best finance biography books

The 40 best finance books to read in 2024

There’s much more to the world of finance than figures on a screen, as these finance books reveal..

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that finance is just a numbers game, but those numbers represent hugely important things – from commodities that make the world go round, to people’s deep-seated hopes and dreams. The best finance books are those that accessibly explain subjects shrouded in often self-serving industry jargon, revealing fascinating and unseen truths about the way the world works.

Books about money can be windows into an overlooked past as well as snapshots of a possible future – sharing everything from ideas that can change the world to frauds that have brought whole nations to their knees. Whether it’s a personal finance book or a technical manual, there’s something for everyone – because finance affects us all. These finance books can help you make a success of money no matter your circumstances.

The Psychology of Money

By morgan housel.

“The best book about money ever written,” according to Diary of a CEO ’s Steven Bartlett, and who are we to argue? This global sensation was published in 2020 and has gone on to sell over four million copies. It’s easy to see why: Housel is a consummate story-teller, and these are stories that will change how you think about wealth, greed and happiness forever. Far from being mere cash, money is perhaps the ultimate human construct – and conundrum – that we face.

Same as Ever

Morgan Housel’s follow-up to The Psychology of Money does not disappoint. Everyone wants to predict the future, but everyone’s bad at it. That’s because the focus is usually on what will change – billions are spent every year trying to forecast it – yet no one can know for sure. However, there’s a small number of things that never change, and identifying them can give you a reliable advantage – not just in investing, but in business, life and more. In Same as Ever , international bestselling author Morgan Housel reveals them through twenty-three unforgettable stories.

by Jared Dillian

There are books that make personal finance a nightmare of self-denial and checklists. Then there’s No Worries , a compulsively readable guide to living a stress-free financial life by simply getting a small number of things right, enabling you to flourish no matter your situation. This is the ultimate book for doing well with money for those who don’t want to spend their lives thinking about it.

The Art of Execution

By lee freeman-shor.

Over seven years, Lee Freeman-Shor allocated twenty-five to 150 million dollars to forty-five of the world’s top investors, on the condition that they only invest in their ten best ideas. Surprisingly, despite their expertise, most of these ideas failed to make money, with a coin toss proving a more effective decision-maker. Yet many of these investors still profited significantly. How? The Art of Execution reveals a crucial, often overlooked aspect of investing. Through real-life data, case studies, and stories from Freeman-Shor’s perspective as their fund manager, readers learn the secret habits that make or break investment success.

The 4-Hour Workweek

By tim ferriss.

The 4-Hour Workweek is the book that put passive income, personal outsourcing and remote work on the map. Published in a world where a 9–5 glued to your desk in an office seemed inescapable, Tim Ferris redefined the possibilities – and did so without the gimmicks or empty promises that so often cloud this topic. By following the blueprints in this practical and approachable book, you can learn how to live more and work less right now, instead of waiting decades until retirement. While some of the resources have inevitably dated since publication, the principles remain timeless – and the outcomes empowering.

The Naked Trader

By robbie burns.

For a refreshingly straightforward guide to stock market investing, look no further than The Naked Trader by Robbie Burns, one of the UK’s most popular financial writers (and the only one to have turned a few thousand pounds into £3m largely while trading in his pyjamas). Written in plain language and peppered with real-life examples, this book demystifies the often complex world of buying and selling shares for a living. It shows how anyone can do it – and enjoy a life of financial independence – without spending all day glued to a screen. The Naked Trader’s Book of Trading Strategies is a great companion book for those inspired by Robbie Burns.

Liar’s Poker

By michael lewis.

The book that launched a thousand finance memoirs, Michael Lewis’s first work as an author is still one of the best of its kind. An eye-opening journey through the chaotic world of 1980s Wall Street, from the intense dynamics of the trading floor to shifts in global finance, Lewis’s storytelling paints an unforgettable picture of greed, ambition, and economic change. The audio version is produced by Malcolm Gladwell’s innovative audio production company, Pushkin Industries – augmented with archival clips, original score and sound effects, as well as a bonus podcast episode.

Best Loser Wins

By tom hougaard.

Tom Hougaard is a renowned high-stakes trader known for turning £25,000 into over £1m in a year by trading the financial markets. Unlike typical trading books focusing on strategies and money management, this book offers a rare glimpse inside a trader’s mind. The result is fresh, honest, vulnerable – and deeply informative. Hougaard argues that success in trading isn’t just about technical knowledge but understanding, and managing, the psychological impact of the markets.

Billion Dollar Whale

By tom wright and bradley hope.

Billion Dollar Whale is the story of the astonishing fraud committed by Jho Low, a Wharton School graduate, who stole billions of dollars from a Malaysian investment fund, leaving the global financial system reeling. This pacy narrative recounts Low’s audacious scheme and the uses he put the stolen funds to – including financing The Wolf of Wall Street (of all films), opulent parties, and luxury real estate. Today, Low remains an international fugitive, evading charges in multiple countries, while investigations continue.

Iceland’s Secret

By jared bibler.

You don’t need a murder to make a thrilling piece of Nordic noir. This true story of the world’s biggest con – leading to a financial collapse the equivalent of three Enrons (the infamous US energy company which filed for the then largest ever bankruptcy in history in 2001 after accounting irregularities) – is almost impossible to believe. Jared Bibler moved from the US to Iceland in the 2000s, just in time to live through the country's financial meltdown in 2008. His own finances wiped out along with hundreds of thousands of fellow Icelanders, he landed a new role: as lead investigator into the dizzying crimes that had brought it about. His work led to Iceland being the only country to jail the CEOs of its major banks in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The Secret Wealth Advantage

By akhil patel.

The Secret Wealth Advantage is a strategic guide to making astute financial decisions by understanding the economic cycle that influences periods of boom and bust. Akhil Patel uses historical data and engaging anecdotes to explain the cycle’s dynamics, its impact on the economy, and why it often goes unnoticed. More than just theoretical insight, Patel provides practical advice for navigating each phase of the cycle, allowing readers to invest wisely, preserve wealth during downturns, and master what can seem like a chaotic financial world.

Just Keep Buying

By nick maggiulli.

Renowned finance blogger Nick Maggiulli tackles crucial financial questions with a data-driven approach in Just Keep Buying . This debut book is an intellectually thrilling debunking of many traditional beliefs in personal finance, offering evidence-based strategies for building wealth. Find out why saving less could be more effective, why you should never wait for market dips, and how you can actually thrive in market crashes – and much more.

Number Go Up

By zeke faux.

A darkly comic and revelatory account of the 2021 crypto boom, Bloomberg reporter Zeke Faux’s journey takes him from luxury parties in the Bahamas to uncovering a crypto-fuelled crime ring in Cambodia. The book brilliantly blends humour with detailed reporting, providing a captivating narrative on the rise and fall of a $3 trillion illusion. And if this hasn’t convinced you, it’s safe to say Number Go Up boasts perhaps the best opening two sentences to a finance book of all time – you’ll have to read it to find out.

The Essays of Warren Buffett

By warren buffett.

If you want to understand Warren Buffett’s approach to business and investing, this is what you need to read – with the man himself recommending it as the most comprehensive survey of his methods and thinking. A thorough and accessible compilation of insights over multiple decades of outperformance – packed with the wisdom and turns of phrase that led to him being acclaimed by many as the “Sage of Omaha” (the Nebraska city where Buffett and his company, Berkshire Hathaway, are based).

Poor Charlie’s Almanack

By charles t. munger.

Poor Charlie’s Almanack is the selected wisdom of investor and businessman Warren Buffett’s sharp-witted vice chairman, the late Charlie Munger. Edited by Peter D. Kaufman, this book shares Munger’s profound knowledge across multiple disciplines, including finance, business, history and philosophy. It’s not just an investment guide; it’s a comprehensive manual on ethical living, rational decision-making, and continuous learning.

The Simple Path to Wealth

By jl collins.

A beloved modern classic, The Simple Path to Wealth started as letters from financial expert and author, JL Collins, to his daughter, explaining the remarkably simple – but almost universally overlooked – ways she could ensure a life of financial freedom. These are simple steps anyone can take that will equip them to work and live on their own terms at any time, and in any place – most people just don’t know about them. The letters became a blog, the blog became a book, and over half a million copies later it continues to fascinate readers and change lives.

Pathfinders

The perfect pairing with his first book, The Simple Path to Wealth , Pathfinders is JL Collins’s collection of the most inspiring and interesting stories of his readers pursuing (and achieving) financial independence. From a restaurant employee on minimum wage who will be able to retire before he turns 45, to two teachers who never made a six-figure salary combined but retired as millionaires in their 30s – these stories are proof it can be done, and practical help for you at any stage on your own financial journey.

Free Capital

By guy thomas.

There are lots of books that explain how experts make millions investing in stocks and shares. Free Capital reveals a more elusive and intriguing set of subjects: ordinary private investors who have built colossal fortunes entirely on their own, including some within a tax-free ISA. Often speaking anonymously, Thomas gained unique access to these investors – and shares their stories and strategies in real depth in Free Capital .

Fooled by Randomness

By nassim nicholas taleb.

Can you distinguish skill from luck? Nassim Taleb’s engaging first book investigates this with the vivid and deeply read style that has become his trademark. A veteran trader and risk expert, Taleb upends nearly every conventional belief about talent and chance in an intellectual tour de force, through fascinating stories and a cast of engaging characters from Odysseus to George Soros.

Unknown Market Wizards

By jack d. schwager.

Jack D. Schwager’s Market Wizards books are legendary, and Unknown Market Wizards, the last entry is the series, is no different Instead of interviewing hedge fund and Wall Street greats as he does in previous works, Schwager introduces the reader to a motley collection of traders delivering substantial returns in total obscurity: the Unknown Market Wizards. The new paperback edition also turns the tables for the first time, as Jack is interviewed in Market Wizards -style himself. This book should be on every trader’s shelf.

The Great Depression: A Diary

By benjamin roth.

Discovered and published by his son in 2010, this account of life in an industrial town in Ohio during the Great Depression is “the best economics book ever written”, according to Morgan Housel, the international bestselling author of The Psychology of Money . Written as he experienced the tumultuous events following the 1929 stock market crash, young lawyer Benjamin Roth provides a uniquely personal perspective on a dramatic period of financial history. The result is not just a historical document but something that will resonate with all readers.

Investing for Growth

By terry smith.

Superstar fund manager Terry Smith is a boxer in his spare time and his prose in this collection of his best investment writing holds no punches, with fighting words on every page and flashes of sardonic humour. Best of all, it offers the kind of clear thinking and logical approach to analysing companies that makes you feel smarter after reading it. For Smith, what matters is whether companies can generate cash and do useful things with it. The more cash, and the more useful the things, the more interested you should be.

The Black Girl’s Guide to Financial Freedom

By paris woods.

