44 books like The Men Who Loved Trains

In the early 1970s, the prolific Paul Theroux decided to ride as many trains as he could find between London and Japan, and to come back on the Trans-Siberian from Vladivostok. There are a few gaps in his rail line (Afghanistan isn’t well served by trains but he does manage to catch a Kyber Pass local), but otherwise he stitches together an itinerary that takes him across the Balkans, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Southeast Asia, and finally Japan. He chats up everyone he meets, and the book is a cross between a compelling account of numerous train journeys and novelistic dialogue with his fellow travelers (including poor Mr. Duffill who in Venice gets off and misses the train he and Theroux were on). Theroux can be cynical, but it is cynicism born of honesty, and it’s impossible to read this book and not want to ride night trains across India… show more.

Sadly, much of Mr. Frimbo’s train world no longer exists, at least in the United States, but this book—a collection of delightful essays from train journeys—is a fitting legacy to a departed rail network. Whitaker was a copyeditor at The New Yorker. Later he traveled with Tony Hiss, also at The New Yorker, and the two have preserved in print the quirkiness and greatness of what were America’s passenger trains, from the Twentieth Century Limited to long-forgotten branch lines.

If you have ever wondered what happened to the greatest passenger rail network in the world (yes, it was in the United States, which is now reduced to the crumbs of Amtrak), this account of the failed merger between the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central is for you. Earlier in their history, the two companies defined American corporate might, but in 1968, when the two roads combined, each was closer to bankruptcy than to the Fortune 500. The book is a fast-paced account of corporate failure. As was said of the doomed venture: “It wasn’t a merger so much as a death watch,” and by 1971 the Penn-Central, and the greatness of American passenger service, was gone. 

I scatter copies of this timetable all over my life. I have one at my bedside, another by the fireplace, and a third on my desk, and whenever I think about it, I decide that it’s time for me to order the latest edition, which comes with maps and timetables for most trains (and many ferries) on the planet. It used to be called Cook’s Timetable, and it came in a European and International edition. But since 2014, John Potter and his intrepid rail group in Peterborough have brought out the print timetable in one edition, which is perfect for all railroad dreams. How can you live without it? I cannot.

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!

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 Journal on my iPad at the dinner table – and my work life starts pushing out my… show more.

Carol Loomis has edited Buffett’s widely read Letter to Shareholders for many decades. She is also an outstanding journalist who was a writer and editor at Fortune for 60 years. Her book is a compilation of many of her interviews with Buffett over the years, with some additional commentary. As the book subtitle indicates, the book covers “practically everything” in a conversational format so it is sort of a quasi-biography of Buffett.

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. 

The book’s massive length is equivalent to about four modern novels, but it remains a fascinating read—even if I found few of the characters to be truly likable.

Like the Victorians themselves, Trollope’s writing style feels to me both old-fashioned and modern at the same time. To read this work today is to discover many similarities between their “now” (circa 1875) and ours.

Some things never change, including the chase for money and status, the societal traditions and prejudices that can be hard to overcome, and the ways lust and greed can upend just about any of our better human impulses.

I picked this novel for this list because it makes an interesting contrast to North and South, and not just because they deal with different levels of society (working class vs. “genteel”).

In Gaskell’s book, most of the characters are searching for moral high ground as they try to… show more.

This novel by Jeffery Archer is about the hotel industry started by Polish immigrant Abel, his rivalry with Kane, who owns a bank, and how they try to destroy each other. It is similar to the characters in my novel, but in this case, the person trying to destroy the protagonist, who also owns a chain of hotels, is not known until she is almost kidnapped, which shocks everyone. Kane and Abel helped me understand the history of early twentieth-century America, and the struggles rich people went through during the Great Depression after losing everything due to the stock market crash of 1929. So anyone who is interested in early twentieth-century history will love this book.