew up in the 1960s riding night trains around the United States in the company of my father, who loved trains and rode them for his work. From the soaring columns of New York’s Pennsylvania Station, we took trains to Chicago, Wyoming, Denver, Albuquerque, New Orleans, and beyond. In my adult writing life, I've taken trains across Russia, China, India, Australia, the Middle East, Japan, and just about every corner of Europe. Once, I rode all the trains in East Africa between Nairobi and Johannesburg, during which excursion the Tazara Expresswas three days late into Kapiri Mposhi, Tanzania.
Loving was a business reporter for Fortunemagazine, and among his beats was American railroads. Here he tells the compelling story of not just the failed merger between Pennsylvania and the New York Central, but of how in the late 1970s and 80s a group of dedicated railroad executives managed to salvage the rail freight industry. I know it doesn’t sound like a page-turning book, but it is, as Loving has the gift of writing deft profiles, and he describes the steps that lead to the creation of Conrail (itself not a success story) but then the deregulation of the railway freight industry that allowed companies such as the Burlington Northern (later BNSF) and the Union Pacific to thrive, yet again. Too bad they didn’t manage to save parlor cats.
A saga about one of the oldest and most romantic enterprises in the land - America's railroads - "The Men Who Loved Trains" introduces some of the most dynamic businessmen in America. Here are the chieftains who have run the railroads, including those who set about grabbing power and big salaries for themselves, and others who truly loved the industry. As a journalist and associate editor of "Fortune" magazine who covered the demise of Penn Central and the creation of Conrail, Rush Loving often had a front row seat to the foibles and follies of this group of men. He…
Given the state of the world today, laughter truly is the best coping mechanism. The best satire is all about excess in design, intention, characterization, and deployment of attitude. The more extreme, the better; leave restraint to the prudish moralists!
If American Psycho is too bloody an evocation of hyper-capitalism for your stomach, try this tragically under-appreciated door-stopper of a novel, in which an eleven-year-old becomes a millionaire by playing the stock market. Written almost wholly in unattributed dialogue! As with Pynchon, everything written by Gaddis deserves to be on this list; alas, alas.
A National Book Award-winning satire about the unchecked power of American capitalism, written more than three decades before the 2008 financial crisis.
At the center of J R is J R Vansant, a very average sixth grader from Long Island with torn sneakers, a runny nose, and a juvenile fascination with junk-mail get-rich-quick offers. Responding to one, he sees a small return; soon, he is running a paper empire out of a phone booth in the school hallway. Everyone from the school staff to the municipal government to the squabbling heirs of a player-piano company to the titans of Wall…
From our very beginning, Americans have stood out from all other people on earth in one odd habit: We have a powerful reflex to fix problems ourselves—directly, locally, as individuals—instead of waiting for nobles or experts or government officials to save us. Between the volunteer hours and money we donate, our philanthropic efforts total close to a trillion dollars of organic problem-solving every year. It’s a wellspring of our national success. Struck by the effectiveness of our grassroots charitable action, I spent several years compiling the authoritative reference book that documents exactly how private giving bolsters U.S. prosperity, the Almanac of American Philanthropy. Then, I produced a historical novel portraying some great givers.
Everyday neighbors acting to fix our own problems is in our founding DNA. Over the last 125 years, another tradition has grown up in our country: the expectation that anyone who makes it really big will subsequently give away lots of wealth to help others prosper.
The archetype for this was John D. Rockefeller, and this is the best narrative of his success—first as a business mogul and then as the most influential philanthropist in history. Rockefeller made many wise gifts that elevated living standards, science, religion, food production, medical research, and more.
The Almanac of American Philanthropy calculates that more than 60 Nobel laureates in medicine, biochemistry, and health had their work accelerated by Rockefeller gifts.
From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Alexander Hamilton: here is the essential, endlessly engrossing biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.—the Jekyll-and-Hyde of American capitalism. In the course of his nearly 98 years, Rockefeller was known as both a rapacious robber baron, whose Standard Oil Company rode roughshod over an industry, and a philanthropist who donated money lavishly to universities and medical centers. He was the terror of his competitors, the bogeyman of reformers, the delight of caricaturists—and an utter enigma.
Drawing on unprecedented access to Rockefeller’s private papers, Chernow reconstructs his subjects’ troubled origins…
Everything in nature evolves by trial, error, and success—from fundamental physics, through evolution in biology, to how people learn, think, and decide.
This book presents a way of thinking and realistic knowledge that our formal education shuns. Stepping beyond this ignorance, the book shows how to deal with and even…
I've been fascinated by cultures shrouded in secrets and mystery since childhood, a fascination that intensified when efforts to unravel the mystery and expose the truth were stonewalled, leading to frustrating dead-ends. I spent decades trying to uncover the truth history obscures through research that included travel to the lands of secrets, mystery, and sometimes outright lies. As a writer, I draw from experience, education, and imagination because I know it's sometimes necessary to wrap truth in fiction to protect it. The books I've selected speak to that reality.
A story of characters who use hardship as a springboard to success; I was immediately pulled in by a plot told through the eyes of characters as if we were in a pub and they were sharing life lessons. The brutal honesty of how innocents get caught in the crossfires of greed and quests for power resonates. The ending is both poignant and haunting.
Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel is a global phenomenon that has captivated readers worldwide, spawning two sequels and dominating bestseller charts the world over.
Two strangers born worlds apart with one destiny that will define them both.
William Lowell Kane, the son of a Boston millionaire, and Abel Rosnovski, the son of a penniless Polish immigrant, are born on the same day on opposite sides of the world and brought together by fate and the quest of a dream.
Locked in a relentless struggle spanning sixty years and three generations, the two men battle for supremacy in pursuit of an…
