Gordian Knots

• Active Portfolio Management by Grinold and Kahn
• The Little Book of Economics by Greg Ip
• Mr. Market Miscalculates by James Grant
• Anatomy of the Bear by Russell Napier
• Tomorrow’s Gold: Asia’s age of discovery by Marc Faber

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. (UP:1443 | WS:2210 | Total:3653)
2. 1984 by George Orwell. (UP:1447 | WS:2090 | Total:3537)
3. Dune by Frank Herbert. (UP:1122 | WS:2140 | Total:3262)
4. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. (UP:967 | WS:1750 | Total:2717)
5. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. (UP:931 | WS:1680 | Total:2611)
6. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. (UP:1031 | WS:1530 | Total:2561)
7. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. (UP:907 | WS:1320 | Total:2227)
8. The Bible by Various. (UP:810 | WS:1230 | Total:2040)
9. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. (UP:603 | WS:1220 | Total:1823)
10. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling. (UP:1169 | WS:560 | Total:1729)
11. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. (UP:610 | WS:1090 | Total:1700)
12. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman. (UP:483 | WS:1130 | Total:1613)
13. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. (UP:473 | WS:1070 | Total:1543)
14. The Foundation Saga by Isaac Asimov. (UP:519 | WS:960 | Total:1479)
15. Neuromancer by William Gibson. (UP:449 | WS:960 | Total:1409)
16. Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. (UP:664 | WS:710 | Total:1374)
17. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. (UP:455 | WS:870 | Total:1325)
18. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. (UP:402 | WS:880 | Total:1282)
19. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. (UP:388 | WS:890 | Total:1278)
20. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. (UP:466 | WS:790 | Total:1256)
21. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. (UP:403 | WS:830 | Total:1233)
22. Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid by Douglas Hofstadter. (UP:400 | WS:790 | Total:1190)
23. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse. (UP:334 | WS:770 | Total:1104)
24. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwelski. (UP:347 | WS:720 | Total:1067)
25. The Giver by Lois Lowry. (UP:429 | WS:630 | Total:1059)
26. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (UP:264 | WS:680 | Total:944)
27. Animal Farm by George Orwell. (UP:367 | WS:550 | Total:917)
28. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. (UP:266 | WS:580 | Total:846)
29. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. (UP:254 | WS:550 | Total:804)
30. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. (UP:265 | WS:520 | Total:785)
31. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. (UP:264 | WS:520 | Total:784)
32. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. (UP:249 | WS:530 | Total:779)
33. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. (UP:212 | WS:560 | Total:772)
34. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman. (UP:194 | WS:560 | Total:754)
35. The Stranger by Albert Camus. (UP:197 | WS:550 | Total:747)
36. Various by Dr. Seuss. (UP:235 | WS:500 | Total:735)
37. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. (UP:157 | WS:570 | Total:727)
38. Lord of the Flies by William Golding. (UP:247 | WS:470 | Total:717)
39. The Monster At The End Of This Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin. (UP:277 | WS:430 | Total:707)
40. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. (UP:224 | WS:480 | Total:704)
41. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. (UP:241 | WS:460 | Total:701)
42. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick. (UP:270 | WS:390 | Total:660)
43. A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (UP:169 | WS:460 | Total:629)
44. The Art of War by Sun Tzu. (UP:199 | WS:430 | Total:629)
45. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. (UP:228 | WS:390 | Total:618)
46. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. (UP:140 | WS:460 | Total:600)
47. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. (UP:251 | WS:340 | Total:591)
48. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. (UP:108 | WS:450 | Total:558)
49. The Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights by Various. (UP:178 | WS:370 | Total:548)
50. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. (UP:194 | WS:340 | Total:534)
51. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (UP:169 | WS:340 | Total:509)
52. Odyssey by Homer. (UP:153 | WS:310 | Total:463)
53. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. (UP:173 | WS:280 | Total:453)
54. A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. (UP:167 | WS:270 | Total:437)
55. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. (UP:147 | WS:290 | Total:437)
56. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. (UP:103 | WS:320 | Total:423)
57. Ringworld by Larry Niven. (UP:193 | WS:220 | Total:413)
58. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. (UP:82 | WS:330 | Total:412)
59. The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick. (UP:74 | WS:330 | Total:404)
60. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry. (UP:84 | WS:320 | Total:404)
61. Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. (UP:126 | WS:270 | Total:396)
62. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. (UP:155 | WS:240 | Total:395)
63. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. (UP:106 | WS:280 | Total:386)
64. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. (UP:143 | WS:230 | Total:373)
65. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. (UP:148 | WS:210 | Total:358)
66. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. (UP:148 | WS:190 | Total:338)
67. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. (UP:97 | WS:240 | Total:337)
68. Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. (UP:77 | WS:260 | Total:337)
69. Everybody Poops by Tarō Gomi. (UP:118 | WS:200 | Total:318)
70. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. (UP:118 | WS:190 | Total:308)
71. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X with Alex Haley. (UP:105 | WS:200 | Total:305)
72. John Dies at the End by David Wong. (UP:59 | WS:240 | Total:299)
73. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. (UP:117 | WS:180 | Total:297)
74. Contact by Carl Sagan. (UP:104 | WS:190 | Total:294)
75. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. (UP:116 | WS:170 | Total:286)
76. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. (UP:121 | WS:160 | Total:281)
77. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. (UP:92 | WS:180 | Total:272)
78. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. (UP:119 | WS:150 | Total:269)
79. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. (UP:55 | WS:210 | Total:265)
80. The Stand by Stephen King. (UP:83 | WS:180 | Total:263)
81. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. (UP:80 | WS:180 | Total:260)
82. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. (UP:48 | WS:210 | Total:258)
83. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. (UP:55 | WS:200 | Total:255)
84. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. (UP:75 | WS:180 | Total:255)
85. Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer. (UP:75 | WS:180 | Total:255)
86. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. (UP:129 | WS:120 | Total:249)
87. Asimov’s Guide to the Bible by Isaac Asimov. (UP:58 | WS:180 | Total:238)
88. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. (UP:104 | WS:130 | Total:234)
89. Collapse by Jared Diamond. (UP:53 | WS:180 | Total:233)
90. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallave. (UP:53 | WS:180 | Total:233)
91. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. (UP:112 | WS:120 | Total:232)
92. Chaos by James Gleick. (UP:58 | WS:170 | Total:228)
93. American Gods by Neil Gaiman. (UP:46 | WS:180 | Total:226)
94. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. (UP:103 | WS:120 | Total:223)
95. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon. (UP:52 | WS:170 | Total:222)
96. You Can Choose to Be Happy by Tom G. Stevens. (UP:70 | WS:150 | Total:220)
97. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler. (UP:58 | WS:160 | Total:218)
98. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. (UP:73 | WS:130 | Total:203)
99. Candide by Voltaire. (UP:102 | WS:100 | Total:202)
100. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. (UP:62 | WS:140 | Total:202)
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. (UP:50 | WS:150 | Total:200)
102. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. (UP:49 | WS:150 | Total:199)
103. The Dark Tower by Stephen King. (UP:67 | WS:130 | Total:197)
104. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. (UP:62 | WS:130 | Total:192)
105. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. (UP:58 | WS:130 | Total:188)
106. The Making of a Radical by Scott Nearing. (UP:48 | WS:140 | Total:188)
107. The Turner Diaries by Andrew MacDonald. (UP:45 | WS:140 | Total:185)
108. The Scar by China Mieville. (UP:24 | WS:160 | Total:184)
109. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. (UP:58 | WS:120 | Total:178)
110. Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. (UP:51 | WS:120 | Total:171)
111. 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis De Sade. (UP:40 | WS:130 | Total:170)
112. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke. (UP:87 | WS:80 | Total:167)
113. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. (UP:33 | WS:130 | Total:163)
114. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. (UP:50 | WS:110 | Total:160)
115. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. (UP:37 | WS:120 | Total:157)
116. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. (UP:25 | WS:130 | Total:155)
117. Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke. (UP:44 | WS:110 | Total:154)
118. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. (UP:34 | WS:120 | Total:154)
119. The Book of Ler by MA Foster. (UP:57 | WS:90 | Total:147)
120. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. (UP:57 | WS:90 | Total:147)
121. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. (UP:35 | WS:110 | Total:145)
122. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. (UP:24 | WS:120 | Total:144)
123. Watership Down by Richard Adams. (UP:32 | WS:110 | Total:142)
124. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. (UP:29 | WS:110 | Total:139)
125. Civilization and Capitalism by Fernand Braudel. (UP:28 | WS:110 | Total:138)
126. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. (UP:48 | WS:90 | Total:138)
127. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. (UP:97 | WS:40 | Total:137)
128. The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J Anderson. (UP:57 | WS:80 | Total:137)
129. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck . (UP:86 | WS:50 | Total:136)
130. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. (UP:30 | WS:100 | Total:130)
131. The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. (UP:40 | WS:90 | Total:130)
132. The Chomsky Reader by Noam Chomsky. (UP:28 | WS:100 | Total:128)
133. The Panda’s Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould. (UP:17 | WS:110 | Total:127)
134. Flatland by Edwin Abbot. (UP:36 | WS:90 | Total:126)
135. On the Road by Jack Kerouac . (UP:36 | WS:90 | Total:126)
136. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. (UP:44 | WS:80 | Total:124)
137. The Classical Style by Charles Rosen. (UP:28 | WS:90 | Total:118)
138. Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. (UP:17 | WS:100 | Total:117)
139. An American Life by Ronald Reagan. (UP:16 | WS:100 | Total:116)
140. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan. (UP:36 | WS:80 | Total:116)
141. The Little Schemer by Friedman & Felleisen. (UP:36 | WS:80 | Total:116)
142. Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau. (UP:24 | WS:90 | Total:114)
143. Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by Rebecca West. (UP:28 | WS:80 | Total:108)
144. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. (UP:48 | WS:60 | Total:108)
145. Sandman by Neil Gaiman. (UP:17 | WS:90 | Total:107)
146. The Game by Neil Strauss. (UP:36 | WS:70 | Total:106)
147. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. (UP:15 | WS:90 | Total:105)
148. Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. (UP:34 | WS:70 | Total:104)