Paris Wood’s groundbreaking book provides practical strategies for building generational wealth, avoiding financial pitfalls, pursuing education debt-free, and achieving early financial independence. With real-life stories – such as the extreme saver who retired at 30, the woman who worked 25 years in the wrong career, and how the author herself used the tools she shares in the book to create "job freedom" when she was laid off  – and clear advice, it’s tailored for Black women at any stage, from young professionals to those seeking new, empowering financial paths.

How to Think About Money

By jonathan clements.

Ever wanted to lead a more prosperous, worry-free financial life? Jonathan Clements argues that there are five crucial ideas that will get anyone there, and How to Think About Money is his guide to them. Lauded by both readers and investment icons like Jack Bogle, this book will unlock a lifetime of smarter financial choices with a single afternoon of reading.

The Zurich Axioms

By max gunther.

Legendary financial journalist Max Gunther wrote a number of classic finance books in the 1960s and 70s. This one reveals the principles of financial success relied upon by generations of super-rich Swiss speculators. These axioms were handed down to Gunther by his father, the latest in a long line of investors. Ultimately, it’s a guide to embracing risk intelligently – with applications not just to investment but business, life and love.

The Bond King

By mary childs.

How did Bill Gross – the “Bond King” of this book’s title, who at one time presided over a financial empire of $300bn – attain his crown? As with any struggle for a throne, the story isn’t always pretty, but it is always engrossing. Starting as a card-counting gambler in Vegas with just $200, Gross’s story is one of transformation and revolution – both personal and in the once-staid bond market. Mary Childs’s account of his journey is an important chronicle of the making of the modern financial world.

Engines That Move Markets

By alasdair nairn.

Engines That Move Markets is a captivating journey through history that unravels the cyclical nature of technological revolutions, from electric lighting to the internet. It highlights how initial scepticism often evolves into investor enthusiasm, leading to market booms and eventual busts. Investment partner Alasdair Nairn’s research provides invaluable lessons for evaluating emerging tech sectors and firms, as well as memorable and surprising stories from the forgotten pages of financial history.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

By edwin lefèvre.

First published in 1923, this lightly fictionalised account of legendary trader Jesse Livermore’s life and work is an enduring classic. Thanks to its timeless insights into market psychology, it remains as relevant today as a century ago – even though its evocative world of New York ‘bucket shops’ and ticker tape has vanished forever. Livermore’s trading career did not end happily – but anyone can learn from his story to approach the markets with the right mindset.

The Allocator’s Edge

By phil huber.

As traditional investment portfolios face new challenges, this book highlights the growing importance of spreading investments across multiple areas like private equity, hedge funds, and digital assets. Huber provides a uniquely detailed analysis of these alternatives, their risks, returns, and integration into portfolios that will be able to stand the test of time as technology and innovation transform both financial markets and the world around us.

The Intelligent Fund Investor

By joe wiggins.

Investing in funds is popular with those who want to build the value of their savings towards retirement or another goal. But sadly many of these investors give in to sloppy thinking, biases and the temptation to skimp on research. Joe Wiggins’s book shows not only how to overcome such pitfalls, but how to enjoy the process – and profit handsomely from the results. Discover why you should fear (not seek) smooth fund performance, why the best stories tend to lead to the worst investments, and why past performance is not only no guide to the future but the least effective way to make investing decisions.

The Geometry of Wealth

By brian portnoy.

The relationship between money and happiness is famously chequered. This book brings a vital and deeply researched new take on the question of whether one can buy the other, driven by the conviction that true wealth – financial and emotional – lies within reach of most of us, as long as we have the right framework.

My Money Journey

The road to financial independence doesn’t have to look the same for everyone. This diverse collection of 30 individual journeys to wealth and freedom shows the varied yet achievable routes that can get you there – from the fierce frugality of Kristine, who started again in her 40s after a divorce, to the slow and steady of Greg, who turned a childhood habit of saving into a lifetime of prudence and prosperity. Compiled by former Wall Street Journal columnist Jonathan Clements, the results are both surprising and encouraging.

Simple But Not Easy

By richard oldfield.

How many finance books start with a detailed list of the author’s investment mistakes? Described by the author as partly autobiographical and heavily biased – in other words, enjoyably candid and opinionated –, this book by fund manager Richard Oldfield is a terrific read. Come for the self-effacing humour, stay for the deep insights on the true nature of investment success, and take away learnings on what you can (and can’t) do to put the odds in your favour.

The Crypto Trader

By glen goodman.

The world of crypto can seem like a financial Wild West (see Number Go Up elsewhere on this list). But as with any asset, there have always been – and always will be – ways of making money consistently that don’t rely on random speculation or madcap schemes. In this insider’s view of successful cryptocurrency trading, Glen Goodman shares how to trade cryptocurrencies using time-tested and risk-controlled methods taken from the world of traditional trading – and demonstrated by years of his own highly profitable real-life crypto trades.

The Laws of Wealth

By daniel crosby.

In this landmark book, behavioural finance expert Dr. Daniel Crosby uses a lifetime of research and data to distil the practical rules of behaviour that anyone can follow to enjoy better results as an investor. Discover the behavioural foundations of wise investing, simple strategies for mitigating behavioural risks, and how to harness human nature for effective equity investing.

by Iona Bain

Things haven’t been easy when it comes to finances for young people – low wages, high housing costs, the economic impact of Covid-19, and that’s just to start. In Own It! , Iona Bain – BBC’s Morning Live residential financial expert, and one of the top millennial voices on money – helps readers tackle all these issues and more, showing how any young person can establish wealth and transform their life starting with nothing, beginning today.

The Smartest Guys in the Room

By bethany mclean and peter elkind.

How did an energy firm admired by investors and feared by rivals become a byword for fraud and scandal? The tipping point for the firm in question, Enron, was a Fortune article by Bethany McLean, questioning its earnings methods. What followed was a rapid descent into one of the largest bankruptcies in US history, shattering American confidence in a system that enriched executives while devastating small investors. McLean returns here in book form – along with co-author Peter Elkind – to tell the unbelievable true story in full.

Capital Allocators

By ted seides.

There is a hidden world in investing: the realm of the chief investment officer. These influential figures – managing trillions in assets on behalf of endowments, pensions, family offices, and more – largely operate out of the public eye. This book provides unprecedented insight into their practices, skills, decision-making frameworks, and portfolio management strategies.

How I Invest My Money

By joshua m. brown and brian portnoy.

How I Invest My Money is a collection of essays offering rare insight into the personal investment strategies of twenty-five financial experts, including portfolio managers, financial advisors, and venture capitalists. These professionals share how their backgrounds, families, and life struggles influence their financial decisions, highlighting the deep connection between money and values. Enhanced with illustrations by Carl Richards, it not only provides financial guidance but encourages readers to reflect on how money aligns with their own life goals and values.

The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway

By adam mead.

Berkshire Hathaway is the conglomerate run by Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger, with a toe in everything from insurance to boxed chocolates, as well as significant stakes in companies such as Apple and Coca-Cola. . I’s much more than a holding company and its history has lots to teach any investor or business leader. This weighty tome from Adam Mead tells the complete story, starting from its early days in the textile industry up to the present day, drawing on Warren Buffett's letters, annual reports, SEC filings, and meeting transcripts, along with subsidiary financials. A business epic.

Quality Investing

By lawrence a. cunningham, torkell t. eide and patrick hargreaves.

Is extraordinary performance in investing sustainable? Only if you can identify companies with advantages that do not decay over time – but strengthen. That possibility lies at the heart of this impressively researched book from investors at the renowned AKO Capital, the long-term-minded investment firm founded by two Norwegian investors in 2005 (one of whom recently moved to manage the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world). The book reveals the traits that show a company’s potential for enduring success, using real-life case studies with a crispness and depth that has drawn praise from readers and professionals alike.

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50 best autobiographies & biographies of all time, the 100 best non-fiction books of all time, 50 best feminist books you should be reading.

• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• Finance for the People
• The Automatic Millionaire
• The Simple Path to Wealth
• Get Good With Money
• Cashing Out
• Retire Before Mom and Dad
• When She Makes More
• You Are a Badass at Making Money
• The Millionaire Next Door
• Spend Well, Live Rich
• Your Money or Your Life
• Broke Millennial Takes On Investing
• Get A Financial Life
• The Financial Diet
• The Money Manual
• Clever Girl Finance
• How I Invest My Money

The 19 best personal finance books

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These are the best personal finance books for 2023:

• " I Will Teach You To Be Rich ," by Ramit Sethi
• " Finance for the People ," by Paco de Leon
• " The Automatic Millionaire ," by David Bach
• " The Simple Path to Wealth ," by JL Collins
• " Get Good With Money ," by Tiffany "The Budgetnista" Aliche
• " Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away ," by Julien and Kiersten Saunders
• " Retire Before Mom and Dad ," by Rob Berger
• " When She Makes More ," by Farnoosh Torabi
• " Financial Feminist: Overcoming the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love, " by Tori Dunlap
• " You Are a Badass at Making Money ," by Jen Sincero
• " The Millionaire Next Door ," by Thomas J. Stanley
• " Spend Well, Live Rich ," by Michelle Singletary
• " Your Money or Your Life ," by Vicki Robin
• " Broke Millennial Takes On Investing, " by Erin Lowry
• " Get a Financial Life ," by Beth Kobliner
• " The Financial Diet ," by Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage
• "The Money Manual," by Tonya B. Rapley
• "Clever Girl Finance," by Bola Sokunbi
• "How I Invest My Money," by Joshua Brown and Brian Portnoy

We've put together a list of 18 books for every stage of life and for every money goal, whether you want to retire early , invest in the stock market , start conversations about money with your family , or just see money from a different point of view. 

These titles were handpicked by the Personal Finance Insider team: some of our personal favorites, some we're always talking about, and some with truly impressive Amazon reviews and ratings.

From timeless advice to detailed budgeting breakdowns for millennials, here are Insider's top 18 personal finance books for 2023.

Read more: The best investing apps for beginners

'I Will Teach You To Be Rich,' by Ramit Sethi

Personal finance author Ramit Sethi outlines a six-week plan for living out your "rich life" as you define it. ""I Will Teach You to be Rich" by Ramit Sethi" walks readers through how to use credit cards and maximize rewards , opening a high-yield savings account to earn interest, and even automating accounts to save with no effort every month. This easy-to-read and highly actionable book goes from reading to returns quickly. 

• Making a plan
• Strategizing with your money
• Setting up systems to build wealth

'Finance for the People,' by Paco de Leon

In "Finance for the People," former financial planner Paco de Leon explains how to take personal responsibility for our personal finances despite inequities out of our control, while providing the necessary tools to help you build a strong financial foundation.

• Visual learners
• Socially conscious millennials and Gen Zers
• Holistic financial wellness advice

'The Automatic Millionaire,' by David Bach

This book by financial writer David Bach teaches one simple principal: automating your finances. From saving to paying off debt, this book posits that setting up your finances to manage themselves could help grow wealth over many years. This book lays out a plan that can be put into action in an afternoon and make a lasting impact.

