38 Comments
 

I love how Den of Thieves stays current as a top read in business/finance. I really enjoyed the read - not enough to read it twice, but enough to remember that it was eye opening for me in certain ways at the time. Definitely recommended.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Another good Milken book is Predators' Ball. Den of thieves does cover a lot of Milken but it is ultimately more about a larger group of insiders that included Milken, Siegel, Boesky etc. Predators' Ball is more of an actual Milken biography that covers his life starting with the beginning of his career when he spent the whole of his commute (2 hr each way) reading 10Ks and prospectuses with a miner's headlamp on his head (because buses during those days apparently didn't have interior lights).

 

Liar's Ball -- fascinating read about history of GM building / RE world (big focus on Macklowe)

Rogue Trader

Discussion Materials

The Ascent of Money

What It Takes

More Money Than God

King of Capital

Straight to Hell

Array
 
"prestigewhore101" Anyone have good recommendations for non-finance / business books? Trying to broaden my horizons

Man's search for meaning

https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I already added a post above that compares the two books, but here it is again:

Den of thieves does cover a lot of Milken but it is ultimately more about a larger group of insiders that included Milken, Siegel, Boesky etc. Predators' Ball is more of an actual Milken biography that covers his life starting with the beginning of his career when he spent the whole of his commute (2 hr each way) reading 10Ks and prospectuses with a miner's headlamp on his head (because buses during those days apparently didn't have interior lights). Both are great so I recommend reading both (personally like Predator's Ball better because I find Milken's career fascinating)

 

Rich Dad Poor Dad if you havent read it already, in my opinion whenever someone gets their first paying gig( internship/job) they should get this book along with their offer letter

 

Check out Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. All about making good decisions with a limited set of facts. Wasn’t written as a finance book, but definitely has major takeaways for finance among many other things.

 

I would recommend "The Art of Living" by Thich Nhat Hahn. It is essentially a book about mindfulness written by a Vietnamese monk. I might disagree with some things in a book but it is a very nice read to stop and reflect and relax :)

Also "Willpower" by Baumeister - for people who found themselves in tough place with the pressure of lockdown to accomplish million things.

 

Some of my recent favorites: Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America (Christopher Leonard)

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (Peter Frankopan)

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Daniel Immerwahr)

How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region (Joe Studwell)

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice (Bill Browder)

 

Red Notice is a really interesting book, but I suggest try doing some background research on Bill Browder. There are a lot of things about him that is not as it seems in the book that he wrote - e.g., the sketchy tax practices engaged by Browder's Russian shell corporations (before Browder lost his access to enter Russia) and the role that Sergei Magnitsky (who is not actually a "tax lawyer" as Browder says) played relating to that tax practice. There is a several hours long deposition of Browder on Youtube where Browder gets grilled on these facts and the stuff that he said in his book and it's quite illuminating (the deposition and other reports about Browder generally show that, despite running around on a high horse esp. with the Magnitsky Act, Browder seems to have a very sketchy background).

 

A few non finance books that I have really enjoyed are:

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin

Deep Work by Cal Newport

Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss (highly recommended if you want to learn negotiations)

Some of my favorite finance related books that are not mentioned above

Mastering the Market Cycle - Howard Marks

Too Big to Fail - Andrew Ross Sorkin

Monkey Business - John Rolfe

 

Since the finance books are a bit oversaturated at this point, here's a mix of both: 

Pachinko (for all the non targets trying to break into BB's or MF PE's, read the author's backstory if you want a motivational boost on making it against seemingly insurmountable odds)

King of Capital (interesting look into Blackstone's comeup)

The Wind Up Bird Chronicles (true mind fuck)

Severance (a story about a pandemic written in ~2018. eerily accurate down to the n-95 masks...)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (interesting social commentary on how racial intolerance can shape people)

Dune (sci fi)

Julius Caesar by Philip Pullman (if there was ever a biography that made you feel unaccomplished)

Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger's autobio. This man is running for president one day)

 

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