Here are 56 books that The Book of Satoshi fans have personally recommended if you like
The Book of Satoshi.
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I’ve been writing about cryptocurrency since 2015, and full-time since 2017. I’ve worked for the biggest crypto news site in the world, CoinDesk, but now I write about it every day for a more mainstream audience. Cryptocurrency fits at a nexus at the kind of things I’m drawn to: It’s technological, it’s economic and it freaks people out. Unlike a lot of people who write about crypto, I’ve actually played around with the stuff. I’m not an investor, but I have used it. Using it is really the only way anyone gets to the point of grokking it, and I grok the stuff.
So this book only has one chapter on cryptocurrency (and it dismisses it), but it’s still a worthwhile addition to this list, and here’s why:
Money does a great job showing readers what a protean thing money really is and has always been. Every time money is about to make a giant change in human history, people think that change is completely crazy and will never work. And then it happens, and before long people seem to believe that money could have never worked any other way.
Does it sound relevant now?
While Goldstein eloquently explains and then dismisses Bitcoin in these pages (in fact, it’s one of the best dismissals I’ve ever read), it’s still a worthy entry for anyone who wants to wrap their heads around why so many people have invested so much in fundamentally changing how money works here in the 21st Century.
The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs.
Money only works because we all agree to believe in it. In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century.
At the heart of the story are the fringe thinkers and world…
Crypto’s rollercoaster journey has given rise to some of the most thrilling real-life tales of the last two decades. These tales teem with personal drama and reveal much larger truths: about our fractured global moment, about the ripple effects of well-intentioned technological systems, and about the massive divide between how we want society to function and how it actually does.
As much as some people wish it dead, crypto is not going away any time soon. Many of its followers have adopted a religious-like belief that it will transform humanity and bring unlimited wealth to its followers; others simply believe it to be a good investment. Their collective trust in these strange digital currencies means that crypto will continue to shape the world in unpredictable ways.
The journalist Nathaniel Popper starts at the beginning, telling the story of how Bitcoin emerged from message boards and was slowly but surely propelled forward by government-wary libertarians, computer science nerds, and opportunistic venture capitalists.
Popper persuasively articulates the many problems that Bitcoin solves across the world—and then reveals its extremely bumpy road toward adoption.
Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
A New York Times technology and business reporter charts the dramatic rise of Bitcoin and the fascinating personalities who are striving to create a new global money for the Internet age.
Digital Gold is New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper's brilliant and engrossing history of Bitcoin, the landmark digital money and financial technology that has spawned a global social movement.
The notion of a new currency, maintained by the computers of users around the world, has been the butt of many jokes, but that has not stopped…
I’ve been fascinated by money since I was a graduate student when I had even less of it than I do today (as a British historian in the CUNY system). We all carry it in our wallets and have more or less of it in the bank, but it’s also in the air we breathe, suffusing the books we read and the decisions we make. So when I started researching and writing about the British past, money and its associated institutions seemed like an obvious place to start looking. It has yet to let me down, enabling me to discover new things to say about politics, literature, and society.
I love the way this book makes the very old story of the French Revolution new and exciting by telling the parallel story of how so much of the turmoil of that period was etched onto the money that a succession of governments issued.
I learned so much, both from the shifting set of images on French money and the wonderful stories about how a confused populace used this money to the best of their ability, as their paper currency lost both the crowned heads that once adorned it and, in the process, much of its value. Spang ingeniously recounts the revolutionaries’ efforts to paper over a failing revolution with vacuous promises to pay.