'The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life,' by JL Collins

The principles of "The Simple Path to Wealth" were first laid out in a series of letters by the author to his daughter, and there's no shortage of accessible and actionable advice on  investing  throughout the book. It takes on a light and casual tone in some chapters, but doesn't shy away from explanations of more complicated topics, either. It's the highest-rated personal finance book on the list, with over 3,800 Amazon reviews and an average rating of 4.8 stars. 

• People who want to retire early

'Get Good With Money: Ten Simple Steps To Becoming Financially Whole,' by Tiffany 'The Budgetnista' Aliche

Tiffany Aliche, aka The Budgetnista , shares her own triumph over debt and financial hardships. "Get Good With Money" also includes worksheets to help you assess your financial wellness without shame or judgment.

• People who want to pay off debt
• People who like worksheets
• Young professionals

'Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away,' by Julien and Kiersten Saunders

Early retirees Julien and Kiersten Saunders, founders of the award-winning blog rich®ULAR , outline the exact 15-year plan they used to retire in their 40s. "Cashing Out" walks readers through the process of building a lasting wealth-building plan without sacrificing too many small pleasures that keep you going.

• Anyone experiencing burnout in a high-stress job
• First-time investors

'Retire Before Mom and Dad,' by Rob Berger

For anyone considering early retirement through the  FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire Early) movement , this book is a quintessential primer on the principles of getting started on this path. But, it also looks at principles that make financial independence and retirement attainable, even if retiring early isn't on your list.

• People who want to build wealth

'When She Makes More,' by Farnoosh Torabi

"When She Makes More" author and personal finance expert Farnoosh Torabi explores a reality she lives with every day:  being a breadwinner and a woman  in a different-sex relationship. She looks at the realities and the rules she's made with her partner, and discusses ways to maximize earnings and minimize conflict.

• Starting a conversation about money

'Financial Feminist: Overcoming the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love,' by Tori Dunlap

In "Financial Feminist," entrepreneur and author Tori Dunlap teaches women how to advocate for their worth and channel their emotions to make smart money decisions. Dunlap offers a financial game plan that helps you build a career you love.

• Socially conscious millennial women

'You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth,' by Jen Sincero

Jen Sincero comes at money from a lighthearted angle in this book, and looks at the mindset it takes to earn and keep money. What it lacks in actionable financial advice it makes up for in inspiration. It's an ideal book for anyone wanting a new perspective on earning and a motivation boost. 

• Inspiration

'The Millionaire Next Door,' by Thomas J. Stanley

Thomas J. Stanley's profile of America's wealthy citizens finds that they're more similar than they are different, and they're not all the people you'd expect. Stanley looks at millionaires and finds seven habits that they have in common, including living below their means and rejecting traditional consumerism. Stanley's insights have earned this book over 5,300 five-star reviews.

'Spend Well, Live Rich: How to Get What You Want with the Money You Have,' by Michelle Singletary

Author Michelle Singletary reflects on her life with her grandmother, who raised five children (including the author) on a modest salary. Singletary looks into the principles that her grandmother used with her own finances to make the most of what she had. It's best for anyone wanting inspiration on making the most of the money they already have. 

• Personal finance beginners

'Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence,' by Vicki Robin

Financial independence is at the core of "Your Money or Your Life," and it lays out a plan to get to that goal. While the book is fairly long (368 pages long, to be exact) it does give advice for every aspect of becoming financially independent, from the mindset it requires to the investment moves  you should be making. It offers specific advice that can be applied whether or not you're aiming to retire early. 

'Broke Millennial Takes On Investing: A Beginner's Guide To Leveling Up Your Money,' by Erin Lowry

" Broke Millennial " took the world by storm with great budgeting tips  written specifically for avocado-toast-brunching millennials.  Erin Lowry is back at it again with a practical, easy-to-read guide to investing. Packed with tips for beginners, " Broke Millennial Takes On Investing " will teach you how to navigate the market in alignment with your beliefs and values.

• Socially conscious investors

'Get A Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties,' by Beth Kobliner

Another book aimed at millennials and young adults, "Get a Financial Life" focuses on the basics. From  doing taxes  to  debt repayment  strategies, Beth Kobliner gives a thorough foundation for anyone wanting to establish a financial life for themselves. 

'The Financial Diet: A Total Beginner's Guide to Getting Good with Money,' by Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage

Another great book for beginners, "The Financial Diet" lays a groundwork for anyone wanting to learn more about money and life. Best for young adults, Fagan dives into starting to invest and saving for retirement, as well as budgeting and debt repayment plans. The advice here is no-frills and easy to put into practice. 

'The Money Manual' by Tonya B. Rapley

"The Money Manual" is a guidebook to the basics of managing money, from saving to building credit. Written by the blogger behind  Myfabfinance.com , this book is both engaging and approachable, with money lessons that are applicable no matter how much you're earning. 

This book is more interactive than most, with sections of questions and space for writing. The book starts with a simple money check-in, and from the beginning gives actionable advice that can help you understand where you are and where you want to go. 

Best for: 

• Young adults and millennials
• Re-learning the basics of budgeting and saving
• Hands-on learners

'Clever Girl Finance,' by Bola Sokunbi

This easy-to-read guide to money doesn't make assumptions — it starts with the very basics of building wealth and builds on them. This book roots its lessons in reality with real-life anecdotes, including from the author herself. 

It doesn't require any prior knowledge, either. It covers the basics of organizing money and budgeting , then explains the credit system, debt, investing, and even asking for a raise.

It's an excellent choice for anyone who is just getting started with personal finance, or simply wants a refresher on the basics. 

• Anyone searching for a crash course on managing money and building wealth

'How I Invest My Money,' by Joshua Brown and Brian Portnoy

If you've ever wondered how your financial advisor, a venture capitalist, or that money expert on the internet invests their money, Brian Portnoy and Joshua Brown have answers.

With pithy stories from 25 financial experts, this book advances on basic personal finance topics, giving readers ideas to implement as they take the next steps on their financial journeys.

It's not the best choice for anyone who's new to managing money, as it lacks enough explanation of the basics to be a stand-alone guide. But for readers who are ready to make new financial moves, this book will prove helpful.

• Strategies for building wealth, saving, and retirement topics
• People who are looking for inspiration to take the next step with their money

Want to read more? Try these:

Not every book we wanted to mention made the top 18. Here are a few more good choices to continue your reading:

• " The Intelligent Investor, " by Benjamin Graham
• " Girl, Get Your Credit Straight! ," by Glinda Bridgforth
• " Financially Fearless: The LearnVest Program for Taking Control of Your Money ," by Alexa Von Tobel
• " Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School ," by Andrew Hallam

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The 10 Best Personal Finance Books

Get your money on track with our picks

Personal finance books help you manage your money better. At the most basic level, you can learn personal finance basics—like why paying yourself first pays off or how to manage and pay off debt—so you'll become smarter and more confident with handling your money. But it doesn't stop there. They can also teach you how to invest, manage a mortgage, create a nest egg, save for retirement, and ultimately help you overcome common money pitfalls. Sure, it’s not light reading, but your wallet—and your investment portfolio —will thank you.

Here are our picks of the best personal finance books to help foster a healthy relationship with your money.

Best Overall: Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School?

Courtesy of Amazon

Ask anyone what they wish they’d learned more about in school, and the answer is likely money. More specifically, how to properly handle one’s finances—enter Cary Siegel’s title, “Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School?” Siegel, a retired business executive, divides the book into 99 principles and eight money lessons that you should have learned by high school or college but didn’t. This book was initially intended for his five children when he realized they didn’t learn important personal finance principles before entering the real world, but it grew into a well-reviewed read full of money lessons, as well as firsthand experience and advice from Siegel. This easy-to-read book is ideal for new grads or anyone looking to start their personal finance journey on the right foot.

Best Memoir: Rich Dad Poor Dad

You’ve probably heard of Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad," but there’s a reason it’s stuck around for more than two decades. In one of the most popular personal finance books of all time, Kiyosaki shares what he learned growing up from his father and his friend’s father, the latter of which is the “rich dad” in the title. Those lessons include how you don’t need to make a lot of money to get rich and how to think about assets and liabilities . He also explains to parents why schools won’t teach their kids what they need to know about personal finance. This 20th-anniversary edition includes an update from the author on all things money, the economy, and investing.

Best for Debt Management: The Total Money Makeover

Debt management plays a major role in the state of your personal finances. Need a little help in that area? Take a look at Dave Ramsey’s “The Total Money Makeover.” This New York Times bestseller explains, without mincing words, how to get out of debt and improve your financial picture by avoiding common pitfalls like rent-to-own, cash advances, or using credit. It also offers solid advice on starting an emergency fund, saving for college and retirement, and how to succeed at Ramsey’s famed “Snowball Method” for debt payoff.

Best for Building Wealth: The Automatic Millionaire

Who doesn’t want to be a millionaire? David Bach’s “The Automatic Millionaire,” a New York Times, USA Today, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Wall Street Journal business bestseller, shows you how to do just that. The book kicks off with the story of a couple earning $55,000 combined annually, and how they achieved their financial dreams. Think: owning two homes, putting their children through college, and retiring at 55 with a $1 million retirement nest egg. The secret? Setting up a financial system that not only pays yourself first but one that is automatic. Bach has also written "Smart Women Finish Rich," "Smart Couples Finish Rich," and "Start Late, Finish Rich."

Related: The Best Investing Books

Best for Beginners: Broke Millennial

If you can decipher #GYFLT, then this is the personal finance book for you. (Hint: #GYFLT stands for “get your financial life together” in social media speak.) Erin Lowry’s “Broke Millennial” explains in her signature conversational style how 20-somethings can get in control of their personal finances. From understanding your relationship with money to managing student loans to sharing the details of your finances with a partner, this book covers the biggest money challenges facing millennials today. 

Related: The Best Investing Books for Beginners

Runner-Up, Best for Beginners: The One-Page Financial Plan

Courtesy of Walmart

Confused when it comes to your money, whether it’s how to properly invest or how to deal with unexpected financial challenges? Carl Richards’ “The One-Page Financial Plan” takes the mystery out of how to effectively manage your finances. This book helps you not only figure out what your financial goals are, but also how to get there in a simple, one-page plan. Richards is a Certified Financial Planner and a columnist for The New York Times. 

Best for Spenders: I Will Teach You to Be Rich

Being rich isn’t about not spending money at all. In "I Will Teach You to Be Rich," a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, financial expert Ramit Sethi explains that you can spend your money guilt-free as long as you have it invested and allocated properly. This title talks about how to deal with all the common money pitfalls, from paying off student loans to how to save every month, and even how to talk your way out of late fees. This 10th-anniversary edition includes updated views on technology, money, and psychology, as well as some success stories of readers who have actually gotten rich from reading—you guessed it—Sethi’s book.