149. Walden by Henry David Thoreau. (UP:24 | WS:80 | Total:104)
150. The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. (UP:10 | WS:90 | Total:100)
151. Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft. (UP:19 | WS:80 | Total:99)
152. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. (UP:39 | WS:60 | Total:99)
153. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. (UP:26 | WS:70 | Total:96)
154. The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker. (UP:45 | WS:50 | Total:95)
155. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. (UP:14 | WS:80 | Total:94)
156. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. (UP:33 | WS:60 | Total:93)
157. The Wasteland by TS Elliot. (UP:19 | WS:70 | Total:89)
158. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. (UP:38 | WS:50 | Total:88)
159. Pi to 5 million places by [kick books]. (UP:26 | WS:60 | Total:86)
160. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. (UP:36 | WS:50 | Total:86)
161. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. (UP:33 | WS:50 | Total:83)
162. Guts by Chuck Palahniuk. (UP:21 | WS:60 | Total:81)
163. fear and trembling by Søren Kierkegaard. (UP:20 | WS:60 | Total:80)
164. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. (UP:70 | WS:10 | Total:80)
165. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. (UP:19 | WS:60 | Total:79)
166. Ulysses by James Joyce. (UP:29 | WS:50 | Total:79)
167. Macbeth by Shakespeare. (UP:38 | WS:40 | Total:78)
168. Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. (UP:27 | WS:50 | Total:77)
169. Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith. (UP:36 | WS:40 | Total:76)
170. The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood. (UP:16 | WS:60 | Total:76)
171. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. (UP:25 | WS:50 | Total:75)
172. Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. (UP:13 | WS:60 | Total:73)
173. Women by Charles Bukowski. (UP:13 | WS:60 | Total:73)
174. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. (UP:32 | WS:40 | Total:72)
175. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. (UP:20 | WS:50 | Total:70)
176. How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland. (UP:19 | WS:50 | Total:69)
177. Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein. (UP:19 | WS:50 | Total:69)
178. The singularity is near by Ray Kurzweil. (UP:17 | WS:50 | Total:67)
179. The Day of the Trifids by John Wyndham. (UP:16 | WS:50 | Total:66)
180. The Long Walk by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman). (UP:36 | WS:30 | Total:66)
181. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. (UP:18 | WS:40 | Total:58)
182. The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. (UP:17 | WS:40 | Total:57)
183. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. (UP:37 | WS:20 | Total:57)
184. The Elegant Universe by Brian Green. (UP:16 | WS:40 | Total:56)
185. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. (UP:13 | WS:40 | Total:53)
186. Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. (UP:13 | WS:40 | Total:53)
187. King Lear by Shakespeare. (UP:29 | WS:20 | Total:49)
188. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. (UP:28 | WS:20 | Total:48)
189. The Voyage of Argo: The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes. (UP:8 | WS:40 | Total:48)
190. The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. (UP:37 | WS:10 | Total:47)
191. Nichomachean ethics by Aristotle. (UP:16 | WS:30 | Total:46)
192. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandlla. (UP:15 | WS:30 | Total:45)
193. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. (UP:4 | WS:40 | Total:44)
194. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. (UP:13 | WS:30 | Total:43)
195. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. (UP:12 | WS:30 | Total:42)
196. The Occult by Colin Wilson. (UP:12 | WS:30 | Total:42)
197. Cosmos by Carl Sagan. (UP:21 | WS:20 | Total:41)
198. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. (UP:31 | WS:10 | Total:41)
199. Hamlet by Shakespeare. (UP:29 | WS:10 | Total:39)
200. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. (UP:28 | WS:10 | Total:38)