Winner of the Louis Gottschalk Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies A Financial Times Best History Book of the Year A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
Rebecca L. Spang, who revolutionized our understanding of the restaurant, has written a new history of money. It uses one of the most infamous examples of monetary innovation, the assignats-a currency initially defined by French revolutionaries as "circulating land"-to demonstrate that money is as much a social and political mediator as it is an economic instrument. Following the assignats from creation to abandonment, Spang shows them to be subject to the same…
At The Financial Diet, I’ve written and produced videos about money, productivity, and work/life balance for the better part of a decade. I’ve come to the conclusion that most of our commonly held beliefs about money and work are incorrect: your job shouldn’t be your main purpose, and money shouldn’t be the end goal in and of itself. I’ve also been a longtime nonfiction reader, and I lead a monthly book club for our Patreon members. This list is composed of my favorite selections from those meetings (a few of which I’d read previously), and I hope they invite you to question your own relationship with work and money!
This was probably the most easily digestible book on investing that I’ve ever read. To me, the most difficult part of investing is simply getting over the fear of doing it, and Morgan Housel gives genuine motivation for overcoming that fear.
The chapters are purposefully short, which allowed me to absorb the main takeaways without getting too in the weeds on details (a necessary downside of a lot of nonfiction). I loved that it included very clear examples of how our brains work against us when it comes to our finances, as well as clear advice on how to counteract that.
Doing well with money isn't necessarily about what you know. It's about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.
Money-investing, personal finance, and business decisions-is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don't make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together.
In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan…
I am the teaching pastor of Woodland Christian Church, a role I've held since 2010. I preach God’s Word 1 to 3 times weekly, and I'm also a conference speaker and author. While I do some counseling and discipling, my main focus is on teaching and preaching, which involves studying God’s Word for 20 to 30 hours per week. I've learned biblical financial principles and I'm passionate about equipping people with them. With ten children on a single-income pastor’s salary, I've had to apply these principles in my own life, which has reinforced their importance and effectiveness.
God and Money is primarily a guide to giving. Still, it is also a testimony of how the authors, while attending Harvard, became conflicted about their extravagant lifestyles and convicted of the need to give more. In other words, something enjoyable and unique about the book is that the authors discuss finances, but it is also their story.
They also use modern-day case studies and practical ways to apply the Bible’s teaching. They followed up with True Riches, pride to gratitude, coveting to content, anxiety to trust, and indifference to love are the chapter topics.
John Cortines and Gregory Baumer met as Harvard MBA candidates in a men’s Bible study and stopped asking “How much should I give?” and started asking “How much do I need to keep?” With their top-notch education and rising careers, Cortines and Baumer were guaranteed comfort and security for the rest of their lives. However, when their plans for saving and spending collided with God’s purposes for extravagant generosity, they were each compelled to make a life-changing decision that challenges the values held by mainstream America and many Christian commentators. Cortines and Baumer show not only how to radically give,…
For my entire life, I have been on a quest to get to know God on a deeper and more spiritual level and to manifest my dreams into my living reality. I have been intrigued by manifestation since I was a young girl, and it has allowed me to help and teach others how they can manifest their dream lives as well. Now, I am a full-time author, living the life I created, and I read books to help me understand more about my craft and also how I can help others who are looking for guidance in their lives. I hope you enjoy the books on this list, as they have helped shape my life and my way of thinking in one way or another.
This book helped change my perspective around money. It also helped me create more money and allow it to flow into my life in abundance.
The principles, techniques, and modalities in the book have changed my life, and I now think differently about money, how it is created, and how I can attract it into my life.
This step-by-step guide to creating money and abundance was given to Sanaya and Duane by their guides, Orin and DaBen. These wise spirit teachers have successfully helped thousands of people to manifest prosperity, find their life's work, and fulfill their life purpose. This book is infused with Orin and DaBen's consciousness of abundance that is available to you as you read to increase your ability to create money and abundance.
You can see immediate results in your life when you learn to create abundance by following the spiritual laws of money and abundance. Section I, Creating Money, is a step-by-step…
I was a finance major who worked in banking, so I knew what I needed to do with money, but I found it challenging to follow through. The books I previously read were money books written by financial gurus who always used yelling and shaming as their teaching method. It never aligned with me. I started writing books with more compassion and an understanding that there are other variables affecting your financial health. I continue to read and recommend books written by people who aspire to help others by giving them knowledge and the space and grace to grow without the guilt trip.