Best for Women: Clever Girl Finance

Women still earn just 83 cents to a man’s dollar, and average earnings are even lower for women who are older or belong to certain race and ethnicity groups, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In short, women still have to work harder when it comes to their money. Bola Sokunbi’s “Clever Girl Finance” aims to empower and educate a whole new generation of women, sounding off on things like how to keep an eye on expenses, create and stick to a budget, manage your credit, build a nest egg, and take responsibility for your own financial well-being. Sokunbi is a Certified Financial Education Instructor (CFEI) and the founder and CEO of the website Clever Girl Finance.

Best Psychology: The Psychology of Money

This read is an interesting delve into the psychology of money and how your ego, preconceived notions, and even your pride can affect your decisions around money. As expected, this isn’t exactly the best way to manage your investment portfolio, and Morgan Housel’s “The Psychology of Money'' gives readers tips and tools for combating these biases in the form of 19 short stories that focus on the same topic. Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund and has worked as a columnist at The Wall Street Journal.

Related: The Best Economics Books

Best for Budgeting: Your Money or Your Life

With more than a million copies sold, Vicki Robin’s “Your Money or Your Life” lays out an easy-to-follow, nine-step plan to help readers change their relationship with money. Whether it’s how to get out of debt, get started investing , build wealth, or even save money by practicing Robin’s signature mindfulness technique, this read has you covered.

Final Verdict

Whether you're new to finances or just looking for more financial advice, the top overall personal finance book is "Why Didn't They Teach Me This In School?" by Cary Siegel ( view at Amazon ). It teaches eight important money lessons you should've learned by high school as well as a whopping 99 principles that will help you save, invest, and build your wealth.

Meet the Expert

Rachel Morgan Cautero has a master's degree in journalism from New York University and more than a decade of journalism experience, most in the personal finance sector. Most recently, she was the managing editor of DailyWorth, a finance-based media destination for women. She’s been published in SmartAsset, The Balance, The Atlantic, Life & Money, Parents, WealthRocket, and Yahoo Finance.

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Best business books

All the books longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

• Short listed
• Long listed

The Man Who Knew

Empire Of Pain

The Man Who Solved the Market

The Match King

The Snowball

The Age of Turbulence

Blood and Oil

Flash Crash

Make, Think, Imagine

Damaged Goods

Who is Michael Ovitz?

Hit Refresh

Brazillionaires

The Profiteers

Sons of Wichita

The Innovators

Car Guys vs Bean Counters

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The 7 Best Investing Books

‘Don’t lose’ is author Benjamin Graham’s best advice for investors

Michelle Lodge is a contributor to Investopedia, who is also a writer, editor, and podcaster.

If you’re like many astute people, you are always on the lookout for solid books on investing. You may want to start with a book that lays out the entire landscape of investing opportunities, from stocks and bonds to real estate, fine art, and cryptocurrencies. You may want to zero in on an area of investing or to understand the thinking behind how experts approach investing and money.

Below, we have covered all areas, starting with our best overall book on investing: The Bond King, by NPR “Planet Money” podcaster and journalist Mary Childs, who delivers a powerful biography of Bill Gross, formerly of PIMCO, who made a whole new market on trading bonds and ended up revered by some, but not by others, while becoming extremely wealthy. For value investing, we recommend Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor , a favorite of many of the world’s most successful investors. For a solid book on investing overall, we cite The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need , by Andrew Tobias.

Best Overall: The Bond King

This may be the year for books about Bill Gross. In addition to The Bond King by Mary Childs, which we rank the best overall investing book on our list, the subject himself has released a self-published autobiography titled I’m Still Standing: Bond King Bill Gross and the PIMCO Express.

Childs’ authoritative, engaging book about pioneering bond trader Gross, from the investment management firm PIMCO, portrays him as brilliant and a visionary, who devised a new way to invest by making a market for trading bonds. Yet he also comes across as an egotistical, mercurial boss who was so verbally abusive to his staff that some avoided walking by his office to keep from running into him. After many years, enough staff members quit—including PIMCO’s former co-CEO and co-CIO, economist Mohamed El-Erian , whom Gross had recruited from Harvard Management Co. as his eventual successor—that Gross was forced to resign from the company he built.

Childs, a co-host of NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast who has also reported for Barron’s , the Financial Times and Bloomberg News, takes the reader through the subprime mortgage crisis , in which many Americans lost their homes due to predatory lending practices. At the time, Gross’ number was on the speed dial, so to speak, of many top federal and banking officials who valued his opinion and sway.

Early on, Gross learned about strategy by successfully counting cards as a blackjack player at various Las Vegas casinos. He took that same push-to-the-limit mentality to the bond market, where he was dubbed the “Bond King” by Fortune in 2002. During those years, he was a darling of the financial press—beaming from business magazine covers, being interviewed on CNBC, and being a sought-after speaker at financial gatherings.

After he was ousted from PIMCO, he went to Janus Capital Group, where he was unable to duplicate his earlier success. In 2019, Gross revealed that he had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, which affects communication skills. In 2022, far from having “lost it all,” Forbes put Gross’ net worth at $2.6 billion.

Best Book About Value Investing: The Intelligent Investor

The key lesson from Benjamin Graham’s much-lauded tome: “Don’t lose.” Easier said than done, of course. So read on. The reason why this book, originally published in 1949, is still in print is that it offers investors—be they beginners, those with some knowledge and success, or old hands—the nuts and bolts of value investing , which is buying stocks of quality companies whose worth is undervalued . The practice is akin to buying a finely made piece of furniture at a discount. It was most recently updated in 2006.

Graham largely shuns the practice of analyzing securities in favor of expanding on investment principles and investors’ attitudes. He notes that the intelligence of any investor has nothing to do with IQ or SAT scores. “It simply means being patient, disciplined, and eager to learn; you must also be able to harness your emotions and think for yourself,” he writes.

Chapters cover investment vs. speculation, the investor and inflation, general portfolio strategy, stock selection for both the enterprising and defensive investors, comparisons of companies, and many other subjects. To bolster the book’s relevance, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig added commentary after each chapter with recent examples. In the preface to the fourth edition, Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, wrote: “I read the first edition of this book in early 1950, when I was 19. I thought then that it was by far the best book on investing. I still think it is.”

Best Book on Investments Helping Society: Patient Capital

“Many of society’s most intractable problems—from addressing the environment, to revitalizing decaying infrastructure in developed and developing nations alike to national security, to the hunger for innovation to stimulate economic growth—resist easy solutions. Rather, they can only be addressed with the thoughtful application of time and money,” write Victoria Ivashina and Josh Lerner, both Harvard Business School professors.

The authors cite the Rockefeller family’s wealth as an example of the use of patient capital. The patriarch, John D. Rockefeller, turned a $4,000 investment in the oil refinery Standard Oil into the initial source of the family’s vast holdings. Two generations later—led by his grandchildren, especially Laurance—long-term capital brought about the development of Eastern Air Lines, a carve-out from General Motors; military contractor McDonnell Aircraft Corp., which eventually was folded into Boeing Co.; the unfolding of tourism and conservation in the U.S. Virgin Islands, including building the exclusive and environmentally friendly Caneel Bay resort on St. John Island; and providing critical funding for the expansion of national parks in the United States.

“Rather than having a set life, RBI [Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., which included Laurance, four brothers, and sister, Babs] was organized as an evergreen fund. Laurance anticipated that the investments would be held for a decade and then sold or taken public,” write Ivashina and Lerner. “Rather than being returned to investors (as in today’s standard fund), the proceeds of the successful would flow back into the fund, ready to be used for subsequent investments.”

The authors explain that the use of patient capital, or long-term capital, means that the investor, like the Rockefeller family, is willing to wait as long as decades for a return . Governments aren’t able to underwrite many of these projects, due to the lack of political will to fund such long-term plans. However, pools of capital in pensions, insurers, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, and family holdings matched with the right entities can do the job. These arranged marriages, the authors maintain, can yield “benefits for investors, fund managers, and society as a whole.”

Best Book About Investing Gone Awry: The Billionaire’s Apprentice

This book about how investing went south reads like a thriller, and covers:

• The South Asian diaspora and its community’s quick rise in the United States in influential areas of business and professions
• The influx of South Asians to the United States post-1965, when U.S. immigration laws were relaxed
• An Othello-Iago story, which is the pairing in crime of a high-born Indian immigrant who headed the consulting company McKinsey and Co., named Rajat Gupta (Othello), with math genius Sri Lankan immigrant Raj Rajaratnam (Iago), who led the Galleon Hedge Fund and became a billionaire
• Their downfall, which led to prison terms for both over convictions related to insider trading

Author Anita Raghavan characterizes Rajaratnam as the “king of wealth” and Gupta as the “king of thought.” Of the title, it was Gupta, a decade older than Rajaratnam, who was lured by the chance to become a billionaire after spending three decades at the consulting firm where he drew a salary in the millions. At the time of their arrests—prosecuted by Indian-born Preet Bharara, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York—some reporters lamented the men’s downfall, saying it reflected poorly on the ascendant South Asian community.

Raghavan—herself of South Asian descent and a contributor to The New York Times , who also had held positions at The Wall Street Journal and Forbes— noted that the Gupta-Rajaratnam affair is a part of the South Asian story but not its defining moment. In The Billionaire’s Apprentice, she closes with a surprising Gupta family secret that foreshadows Rajat Gupta’s crimes.

Best Book on Day Trading: The Ultimate Day Trader

After explaining to readers that  The Ultimate Day Trader   is for the experienced investor, Jacob Bernstein welcomes beginners in the first chapter, “Definitions and Directions—What It Means to Day Trade Today,” for those who are considering joining the market or simply want to know more about the subject. “A day trader ,” he writes, “is an individual who enters and exits a position in the markets during the course of the trading day.” Of course, the “trading day” is now 24 hours, due to the advent of 24-hour trading in many markets.

Bernstein suggests there are 11 reasons to day trade, including reduced headline risk, knowing the results by the end of the “day,” the availability of reliable forecasting, the chance for instant execution, market volatility , and the sheer pleasure of doing it. The downsides, which may not be drawbacks to all, are that day trading is very hard work, subject to random events that impact prices, time consuming, competitive, and stressful.

The author is the founder of the money management firm Bernstein Investments Inc. and has written 35 books on trading, investor, investor psychology, and economic forecasts, including  The Compleat Day Trader . Bernstein employs his straightforward, understandable writing style and punctuates it with charts and graphs to lead the reader through day trading markets and methods, gap day trading, volume spikes and their use in day trading, the importance of structure, exit strategies, and the “10 Cardinal Rules of Day Trading.”

Among his rules are doing your homework, showing consistency, avoiding any stocks or futures markets that “scare you,” and being willing and able to make big moves, which is the way to make profits. At the end, Bernstein asks whether you have what it takes to be a day trader. That is, can you own up to your losses and move on? If so, get started. 

Best on the Thinking Behind Money and Investing: The Psychology of Money

 Courtesy of Amazon

This breezy book takes the reader on a journey across 19 short chapters, which spell out the sometimes odd ways that people think about money and the behavioral psychology surrounding it, then suggest ways to become more financially secure. One example: Author Morgan Housel recommends staying wealthy, as opposed to getting wealthy. To illustrate the point, he draws on the life and work of Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, who began investing as a child and simply loves to make money, while he famously shuns the modern trappings of wealth.

