The most recommended wealth books

The authors’ aim is to differentiate their work from historical and analytical works like mine (though they include it among others as structuring their own framework). Instead they focus on ‘objects’ and how they reveal, across different cultures and time periods, social practices and aspirations. Hence, supplemented with many excellent illustrations, they discuss for example carpets, furniture, clocks, and textiles. This makes the book an attractive volume that will inform and delight, the reading – or even perusal – of which will (to echo its subtitle) be richly rewarding.

This book is a powerful guide to creating a fulfilling and satisfying life.

Stoltz draws on his years of experience as a coach and mentor to provide readers with practical tools and strategies for achieving their goals and realizing their full potential. His insights into the power of positive thinking, the importance of setting goals, and the value of taking risks have inspired me to pursue my dreams with greater confidence and determination.

I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to improve their outlook on life and create a better future for themselves.

In his characteristically funny and sardonic style, Andersen guides us through the historical connection between corporate America and the Republican Party. Needless to say, the relationship has been strong and fruitful (Democrats are guilty as well, but it’s hardly a comparison). He reports on the key conservative figures in both the private and public spheres who have funded and enabled the transformation of our laws and society. It is a remarkable story of power and greed written in concise witty prose. Highly recommend!

Reading about income inequality can be fun! 

Branko Milanovic combines critical accounts of the literature on inequality with short illustrative vignettes that cover everything from English literature to Marx´s ideas. 

Over three chapters, he reviews the three key dimensions of inequality: income gaps between people within a single country, income gaps between countries, and (combining both) income gaps between all citizens of the world. 

There are so many interesting examples in this book: you will learn what Pride and Prejudice teach us about wealth concentration, the degree of inequality in the Roman empire, or the links between income distribution and the 2008 financial crisis. 

A must-read if you want to understand economics while learning about interesting facts in an entertaining way.

The very first sentence of this book made me slam it shut and leave it untouched for years. It reads: “Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich.” Hello? How gross is that?! It offended me to my hippie core, until I understood what it was really saying and that, erm, you kind of can’t —not if you want to fully express yourself, anyway. “Rich” simply means that you have everything you need to share your gifts fully with the world and stay at the highest vibration while you do it, whatever that looks like for you. This is now easily the book I recommend to people the most, and the one I read over and over. But you have to let a lot go because it will… show more.

This was another foundational book for the network I created, PreachersNSneakers, and seemed to validate some of the questions I already had about Christianity. This book is packed with statistics and other realities about how much poverty and suffering there is in the world compared to the small subset of Western Christians that live with relative wealth. This book helps wrestle with the idea that a few get to flourish while masses live in poverty and how we as Christians should live our lives knowing that fact. This book is challenging in the best way and is a must-read for those who have questions about the relationship between faith and money.

I interviewed Rachel Rodgers on the inaugural episode of the Holistic Wealth podcast, where she shared her story of doubling her income from $2 million to 5 million during a global pandemic.

The interview struck a cord and is still one of the most popular podcast episodes today. I read the book and really liked the focus on wealth mindset for women. Rachel has also had to overcome the death of her father as a child, and that also resonated with me as I stated in my book how my kids also lost their father at a young age.

Whatever struggles we all go through in life, we can rest assured that there is always hope. I love books that outline these struggles and victories. 

Yet another book I chose based on the cover. I dove into this book knowing that I would love the storyline since I adore all things time travel. Timeless is very descriptive and history based, which pulled me in right away. I will say I didn’t love our main character from the beginning, but as I got to know her I understood her quirks. In this book, we are tossed between the current time and 1910, my favorite era. Michele, our main character, is having dreams about a man with blue eyes and a skeleton key, which is all revealed later in the book. The writing is flawless and the romance is sweet, which puts this book more in the young adult category. I myself prefer YA books, and I do not apologize for it.

I ended up reading the series and really enjoyed the progression.

I stumbled upon Ramit's work years ago when I started trying to get my financial life together.

At the time, I was checking out armfuls and armfuls of books from the library, but they felt so grossly out of touch with my current financial reality. I wanted practical advice, and in Ramit's book, I found it.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich walks readers through how to focus more on big financial matters, like automating savings and retirement contributions in low-cost index funds, instead of focusing on $5 and $10 purchases.

His philosophy is that everyone's version of a "rich life" is different, and rather than trying to shoehorn someone else's financial philosophy into yours, it's imperative to consider your life's needs and wants and prioritize spending and to save in the areas that will bring you the most joy and security. 

There is a quote that truly resonates, and inspires people to save money, regardless of what the economy is doing.