This book was such an easy read and finished it in a matter of hours on a long train ride. I like this approach to money that is less tactical and more spiritual. I enjoyed reading Ken’s observations of what helps us live happier lives by helping make our money happy.
Look around you - what do you see? You may discover to your surprise that the people who are most at peace with money are the ones who walk nimbly between having too little and having too much. They have found a balance between indulgence and austerity; between success and happiness; between motivation and inspiration; and between any number of other poles we tend to think of as either/or choices, but which in reality are simply posts on either side of a doorway through which we must pass.
For many of us the subject of money is unavoidably stressful. Managing…
I’ve been writing about cryptocurrency since 2015, and full-time since 2017. I’ve worked for the biggest crypto news site in the world, CoinDesk, but now I write about it every day for a more mainstream audience. Cryptocurrency fits at a nexus at the kind of things I’m drawn to: It’s technological, it’s economic and it freaks people out. Unlike a lot of people who write about crypto, I’ve actually played around with the stuff. I’m not an investor, but I have used it. Using it is really the only way anyone gets to the point of grokking it, and I grok the stuff.
The Cryptopians covers basically the same ground as The Infinite Machine, but in much, much more detail.
Shin very much sets out to dig the skeletons out of the closet from the earliest days of the Ethereum adventure.
The thing you have to understand about how Ethereum started is this: A 19-year-old gawky immigrant kid who was completely conflict averse came up with the vision. A bunch of moderately rich guys and hacker types heard his ideas and saw money start to burst out of their eyeballs. They all moved into a house together and tried to build it and a lot of personal rivalries and drama ensued.
Then there were a couple of gigantic early screw-ups that nearly sank the whole thing.
Shin goes through it all blow by blow. There are a lot of “he said/she said” sort of moments in the book.
In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures-vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments.
The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus…
I realised in my twenties that there were millions of people who desperately needed advice about their money but could not afford an accountant or an adviser. Since then my passion has been to simplify the deliberately complex financial world, explain the obscure and often unintelligible rules about tax, childcare, benefits, investment, savings, and borrowing. Recently as the tsunami of fraud has swept across the UK I have devoted more time to help people avoid losing money to scammers – both criminal and respectable. Most people can’t afford professional advice, but they can afford me – I’m freely available in print, on air, and online.
This book – a copy is free at hathitrust.org – shows how some truths about money are eternal.
It is the first personal finance guide written for women but its advice is still valid – ‘high interest is another name for bad security’ ‘Do not put all your money into one concern’ ‘the Broker [you employ] should be of high standing and respectability’ ‘place the money…in the bank at interest [or] put it into the Funds’. And it is a model of clear writing. I loved it.
As a physicist by education and therefore fundamentally interested in how things work, my early career was spent in secure communications before moving into finance, specifically payments. I helped to found one of the leading consultancies in the field and worked globally for organizations ranging from Visa and AMEX to various governments and multiple Central Banks. I wrote, it turned out, one of the key books in the field, Identity Is The New Money (2014), and subsequently, Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin (2017), about the history and future of money. The Currency Cold War (2020) was a prescient implication of digital currencies, particularly CBDC.
I see David Greaeber’s book as a landmark in the field. He completely changed my understanding of and views on money’s role in society and its evolution. I had the good fortune to meet David a few times (in fact, I made a podcast with him) and feel like I learned from every conversation.
Until I read David’s book, I had assumed that the Barter theory of money and the double coincidence of wants was the natural and unchallenged explanation for how money came to be and what roles it performed. David’s and subsequent authors' work has shown that this view is simplistic and outdated.
The groundbreaking international best-seller that turns everything you think about money, debt, and society on its head—from the “brilliant, deeply original political thinker” David Graeber (Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me)
Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors—which lives on in full force to this day.