Housel maintains that the goal of having money is the freedom it affords people to make choices that make them happy. “It is the highest dividend money pays,” writes Housel, a former Wall Street Journal columnist, who has won many journalism awards. One place where we disagree with Housel: He considers Benjamin Graham’s above-mentioned The Intelligent Investor dated and not useful for today’s investors. However, the rest of his advice is excellent.

“[Housel’s book] covers some of the most important topics in finance, which are unexpected and fun to contemplate. Why were Warren Buffett and Bill Gates so successful? Sure, they’re smart people, but there are a lot of smart people out there. Buffett used time to his advantage and Gates was fortunate enough to attend a school where there was access to a computer [at a time when few schools had them],” writes Certified Financial Planner Justin Pritchard .

Best Investing How-To Book: The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need

“Lives up to its brash title” is how the Los Angeles Times described Andrew Tobias’s investment book, which debuted in 1978 and has been revised several times, including in 2022.

In the latest revision, this best-selling author covers the economic effects of the COVID-19 epidemic and how investors and taxpayers fared during the Trump administration and others prior. With knowledge and wit, Tobias takes readers through the basics of investment vehicles—stocks, bonds (savings, municipal, corporate, convertible, zero-coupon), mutual funds, U.S. Treasury bills, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and the various retirement accounts. He also delves into tax strategies and discusses finding and dealing with brokers. Tobias suggests a stock market strategy of putting the bulk of your savings in mutual funds and ETFs, and no more than 20% into funds you direct.

Throughout, he assumes the role of the wise, well-off uncle, especially in the chapter “A Penny Saved is Two Pennies Earned,” in which he dispenses commonsense money advice on everything from credit cards to saving on vacations, monitoring your bank accounts, and buying cubic zirconium jewelry instead of diamonds (“ridiculous,” he writes). In the appendices, Tobias tackles Social Security, life insurance, saving money by buying wine by the case, the national debt, and selected discount brokers. About the book, Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban wrote: “This is the only investment book I’ve read that truly made sense.”

The Bond King, by NPR “Planet Money” podcaster and journalist Mary Childs, is our best book overall. The tale of how Bill Gross, formerly of PIMCO, made a whole new market on trading bonds reveals how Wall Street works and how you can be fired from the company you built up and still end up with $2.6 billion.

Why Trust Investopedia?

Michelle Lodge is steeped in the book and book-reviewing world. She has been published in  Publishers Weekly  and was an editor and writer for  Library Journal , both of which cover books and the industry. While a book review editor at  Library Journal , which recommends books for public library collections, she selected a number of fine business books for review. She was also the editor of the On Wall Street Book Club, in which she reviewed books and interviewed authors on a podcast.

To find the best investing books, Lodge considered recommendations from Investopedia Financial Review Board members and Investopedia editors, business executives, bestseller lists from the  Financial Times, The   New York Times, The   Times of London, and others, as well as her own experience as a book review editor.

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15 Best Finance Books for Financial Professionals

These finance books are must-read picks for financial advisors and other financial professionals.

15 Best Books for Finance Pros

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These money-focused reads include informative books by both investors and financial advisors.

Financial advisors and money professionals can choose from a range of books to supercharge their professional development, advice-giving strategies and money-management skills.

Many workers in finance know how deep the rabbit hole of information goes. There seems to be an endless depth to the well of knowledge available to financial professionals. Sometimes, you know what you're after when you dip your bucket into its pools. At other times, it's nice to have a recommendation to guide you.

This list highlights 15 great finance books. It includes behavioral finance books and tomes on understanding how money really works. It lists books by investors and by financial advisors.

This list of the best books for financial advisors won't let you go thirsty for knowledge.

"The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve" by G. Edward Griffin

While the title may sound better suited to a Halloween reading list than a list of the best finance books , make no mistake, this "creature" is one financial professionals should know about. Anyone who deals in finance had better understand money and the Federal Reserve. And no one explains it better – or more engagingly – than Griffin does.

It's written like a detective story, and Griffin pulls back the curtain to reveal "the magician's secrets" that "create the grand illusion called money."

"An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk" by Allison Schrager

It's hard to resist a book with a title like the start of a bad joke, which is good because Schrager's book should not be resisted. It should be devoured. At only 240 pages, it won't take long to do. In fact, you might wish it took a little longer.

An economist and award-winning journalist who has devoted her career to studying how people manage risk in all areas of their lives, Schrager is uniquely suited to help readers do the same.

As financial advisors know, risk cannot be avoided. Instead, the question is how to measure risk to maximize your chance of getting what you're after. In her book, Schrager teaches the five principles of dealing with risk. They may just change how you look at investment risk going forward.

"Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" by Richard H. Thaler

Written by the recipient of a Nobel Prize in economics, "Nudge" is a must-read for financial professionals, says Pete Clemson, senior vice president of digital solutions at Advisor Group.

"While not specifically about finance, it talks about how to change behaviors to be financially successful," he says. "It's even kind of humorous."

"Nudge" looks at how we make choices, which we often do poorly, in life and finance. And it explores how to make better decisions. What's more, if you know how people think, you can help "nudge" them to make better choices, a superpower many financial professionals would be glad to have.

"The Quants" by Scott Patterson

In his New York Times' bestseller, financial journalist Scott Patterson takes readers into the world of the quants, who are "technocrats who make billions not with gut calls or fundamental analysis but with formulas and high-speed computers." Patterson takes readers inside the heads of these math whizzes without forgetting that his readers may not live and breathe formulas.

"This rollicking romp through the history of quantitative finance traces the decadeslong development of quant models along with the colorful characters who developed them," says Steve Sanduski, a certified financial planner and co-founder of ROL Advisor. "(It's) a great primer on how quants dominate the market, written in a highly engaging narrative that is hard to put down."

"The Score Takes Care of Itself" by Bill Walsh

Not all financial books have to be boring – or directly related to personal money management. Take "The Score Takes Care of Itself" by Bill Walsh, for instance. While it's technically a football book, there's plenty in it for financial advisors to learn, Sanduski says.

In the book, Hall of Fame football coach Walsh shares his philosophy of leadership and the 17 values and beliefs that guided how he turned the San Francisco 49ers from one of the all-time worst professional sports teams into three-time Super Bowl champions during his 10 years as head coach, Sanduski says.

"(Walsh's) attention to detail, systems and process is exactly what top advisors need to do when scaling a world-class organization," he says.

"Advice That Sticks: How to Give Financial Advice That People Will Follow" by Moira Somers

Giving advice is easy, but getting your clients to follow your advice is less simple.

Financial psychologist and executive coach Somers knows how frustrating financial nonadherence can be. She also knows, from her clinical and consulting experience and research into positive psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience, how to increase the chances that it won't happen to you and your clients.

Her book looks at the five main factors that contribute to whether a client will follow through with your advice. It's a thought-provoking, practical and sometimes humorous resource for any advice-giver.

"Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts" by Annie Duke

Whether it's working for you or against you, luck plays a role in every situation, according to former World Series of Poker champion Annie Duke. The trick is to let go of your need for certainty and instead focus on assessing what you know and what you don't, so you can embrace uncertainty to become a better decision-maker.

"The Alchemy of Finance" by George Soros

Soros is often hailed as one of the most profitable money managers in the world. In his book, he shares the strategies that earned him the title.

A philosopher at heart, Soros has treated the financial markets as his laboratory to astounding success. If you turn the last page of this great finance book holding the same perspective on financial markets you had upon opening the front cover, you probably read it wrong.

"No Longer Awkward: Communicating With Clients Through the Toughest Times of Life" by Amy Florian

At its heart, financial planning isn't about money; it's about people. "No matter how skilled you are at managing money, you might have to help a client when they are dealing with grief," says Misty Lynch, a certified financial planner and director of financial planning at Beck Bode in Boston. "Avoiding feelings is a mistake a lot of advisors make because it makes them feel uncomfortable." But advisors can be a huge help to clients during emotional transitions.

Florian's book will teach you how. "(It) gives practical tips on how to quit saying, 'I'm sorry' or go-to phrases and have a real, meaningful conversation about what your client is going through," Lynch says. "And if you can ever hear (Florian) speak, do yourself a favor and sign up. She is brilliant."

"Creating Money: Attracting Abundance" by Sanaya Roman

Roman's book may lean more toward the spiritual side of money mindsets, but its potential impact can't be overlooked. While unconventional compared to most finance books, it was incredibly helpful when Lynch started to examine her own thoughts about money, she says.

It's broken into four parts, starting with a section that helps you think about how your thoughts and energy attract what you want. "This may sound a little woo for an investment advisor," Lynch says, "but our thoughts drive our actions and our results."

The second part discusses the limiting beliefs you may harbor and how you can move past them. "So much of what we think about money was handed down to us and never questioned," Lynch says. "Even professionals have thoughts about money that can hold us back."

Next, the book takes readers through a section where you define what you love to do and how you can align it with the ways you make money. "There are plenty of people in jobs they don't even like for many reasons, and this chapter is a guide to get everyone thinking bigger," Lynch says.

The final chapter focuses on having money, which may sound easy, but if your "normal" state is being broke, your brain may guide you in a self-fulfilling broke prophecy.

"Overall, this book is fantastic for anyone who is willing to do some mindset work and feel better about money," Lynch says.

"The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor" by Howard Marks

In the words of Marks, "You can't predict. You can prepare." After decades as a professional investor, Marks compiled excerpts from memos he sent to his clients to create "The Most Important Thing."

In it, Marks "explains his rules-based process, investment philosophy and thoughts on risk in a truly remarkable and effective manner," says B. Brandon Mackie, a certified financial planner and managing associate at Felton & Peel Wealth Management in Georgia and New York. The result is not an investing manual or how-to book. It's one man's philosophy and words of wisdom from a lifetime of experience.

"It reads more like a novel than a finance book, and you're learning from a professional – an expert that manages over $100 billion in assets and has been a professional investor for 50 years," Mackie says. "Passing on the chance to absorb that wisdom is a mistake in any market."

"The Behavioral Investor" by Daniel Crosby

Psychologist and behavioral finance expert Crosby is the man you want guiding you through investors' heads. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Crosby has applied his behavioral insights to his work as an asset manager and bestselling author.

In "The Behavioral Investor," Crosby "delivers what is arguably the most comprehensive guide to the psychology of asset management to date," says Joy Lere, a psychologist and consultant specializing in behavioral finance. "Crosby educates readers about the ways in which an investor's social milieu, psychology and neurobiology combine forces to impact behavior and decision-making."

Advisors who want to create and maintain a competitive edge by integrating behavioral finance in their practices shouldn't be without this book, she says. You'll get that inside edge you need through Crosby's practical, actionable strategies for successful wealth management.

"The modern-day investor's portfolio is incomplete without a copy of this book," Lere says.