The author is not implying that you need to cut out a latte a day in order to become wealthy; yet he illustrates the value of your savings over time, if you just cut one latte a week. The power of compounding. The idea of fixing your finances has a creative angle here. Even buying his latte factor mug is a timely reminder that saving money feels really good. 

“When you fix your finances, you fix your life.” - David Bach

This book is a rare attempt by an eminent economic historian to examine cultural determinants of economic growth and answer the question why it happens, which distinguishes it sharply from the discipline’s exclusive focus on how it proceeds.

Landes, in other words, disentangles the explanation of causes from the preoccupation with the process, which is why I recommend this book.

One of my philosophy professors said science fiction writers were the new philosophers. I couldn’t agree more. Science fiction authors can create worlds to test hypotheses about social structures. Hogan creates a world seeded with humans with the goal of finding a planet they can move to before the impending self-inflicted destruction of Earth. Without the connection to Earth, the society that forms is a highly productive world without an exchangeable currency. The robots that brought the ship to the planet can build everything they need. After generations, Earthlings make their way to the planet, bringing the ideas and philosophies that destroyed Earth. The locals welcome them and are amused at the absurd ideas. This book does a wonderful job exploring concepts of wealth, social structure, and so much more. 

In contrast to seeing the causes of inequality flowing from the labour market, this book is focused on how the capital income ratio has changed using long time series of data that Piketty and his collaborators have assembled.

Piketty argues that there is a long-run tendency for the growth of capital to outpace income and this leads to increasing income accruing to capital which explains the rising levels of inequality in capitalist economies. His most well-known assertion is that r>g where r is the average annual rate of return on capital and g is the rate of growth of the economy.

In fact, this inequality has been emblazoned on t-shirts of those protesting the rise in income of the 1 percent.

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. 

The great fact of economic history is that we all used to be poor, and now most of us are not. 200 years ago, almost 90 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, today around 9 percent does. This is the story of that remarkable transformation and what made it possible. Of course, there are many good books on this, and I have greatly enjoyed for example Joel Mokyr, Deirdre McCloskey, and David Landes, but this is a powerful, short book by a great historian, that manages to weave together economic, political, technological and intellectual factors into a very compelling narrative of progress and its preconditions over the past one thousand years.

Debunking the Horatio Alger promotional blather of self-flattering tech moguls, the real Bay Area comes into view, based on nurses and teachers, drivers and clerks, homeless and the desperate. Real estate bubbles have given way to tech bubbles which have given way to housing bubbles and now have given way to a chimerical prosperity that is as fragile as any of the prior ones. Dick Walker pierces the veils of capitalist self-promotion to reveal the bleak consequences of the “technology booms” that have repeatedly crashed over the San Francisco Bay Area. Whether unpacking the real causes of our ongoing housing crisis or detailing the extensive ecological havoc inflicted on our area, this is a recent, definitive, fact-based analysis of it all.

It’s fashionable to think doomsday is coming, so fashionable that young people’s mental health is being harmed by relentless negativism in education, politics, the media, and Hollywood. 

Yet all previously predicted doomsdays did not happen! 

Historically, optimists have proven right far more often than pessimists. In this book Ridley makes the case that a revival of intellectual respectability for optimism would be good for society. Pessimists think there is no hope. Optimists believe reforms will succeed and society can improve.

We are all going to lose someone we love. We are all going to go through the pain of people we care about dying. We are all going to contemplate our mortality at some point and wonder if what we’re doing has much of a point, if we could do better, and if we could make life a little less painful somehow.

Keisha Blair lost her husband when they were both in their thirties, when their son was 8 weeks old. She shares what she learned about building from that wreckage in Holistic Wealth. The book puts the pain of loss front and center, and then offers insights from stories and interviews on how to take care of our money, our relationships, and our spirituality, and thus ourselves.

Now this book was a Christmas gift from my daughter who was 23 at the time. I typically will submit a readers list to my family around the holidays but this one was not on my list believe it or not.

Little did I know that it would become one of my favorite books and here's why. Dean doesn’t sugarcoat his experience around what it takes to get to the next level. He gives you real examples and will challenge you to get out of your comfort zone very similar to Jack Canfield but with a totally different writing style.

The difference between Jack and Dean, in my opinion, is that Dean uses a more personal approach to storytelling so you feel like you are on the journey right along with him the good the bad, and the ugly.

He then goes into detail about the who, what, and why… show more.

Jean Brunel was one of the early adopters of goals-based investing.

Brunel shares insights from his decades working with high-net-worth investors. This book serves as a foundation for all those that followed, and provided credence to aligning investments to specific goals, rather than merely outperforming some arbitrary benchmark.