Via Farnam
Street: Jamie Dimon’s Summer Reading List
Business
The World is Flat
Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
Security Analysis – Classic 1940 Edition
The Intelligent Investor
Execution – The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Jack: Straight From the Gut
Sam Walton – Made in America
Double your Profits in 6 Months or Less
Built from Scratch
Only the Paranoid Survive
Built to Last

History Bio
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Autobiography of Ben Franklin
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
Eisenhower: Soldier and President
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Washington: The Indispensable Man
Lincoln
Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grand
Jefferson
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

History Other
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future
The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Some so Poor

1. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial Systems–and Themselves. By Andrew Ross Sorkin. Viking; 624 pages; $32.95. Allen Lane; £14.99. A riveting fly-on-the-wall account of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and what came afterwards.
2. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. By Liaquat Ahamed. Penguin Press; 564 pages; $32.95. Heinemann; £20A history of the generation that invented the modern central banker. Winner of this year’s Financial Times/Goldman Sachs business book of the year award.
3. How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities. By John Cassidy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 416 pages; $28. Allen Lane; £25. A sharp look at the roots of the financial crisis that turns into an excellent history of economic thought, by a British writer at the New Yorker.

List of books that profiles Fund Managers – Hat Tip: Mebane

* Hedge Hunters by Katherine Burton
* 20/20 Vision by Harry Liem
* The New Investment Superstars by Lois Peltz
* Market Wizards, The New Market Wizards, and Stock Market Wizards by Jack Schwager
* Inside the House of Money by Stephen Drobny
* Way of the Turtle by Curtis Faith & The Complete TurtleTrader by Michael W. Covel
* Extreme Value Hedging by Ronald D. Orol
* When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
* No Bull by Michael Steinhardt
* Soros on Soros by George Soros
* The Snowball by Alice Schroeder
* How I Became a Quant by Richard R. Lindsey
* Fortune’s Formula by William Poundstone
* Value Investing by Bruce C. N. Greenwald
* Investment Gurus by Peter J. Tanous
* Money Masters, The New Money Masters, and Money Masters of Our Time – Train
* The Global Investor Book of Investing Rules – Jenks
* Julian Robertson – Strachman
* Hedgehogging – Barton Biggs
* When Supertraders Meet Kryptonite -Art Collins
* New Market Mavericks-Cutmore
* Investing With Young Guns-Morton
* The Best:Conversations With Top Traders-Marder
* Investment All Stars-Stern
* Confessions of a Street Addict-Cramer
* Education of a Speculator-Niederhoffer
* The Mind of Wall Street-Levy
* John Neff on Investing-Neff
* The Lion of Wall Street-Dreyfus
* Trading the Worlds Markets-Gough
* Value Investing with the Masters-Kazanjian
* Wizards of Wall Street-Kazanjian
* The Bond King-Middleton
* Pit Bull – Martin Schwartz
* John Neff on Investing – Neff and Mintz
* Running Money by Andy Kessler
* Barnard Baruch – The Adventures of a Wall St Legend
* Charlie D – The Story of the Legendary Bond Trader – William Falloon
* Education of a Speculator – Vic Niederhoffer
* What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars – Jim Paul & Brendan Moynihan

The following is a list of books which piqued my interest based upon their description and associated reviews in FT, Economist, WSJ and NYT. All of these books were published in 2008. I hope to read at least one book once every two weeks over the upcoming year.

1. When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change By Mohamed El-Erian
2. The Logic of Life: Uncovering the New Economics of Everything By Tim Harford
3. Outliers: The Story of Success By Malcolm Gladwell
4. India: The Emerging Giant. By Arvind Panagariya
5. The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs. By Charles D. Ellis
6. A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World. By William J. Bernstein
7. The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. By Rose George
8. The Princeton Companion to Mathematics. Edited by Timothy Gowers, June Barrow-Green and Imre Leader.
9. THE Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies. By Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson.
10. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us). By Tom Vanderbilt.
11. The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company by David A. Price

Also, here is a mixed list of books specific to economics and finance. They include investment and economics classics, and also some recent books on the latest credit crunch and the 2008 market crash. I have read many of the classics in earlier years. This was part of the reason why I had been skeptical about the fake boom in the last few years and had managed to lose less than the S&P 500 in 2008

The reason I put together this list is because I’m more interested in the upcoming economic and investment landscape. Hopefully, re-reading the classics and matching those thoughts with the first views of the ongoing credit crunch will help me see ahead.

More broadly, I plan to go back to school for an MBA in summer of 2009. So, hopefully, these books will stabilize my understanding of the economic and financial landscape before I start school, leading to better career decisions along the way.

1. Once in Golconda by John Brooks
2. Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation by Edward Chancellor
3. The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm by Robert F. Bruner, Sean D. Carr
4. Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises by Charles P. Kindleberger, Robert Aliber
5. The Great Crash of 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith
6. A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation by Richard Bookstaber
7. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre
8. The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means by George Soros
9. Lombard Street. A Description of the Money Market by Walter Bagehot
10. Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity by Michael Lewis
11. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay
12. Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis
13. Capital Ideas Evolving by Peter L. Bernstein
14. The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères and Co. by William D. Cohan
15. Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives by Satyajit Das
16. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
17. The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek
18. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
19. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph A. Schumpeter
20. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
21. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises
22. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism by F. A. Hayek
23. The Theory of Money and Credit by Ludwig Von Mises, H.E. Batson
24. The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays by Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, Gottfried Haberler, Friedrich A. Hayek, Richard M. Ebeling
25. The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
26. The (Mis)behavior of Markets by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson

Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Thomas Schelling
Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton
The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
The Winner’s Curse by Richard Thaler
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
The Hare and the Tortoise by John Kay
How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff

The following is a non-exhaustive list of non-business books that I plan to read in 2007.