"The Psychology of Money" by Morgan Housel

Housel's book takes a narrative approach to revealing human relationships with money. Through 19 short stories, Housel brings to life the complex psychology of money.

The book covers the same personal finance concepts you've probably learned before, but Housel reframes them in a way that makes you rethink your unique relationship with money, says Travis Briggs, CEO of Robo Global U.S.

"The lessons in this book are life-altering," and the "narrative captures the reality that it takes more than numbers to compute the complex calculus that is financial psychology," Lere says. It reveals the "timeless truths about the human experience of money."

"Women of The Street: Why Female Money Managers Generate Higher Returns (and How You Can Too)" by Meredith Jones

"If you want to have a fighting chance of winning the Wall Street World Series, then it will behoove you to throw like a girl," Lere says. "While the finance industry remains a field dominated by male players, Jones hits it out of the park with this valuable playbook."

Drawing from behavioral and biological investment research and interviews from top female money managers , her book shows why women make better investors.

"She helps readers understand the ways in which females in finance have a tendency to show up on the field in unique ways cognitively and behaviorally that ultimately yield a powerful edge and create outsized investment returns."

"Security Analysis" by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd

Most financial advisors know about "The Intelligent Investor," but how many have unearthed the great finance book that is "Security Analysis"?

First published in 1934, it laid the foundation of value investing before value investing was a thing. The latest edition includes 200 pages of commentary by leading Wall Street money managers, so you get to hear not only from "the Father of Value Investing" himself, but from modern practitioners of his philosophies as well.

Tags: money , books , financial advisors , personal finance , financial literacy

The Most Important Ages for Retirement Planning

Comparative assessments and other editorial opinions are those of U.S. News and have not been previously reviewed, approved or endorsed by any other entities, such as banks, credit card issuers or travel companies. The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of our partner offers may have expired.

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The 12 Best Finance Books in 2022

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Best Overall: No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

Sarah Frier’s  No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram . ranks as the best overall book on our list of fine finance books. The title doesn’t do the book justice, because it’s so much more than a book about two smart tech guys creating a novel app and then selling it to Facebook.

Best on Personal Finance: Rich Dad Poor Dad

As any investor knows, it’s not how much money you make, but how much you keep—a main premise of  Rich Dad Poor Dad , now published in a 20th anniversary edition. This conversational book—which considers being financially literate crucial to acquiring wealth—cites the lessons from a “rich dad,” a friend’s father who rises from humble beginnings to create a lucrative business and a capitalist, and a “poor dad,” Robert T. Kiyosaki’s own father, who was a highly educated government employee his entire working life and a socialist.

Best Cryptocurrency Reference: The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains

You  can  judge this book by its cover because it delivers on its title, resulting in a comprehensive, lively must-have reference book on cryptocurrencies. Antony Lewis, a former technologist at Credit Suisse in Singapore and London, left banking to join the startup iBit, where clients buy and sell Bitcoins, and has never looked back.

Best for Investing: A Random Walk Down Wall Street

Burton G. Malkiel is an economics professor, a former director at Vanguard, and a former dean of the Yale School of Management, yet his most recognizable contribution to finance is his  Random Walk  book, originally published in 1973 and, as of 2019, in its twelfth edition. If you wait for Jan. 3, 2023, you can get the 50th anniversary edition in a green, not yellow, cover, the one pictured above.

Best Personal Finance Disaster Management: What to Do With Your Money When Crisis Hits

There are two ways to read Michelle Singletary’s personal finance book, and both are right: You can tackle it from start to finish or dive into the topics that are the most pressing first and then read the rest. In her  Survival Guide —an outgrowth of her nationally syndicated personal finance column, “The Color of Money,” for  The   Washington Post— Singletary covers how to manage money and deal with crises, using a question-and-answer format, which delivers authoritative, straightforward, and actionable answers.

Best Global Perspective: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

To the uninitiated,   the   words  “s ilk roads” may conjure up the deep beauty of shimmering silk fabric in exotic locales. The reality is quite different. In his 2015 book, Oxford University global history professor Peter Frankopan weaves a complex tale across centuries about fearless merchants, middlemen, soldiers, and leaders—many of whom traveled on life-challenging passages across treacherous terrain throughout the Middle East, China, the Balkans, and South Asia with the added provocations of unpredictable weather and peoples, crime and life-threatening disease, and even the proselytizing by clergy of religions old and brand-new, which led to deadly power grabs and wars.

Best on the Dangers of the Gender Data Gap: Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed by Men

In this absorbing book—named 2019’s  Financial Times  and McKinsey Business Book of the Year and a London  Times  bestseller, British journalist and activist Caroline Criado Perez spells out how the data gender gap accounts for disadvantages for women worldwide, costing companies and governments plenty in missed opportunities and productivity. It shows how this bias can yield an unhappy workforce and populace, and result in unnecessary illnesses, and even deaths, among women.

Best Biography: The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life

Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, the so-called “Oracle of Omaha,” has had volumes in many languages written about him. Yet his personal life from the earliest days and beyond remained a mystery until Alice Schroeder penned this eloquent biography at Buffett’s invitation. “Whenever my version is different from somebody else’s, Alice, use the less flattering version,” Buffett advised Schroeder.

Best Origin Story: Trillions

“Over the past decade, 80 cents of every dollar that has gone into the U.S. investment industry has ended up at Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock,” writes Robin Wigglesworth, editor of the  Financial Times ’ Alphaville, a news and commentary service for financial professionals. Wigglesworth’s compelling book tracks the beginning of index funds to the current day and ponders what their dominance means.

Best for Decision-Making Skills: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist by training. However, his work on prospect theory earned him a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, an award he acknowledges he would have shared with collaborator Amos Twersky, had Twersky lived, and with whom he also explored heuristics in judgment and decision-making. Prospect theory means that investors value gains and losses differently, placing more weight on perceived gains than perceived losses.

Best Read on Scoundrels and Saviors: The Predators’ Ball

Today’s younger readers may only know Michael Milken as an advocate for prostate-cancer research and the founder of the Milken Institute, a think tank that promotes market-based principles and everything from financial innovations to social issues. When  New Yorker  writer Connie Bruck’s gripping book was published, life was very different for Milken. He was fighting off federal charges of securities and tax violations. He had been the junk bond king who underwrote some of the biggest corporate raiders, such as Ronald Perelman and Carl Icahn, during the height of junk bonds’ popularity and the leveraged buyout boom.

Best for Dealmakers: Getting to Yes

This classic book uses the words of poet Wallace Stevens to lay out its premise: “After the final no there comes a yes and on the yes the future of the world depends.”  Getting to Yes,  which debuted in 1981 and has been revised since, is the finest book on how to advocate for what you want with skill, integrity, and success.

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Nonfiction Books » Best Nonfiction Books of 2023

The best business books of 2023: the financial times business book of the year award, recommended by andrew hill.

WINNER OF THE 2023 FT BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive by Amy Edmondson

If you like nonfiction books that will get you up to speed with what's going on in the world, the Financial Times annual book prize is a great place to start. If you run a business, one or two useful books also feature. Andrew Hill , the newspaper's senior business writer, talks us through the books that made the 2023 shortlist, from cobalt extraction in the Congo to how to manage the AI genie that's out of the bottle and coming towards us at speed.

Interview by Sophie Roell , Editor

Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway

How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between by Bent Flyvbjerg & Dan Gardner

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma by Michael Bhaskar & Mustafa Suleyman

1 Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway

2 right kind of wrong: why learning to fail can teach us to thrive by amy edmondson, 3 how big things get done: the surprising factors that determine the fate of every project, from home renovations to space exploration and everything in between by bent flyvbjerg & dan gardner, 4 elon musk by walter isaacson, 5 cobalt red: how the blood of the congo powers our lives by siddharth kara, 6 the coming wave: technology, power, and the twenty-first century's greatest dilemma by michael bhaskar & mustafa suleyman.

B efore we get to the books, tell me a bit about this year’s Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award. What were the highlights of 2023?

For only the second time that I can remember, we had a book that the judges called in and put directly onto the shortlist. This was Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk. As the person who administers the prize, I would want it to be as rare as once a decade, because you want books to have gone through the longlist process. Isaacson’s book muscled its way onto the shortlist on the basis of being the newsy new book. That’s unusual but doesn’t say anything about its prospects to come out as a winner.

It’s an interesting shortlist because it divides into three pairs. One is natural resources and the environment – not so much climate change (although there was a climate change book on the longlist). Two of the books are about extractive natural resources. Those are Material World by Ed Conway and Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara.

Another theme was technology and AI . I didn’t think we would have any books about generative AI, because the big ChatGPT breakthrough that seemed to revolutionise everything didn’t happen until November of last year. But we had a couple of books on the longlist and Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave , which is about technology advances, got through to the shortlist. A lot of books on the longlist addressed the effect of technology and automation on jobs and people. I guess one could put the Musk biography into that category because of the various technologies that he’s worked on.

Let’s go through the books individually. Shall we start with Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future , by Ed Conway ? I remember reading the beginning and being quite struck by it. He is watching gold being extracted and thinking, ‘I wonder whether I really needed that gold wedding ring, now that I’ve seen what has to happen in order for it to come into existence.’

What I like about this book—and he makes this point very clearly—is that this is stuff that you can see. Ed Conway is a journalist for Sky News and of course TV journalists are always looking for things that can be filmed. Our review of the book pointed out that it’s a shame that there aren’t more pictures in it. He’s trying to paint a picture, and you want to see what he’s seeing, which is the extraordinary effort that goes into mining the six vital materials that he focuses on: salt, sand, iron, copper, oil, and lithium .

Let’s turn to Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive , by Amy Edmondson, one of the two books about failing you mentioned. In recent years, I’ve read quite a bit about failure being good for you. What does this book bring to the picture?

Amy Edmondson is a very distinguished Harvard researcher, best known for having explored the concept of ‘psychological safety.’ This is the idea, which she pursues further in this book, that you can only advance and become more successful if you are in an environment where you can safely admit—and indeed call out—errors and mistakes being made.

She did a lot of work, which recurs in this book, in the healthcare sector. That’s where she started and where she discovered—slightly to her astonishment—that it wasn’t the teams that were making the fewest errors that were the most successful. It was the teams that were admitting to the most errors, because they were then able to correct and work together to improve.

That is the fundamental underpinning of her research and that of others in this area. She bases this on a fundamental point: that if we’re not able to admit to failure and to approach failure in a constructive way, we’re never going to want to take any risks. We’re not going to be able to make the smarter and more adventurous decisions that lead us to advance.

I find it a very compelling hypothesis, well backed up by research and interesting tales – everything from the Columbia shuttle disaster to open heart surgery – to show how we reached the level of sophistication that we now have in some of these vital areas. I think it’s an important book from an important researcher.

So it’s not so much a self-help book about me, personally, failing in my daily life and learning from that — it’s more about society at large?

Let’s go on to the other failure book: How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration , by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner. That sounds exciting, it’d be nice to get some big things done right now.

This book is exceptionally interesting. Bent Flyvbjerg is an Oxford-based Danish academic. He is the main writer and it’s mainly based on his work, with Dan Gardner as co-author. Flyvbjerg’s work is to look at megaprojects and he poses a law of megaprojects: that they generally go over budget and over time and why this is bad.

In the current circumstances, in the UK, there’s HS2, which Flyvbjerg has written about and talked about, but there are lots of great examples. He’s very fond of the Sydney Opera House debacle because it was a Danish architect who designed it. He points out that it essentially deprived the world of this architect’s future work because he was in such despair at the portrayal of the Sydney Opera House as a failure that he didn’t design anything much after that.

Let’s move on to Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. I’m not generally drawn to biographies of tech gurus, but I read Isaacson’s book about Steve Jobs to prepare for a Five Books interview, and I was blown away by it. I was expecting great things from his Elon Musk book, but the reviews have been mixed. What’s your impression of the book?

The first thing to mention is that this is the second Elon Musk biography that has been on the short or longlist of the award. A few years ago, Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future , was on the longlist. Everybody thought it was great, but obviously Elon Musk was in an earlier phase of his rise to multibillionaire-dom.

This book is at a later phase, but it still isn’t done, as the book makes clear. Inevitably, you’ve got to put a full stop somewhere. The Steve Jobs biography came out just after Jobs had died, so, in a sense, there was a roundness to it that any Musk biography that comes out now isn’t going to achieve.

Isaacson sat at the feet of Musk – literally, in the same room as Musk – for two or three years, I think. The whole second half of the book is about the last three years, so it’s very detailed. It’s very much reporting. He doesn’t step back except right at the end, and then to make a rather general point about how you need the good and the bad in order to have a genius (which was similar to the Steve Jobs conclusion, if I remember correctly). Isaacson doesn’t say, ‘I’m now going to make a judgment on what’s happened.’ It’s very much an account of being with this extraordinary, tempestuous entrepreneur.

From that point of view, it fits into the historical record. Some of the things that have happened in the last few years, including the Twitter takeover, SpaceX, and Tesla — all the events that we’ve read about — are recounted from the Musk point of view in quite a lot of detail.

It’s a long book with very short chapters. It’s quite punchy, in that sense of ‘OK now we’re moving on’ which gives you a bit of an impression of what it must be like to live with or work with Elon Musk. But it doesn’t then step back and say how significant it is.

And, surprisingly, as somebody else pointed out recently, it’s not much about his businesses, as you might expect. There’s not a whole lot about ‘how has he managed to build this?’ It’s very much about the entrepreneurial leader.

Is there anything about Elon Musk that perhaps we don’t know that we’ll learn from this biography?

I think one of the revelations is that he has more children than we thought.

Putting my management hat back on, you get a bit more of an impression of this dynamo who is driving everything. One thing that stuck with me was this idea that he’ll take what had been, until Musk came along, a bureaucratic process, like launching a rocket, a lot of which is to do with safety and protocols, and he will tear it down to its bare essentials.

Let’s turn to Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara. At the beginning of the book, the author goes to the mining region of Katanga. It’s like scenes from the 19th century, with people working for very little money in horrible conditions.

Yes. I’ve been reading it on an iPad and it does make you put down your iPad and think, ‘What is in this thing that I am reading from?’ It’s about cobalt, a vital raw material and one that probably could have made it into Ed Conway’s Material World as a seventh critical material. It’s vital, particularly for rechargeable batteries, and therefore hugely in demand.

Siddharth Kara goes, literally, deep into the holes being dug, mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, by artisan miners who are pulling rocks from the ground in the most extraordinary circumstances. Kara interviews the workers and the traders who are buying it and, he alleges, putting it into the formal supply chain. There’s a shocking moment where he just throws in that none of them has ever held a mobile phone. And yet, they’re at the very end of the chain that leads to our iPhones and our electric cars.

It is a shocking account, and he sets it in the context of the terrible history of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo – previously Zaire, and before that the Belgian Congo – as a place that has been exploited, from the word go, for these minerals, which could have made its people wealthy and prosperous and well looked after.

It’s a shocking indictment and his underlying polemical point is that there are big companies who are whitewashing this out of the record, who are claiming to have a clean supply chain. His essential contention is there is no such thing as clean cobalt.

What’s upsetting is that this is a country of nearly 100 million people.

Yes, and his point is that at the top end – the bottom end, ethically speaking – of the DRC, there are people making out like bandits. There are literal bandits in this book, and there are also politicians who are creaming off an extraordinary amount of money.

Let’s turn to the final book on the 2023 Business Book of the Year shortlist: The Coming Wave: AI, Power and the Twenty-First Century’s Greatest Dilemma  by Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar. Tell me about this book.

The Coming Wave is in that category of books I mentioned about technological progress and its consequences. It sets the advances in automation and in synthetic biology (e.g., gene splicing and DNA printing) and in quantum computing —these current waves of technology—in the context of what happened with past waves, including the Industrial Revolution , and the Luddites, who, bizarrely, crop up in three of this year’s longlisted books. (One of the longlisted books that didn’t make the shortlist – Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech , by Brian Merchant – is actually about the Luddites).

In the context of the history of technological advances, it’s asking, ‘What can we expect?’ It poses the question: ‘Can we contain the bad consequences of fast-moving technological advance and if so how?’

The main author, Mustafa Suleyman, who worked with Michael Bhaskar on the book, is a co-founder of DeepMind, which is now owned by Google. Google and DeepMind are at the heart of some of the technologies mentioned here that are being developed.

In the book, he points out that he started out thinking he was going to write a very optimistic book, as a techno optimist himself, and became more pessimistic. It ends with the anguished idea that we’re trying to contain the uncontainable. Suleyman thinks containment is the way to approach this. It can’t be regulated away: there isn’t enough that any individual regulator can do. But he lays out some ways in which he thinks that the potentially lethal consequences of some of these advances might be contained and channelled.

He makes a lot out of the positive aspects as well, all the amazing things that you can do by combining AI, quantum computing, and synthetic biology, in terms of preserving and extending life, and making life better.

But the overall impression I got from the book is that it’s a warning. We’ve got to work now to think about ways in which we can at least impose some guardrails that prevent this becoming a disaster for humanity. And that, as I say, is slightly echoed in some of the other books that made it to the longlist this year.

What is the worst-case scenario, then, if everything goes wrong, and we don’t manage to put in those guardrails?

There are various ways in which he thinks we could get this wrong. In AI, there’s the possibility that you end up with self-generating solutions that turn out not to be beneficial for wider humanity, a race to the bottom between AI-fuelled machines or the risk of weaponisation – it could be literal weaponisation – of these tools to go after somebody else or another state. Part of his warning is that accidents happen when humans are involved in doing this stuff. We do not necessarily get things right all the time, which brings us back to our books on failure.

What he’s suggesting is that you need to have some context around this, involving regulators and governments and some of the private sector actors working together to prevent those things happening, or, at least, to have a game plan for if they do. I didn’t come out of this book whistling a happy tune, but it’s a contribution to the way in which that worst-case scenario can be mitigated or even avoided.

November 30, 2023

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Andrew Hill

Andrew Hill is senior business writer at the Financial Times, consulting editor of FT Live and organiser of the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award . He is a former management editor, City editor, financial editor and comment and analysis editor. Andrew was named Business Commentator of the Year at the 2016 Comment Awards and Commentator of the Year at the 2009 Business Journalist of the Year Awards, where he also received a Decade of Excellence award. He is the author of Ruskinland: How John Ruskin Shapes Our World .

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Biographies and memoirs charting remarkable lives—whether because of fame, fortune or simply fascination—have the power to inspire us for their depth, curiosity or challenges. This year sees a bumper calendar of personal histories enter bookshops, grappling with enigmatic public figures like singer Joni Mitchell and writer Ian Fleming , to nuanced analysis of how motherhood or sociopathy shape our lives—for better and for worse.

Here we compile some of the most rewarding biographies and memoirs out in 2024. There are stories of trauma and recovery, art as politics and politics as art, and sentences as single life lessons spread across books that will make you rethink much about personal life stories. After all, understanding the triumphs and trials of others can help us see how we can change our own lives to create something different or even better.

Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei and illustrated by Gianluca Costantini

Ai Weiwei , the iconoclastic artist and fierce critic of his homeland China, mixes fairy tales with moral lessons to evocatively retrace the story of his life in graphic form. Illustrations are by Italian artist Gianluca Costantini . “Any artist who isn’t an activist is a dead artist,” Weiwei writes in Zodiac , as he embraces everything from animals found in the Chinese zodiac to mystical folklore tales with anamorphic animals to argue the necessity of art as politics incarnate. The meditative exercise uses pithy anecdotes alongside striking visuals to sketch out a remarkable life story marked by struggle. It’s one weaving political manifesto, philosophy and personal memoir to engage readers on the necessity of art and agitation against authority in a world where we sometimes must resist and fight back.

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

Already well-known for her experimental writings, Sheila Heti takes a decade of diary entries and maps sentences against the alphabet, from A to Z. The project is a subversive rethink of our relationship to introspection—which often asks for order and clarity, like in diary writing—that maps new patterns and themes in its disjointed form. Heti plays with both her confessionals and her sometimes formulaic writing style (like knowingly using “Of course” in entries) to retrace the changes made (and unmade) across ten years of her life. Alphabetical Diaries is a sometimes demanding book given the incoherence of its entries, but remains an illuminating project in thinking about efforts at self-documentation.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison

Unlike her previous work The Empathy Exams , which examined how we relate to one another and on human suffering, writer Leslie Jamison wrestles today with her own failed marriage and the grief of surviving single parenting. After the birth of her daughter, Jamison divorces her partner “C,” traverses the trials and tribulations of rebound relationships (including with “an ex-philosopher”) and confronts unresolved emotional pains born of her own life living under the divorce of her parents. In her intimate retelling—paired with her superb prose—Jamison charts a personal history that acknowledges the unending divide mothers (and others) face dividing themselves between partners, children and their own lives.

Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch

Whether dancing figures or a “radiant baby,” the recognizable cartoonish symbols in Keith Haring ’s art endure today as shorthand signs representing both his playfulness and politicking. Haring (1958-1990) is the subject of writer Brad Gooch ’s deft biography, Radiant , a book that mines new material from the archive along with interviews with contemporaries to reappraise the influential quasi-celebrity artist. From rough beginnings tagging graffiti on New York City walls to cavorting with Andy Warhol and Madonna on art pieces, Haring battled everything from claims of selling out to over-simplicity. But he persisted with work that leveraged catchy quotes and colorful imagery to advance unsavory political messages—from AIDS to crack cocaine. A life tragically cut short at 31 is one powerfully celebrated in this new noble portrait.