1) The future of life by Edward Wilson

2) Robosapiens by Menzel and D’Aluisio

3) Linked: The New Science of Networks by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

4) As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth by Juan Enriquez

5) The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson

6) Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz

7) Ultimate Zero and One : Computing at the Quantum Frontier (Hardcover) by Colin P. Williams, Colin Williams, Scott H. Clearwater

Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life (Paperback) by Steven Johnson

9) On Intelligence (Paperback) by Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee

10) DNA: The Secret of Life (Paperback) by James D. Watson, Andrew Berry

11) Designing the Molecular World (Paperback) by Philip Ball

12) Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (Paperback) by Kevin Kelly

13) Biohazard by Ken Alibek

14) Breakfast at Buck’s by Macniven

15) The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil

16) Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

17) Nature Via Nurture by Matt Ridley

18) Biocosm by James Gardner

19) The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind by Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. Kuhl

20) The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

21) The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

22) The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley

23) Nanofuture: What’s Next For Nanotechnology by J. Storrs Hall

24) The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins

25) The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications by David Deutsch

26) Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos by M Mitchell Waldrop

27) Emergence from Chaos to Order by Holland

28) A Shortcut Through Time: The Path to the Quantum Computer by George Johnson

29) Redesigning Humans: Choosing our genes, changing our future (Paperback) by Gregory Stock

30) QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman

31) The New Humanists: Science at the Edge by John Brockman

I just finished an extraordinary book, ‘Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk’ by Peter Bernstein.

I had always believed that the story of civilization is a story of human’s conquest of risk, or atleast a reduction in the most banal forms of risk. Unlike cavemen, we don’t worry about being eaten by wild animals. The vagaries of the weather seldom have life-threatening implications for the general populace. Every human activity, in commerce and in every day life is oriented towards minimizing unknown risks and eliminating known risks.

Bernstein’s book serves to teach you the history of how we came to understand risk, measure it and then proceed to try to eliminate it. While we have reduced risk in many natural spheres, we have created more in the process. Humans have learnt to conquer the risks caused by nature (for the most part) but how about the conquest of risks caused by the actions of fellow human beings?

Volatility is a consequence of irrationality (pause to think about this statement).

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

- G.K. Chesterton

The Economist on the book “Why Should anyone be Led by You?”

“Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, two British academics, eschew the notion that effective bosses can be constructed piecemeal. Rather than suggesting that high-quality leaders can be constructed from what they dismiss as an “amalgam of traits”, they stress that there are “no universal leadership characteristics”. The talent that the pair thinks most vital is “authenticity”.

The authors go on to make some fairly obvious points that the truly authentic and self-aware could probably work out for themselves: be conscious of how well you read situations (and try to get better); conform (but not too much); get close to your underlings (but not too close); and communicate authentically too.”

I enjoyed reading the book ‘Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture became Consumer Culture’. The following is a summary from the last chapter in the book. I am inclined to believe that there is definitely a lot of truth in the authors’ thesis.

“…countercultural theorists routinely take concrete social problems and trace them back, in one way or another, to a gigantic “technocratic” apparatus of conformity and repression. For example, environmentalists take straightfowards problems like pollution and blame them on some deep structure of Western rationality (as opposed to an incompleteness of the system of propoerty rights) Antiglobalization activists take the homogenizing effects of trade and blame them on an emerging “Empire” of capital, while ignoring the fact that these same tendencies have been manifest in trade relations since beginning of history. Consumer activists look at the obnoxiously depressing spectacle of brand-consciousness in our society and blame it on a fundamental requirement of the mass production system, rather than simply on the exploitation of a preexisting competition for distinction among consumers.”

The authors cite lively examples to prove the above points. A very thorough debunking of activist progressive left.

Via Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
: Extreme entrepreneurship.

… For this personal yet unsentimental travel story, freelance writer Michael Benanav donned a turban and journeyed on camelback into the Sahara for thirty-six days. His goal: to join a desert caravan and travel among tribal salt traders as they hauled huge slabs of precious “white gold” back to the towns and cities of Mali.