The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul Charles

In The House of Hidden Meaning , celebrated drag queen, RuPaul , reckons with a murky inner world that has shaped—and hindered—a lifetime of gender-bending theatricality. The figurative house at the center of the story is his “ego,” a plaguing barrier that apparently long inhibited the performer from realizing dreams of greatness. Now as the world’s most recognizable drag queen—having popularized the art form for mainstream audiences with the TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race —RuPaul reflects on the power that drag and self-love have long offered across his difficult, and sometimes tortured, life. Readers expecting dishy stories may be disappointed, but the psychological self-assessment in the pages of this memoir is far more edifying than Hollywood gossip could ever be.

Sociopath: A Memoir by Patric Gagne

Patric Gagne is an unlikely subject for a memoir on sociopaths. Especially since she is a former therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology. Still, Gagne makes the case that after a troubled childhood of antisocial behavior (like stealing trinkets and cursing teachers) and a difficult adulthood (now stealing credit cards and fighting authority figures), she receives a diagnosis of sociopathy. Her memoir recounts many episodes of bad behavior—deeds often marked by a lack of empathy, guilt or even common decency—where her great antipathy mars any ability for her to connect with others. Sociopath is a rewarding personal exposé that demystifies one vilified psychological condition so often seen as entirely untreatable or irreparable. Only now there’s a familiar face and a real story linked to the prognosis.

Ian Fleming: The Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare

Nicholas Shakespeare is an acclaimed novelist and an astute biographer, delivering tales that wield a discerning eye to subjects and embrace a robust attention to detail. Ian Fleming (1908-1964), the legendary creator of James Bond, is the latest to receive Shakespeare’s treatment. With access to new family materials from the Fleming estate, the seemingly contradictory Fleming is seen anew as a totally “different person” from his popular image. Taking cues from Fleming’s life story—from a refined upbringing spent in expensive private schools to working for Reuters as a journalist in the Soviet Union—Shakespeare reveals how these experiences shaped the elusive world of espionage and intrigue created in Fleming’s novels. Other insights include how Bond was likely informed by Fleming’s cavalier father, a major who fought in WWI. A martini (shaken, not stirred) is best enjoyed with this bio.

Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie , while giving a rare public lecture in New York in August 2022, was violently stabbed by an assailant brandishing a knife . The attack saw Rushdie lose his left hand and his sight in one eye. Speaking to The New Yorker a year later , he confirmed a memoir was in the works that would confront this harrowing existential experience: “When somebody sticks a knife into you, that’s a first-person story. That’s an ‘I’ story.” Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder is promised to be his raw, revelatory and deeply psychological confrontation with the violent incident. Like the sword of Damocles, brutality has long stalked Rushdie ever since the 1989 fatwa issued against the author, following the publication of his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses . The answer to such barbarity, Rushdie is poised to argue, is by finding the strength to stand up again.

The Art of Dying: Writings, 2019–2022 by Peter Schjeldahl (Release: May 14)

Peter Schjeldahl (1942-2022), longstanding art critic of The New Yorker , confronted his mortality when he was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer in 2019. The resulting essay collection he then penned, The Art of Dying , is a masterful meditation on one life preoccupied entirely with aesthetics and criticism. It’s a discursive tactic for a memoir that avoids discussing Schjeldahl’s coming demise while equally confirming its impending visit by avoiding it. Acknowledging that he finds himself “thinking about death less than I used to,” Schjeldahl spends most of the pages revisiting familiar art subjects—from Edward Hopper ’s output to Peter Saul ’s Pop Art—as vehicles to re-examine his own remarkable life. With a life that began in the humble Midwest, Schjeldahl says his birthplace was one that ultimately availed him to write so plainly and cogently on art throughout his career. Such posthumous musings prove illuminating lessons on the potency of American art, with whispered asides on the tragedy of death that will come for all of us.

Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers (Release: June 11)

Joni Mitchell has enjoyed a remarkable revival recently, even already being one of the most acclaimed and enduring singer/songwriters. After retiring from public appearances for health reasons in the 2010s, Mitchell, 80, has returned to the spotlight with a 2021 Kennedy Centers honor , an appearance accepting the 2023 Gershwin Prize and even a live performance at this year’s Grammy Awards . It’s against this backdrop of public celebration of Mitchell that NPR music critic Ann Powers retraces the life story and musical (re)evolution of the singer, from folk to jazz genres and rock to soul music, across five decades for the American songbook. “What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell,” she writes in the introduction. Instead, Powers’ project is one showing how Mitchell’s many journeys—from literal road trips inspiring tracks like “All I Want” to inner probings of Mitchell’s psyche, such as the song “Both Sides Now”—have always inspired Mitchell’s enduring, emotive and palpable output. These travels hold the key, Powers says, to understanding an enigmatic artist.

• SEE ALSO : ‘Under the Bridge’ Review: A Miniseries That Interrogates the True Crime Genre

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Blog – Posted on Monday, Jan 21

The 30 best biographies of all time.

Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”

At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction .

All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels , if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great biographies out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized biography recommendation  😉

Which biography should you read next?

Discover the perfect biography for you. Takes 30 seconds!

1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

This biography of esteemed mathematician John Nash was both a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and the basis for the award-winning film of the same name. Nasar thoroughly explores Nash’s prestigious career, from his beginnings at MIT to his work at the RAND Corporation — as well the internal battle he waged against schizophrenia, a disorder that nearly derailed his life.

2. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition by Andrew Hodges

Hodges’ 1983 biography of Alan Turing sheds light on the inner workings of this brilliant mathematician, cryptologist, and computer pioneer. Indeed, despite the title ( a nod to his work during WWII ), a great deal of the “enigmatic” Turing is laid out in this book. It covers his heroic code-breaking efforts during the war, his computer designs and contributions to mathematical biology in the years following, and of course, the vicious persecution that befell him in the 1950s — when homosexual acts were still a crime punishable by English law.

3. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is not only the inspiration for a hit Broadway musical, but also a work of creative genius itself. This massive undertaking of over 800 pages details every knowable moment of the youngest Founding Father’s life: from his role in the Revolutionary War and early American government to his sordid (and ultimately career-destroying) affair with Maria Reynolds. He may never have been president, but he was a fascinating and unique figure in American history — plus it’s fun to get the truth behind the songs.

Prefer to read about fascinating First Ladies rather than almost-presidents? Check out this awesome list of books about First Ladies over on The Archive.

4. Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

A prolific essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Hurston turned her hand to biographical writing in 1927 with this incredible work, kept under lock and key until it was published 2018. It’s based on Hurston’s interviews with the last remaining survivor of the Middle Passage slave trade, a man named Cudjo Lewis. Rendered in searing detail and Lewis’ highly affecting African-American vernacular, this biography of the “last black cargo” will transport you back in time to an era that, chillingly, is not nearly as far away from us as it feels.

5. Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert

Though many a biography of him has been attempted, Gilbert’s is the final authority on Winston Churchill — considered by many to be Britain’s greatest prime minister ever. A dexterous balance of in-depth research and intimately drawn details makes this biography a perfect tribute to the mercurial man who led Britain through World War II.

Just what those circumstances are occupies much of Bodanis's book, which pays homage to Einstein and, just as important, to predecessors such as Maxwell, Faraday, and Lavoisier, who are not as well known as Einstein today. Balancing writerly energy and scholarly weight, Bodanis offers a primer in modern physics and cosmology, explaining that the universe today is an expression of mass that will, in some vastly distant future, one day slide back to the energy side of the equation, replacing the \'dominion of matter\' with \'a great stillness\'--a vision that is at once lovely and profoundly frightening.

Without sliding into easy psychobiography, Bodanis explores other circumstances as well; namely, Einstein's background and character, which combined with a sterling intelligence to afford him an idiosyncratic view of the way things work--a view that would change the world. --Gregory McNamee

6. E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

This “biography of the world’s most famous equation” is a one-of-a-kind take on the genre: rather than being the story of Einstein, it really does follow the history of the equation itself. From the origins and development of its individual elements (energy, mass, and light) to their ramifications in the twentieth century, Bodanis turns what could be an extremely dry subject into engaging fare for readers of all stripes.

7. Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

When Enrique was only five years old, his mother left Honduras for the United States, promising a quick return. Eleven years later, Enrique finally decided to take matters into his own hands in order to see her again: he would traverse Central and South America via railway, risking his life atop the “train of death” and at the hands of the immigration authorities, to reunite with his mother. This tale of Enrique’s perilous journey is not for the faint of heart, but it is an account of incredible devotion and sharp commentary on the pain of separation among immigrant families.

8. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

Herrera’s 1983 biography of renowned painter Frida Kahlo, one of the most recognizable names in modern art, has since become the definitive account on her life. And while Kahlo no doubt endured a great deal of suffering (a horrific accident when she was eighteen, a husband who had constant affairs), the focal point of the book is not her pain. Instead, it’s her artistic brilliance and immense resolve to leave her mark on the world — a mark that will not soon be forgotten, in part thanks to Herrera’s dedicated work.

9. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Perhaps the most impressive biographical feat of the twenty-first century, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about a woman whose cells completely changed the trajectory of modern medicine. Rebecca Skloot skillfully commemorates the previously unknown life of a poor black woman whose cancer cells were taken, without her knowledge, for medical testing — and without whom we wouldn’t have many of the critical cures we depend upon today.

10. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, hitchhiked to Alaska and disappeared into the Denali wilderness in April 1992. Five months later, McCandless was found emaciated and deceased in his shelter — but of what cause? Krakauer’s biography of McCandless retraces his steps back to the beginning of the trek, attempting to suss out what the young man was looking for on his journey, and whether he fully understood what dangers lay before him.

11. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families by James Agee

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.” From this line derives the central issue of Agee and Evans’ work: who truly deserves our praise and recognition? According to this 1941 biography, it’s the barely-surviving sharecropper families who were severely impacted by the American “Dust Bowl” — hundreds of people entrenched in poverty, whose humanity Evans and Agee desperately implore their audience to see in their book.

12. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Another mysterious explorer takes center stage in this gripping 2009 biography. Grann tells the story of Percy Fawcett, the archaeologist who vanished in the Amazon along with his son in 1925, supposedly in search of an ancient lost city. Parallel to this narrative, Grann describes his own travels in the Amazon 80 years later: discovering firsthand what threats Fawcett may have encountered, and coming to realize what the “Lost City of Z” really was.

13. Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang

Though many of us will be familiar with the name Mao Zedong, this prodigious biography sheds unprecedented light upon the power-hungry “Red Emperor.” Chang and Halliday begin with the shocking statistic that Mao was responsible for 70 million deaths during peacetime — more than any other twentieth-century world leader. From there, they unravel Mao’s complex ideologies, motivations, and missions, breaking down his long-propagated “hero” persona and thrusting forth a new, grislier image of one of China’s biggest revolutionaries.

14. Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson by Andrew Wilson

Titled after one of her most evocative poems, this shimmering bio of Sylvia Plath takes an unusual approach. Instead of focusing on her years of depression and tempestuous marriage to poet Ted Hughes, it chronicles her life before she ever came to Cambridge. Wilson closely examines her early family and relationships, feelings and experiences, with information taken from her meticulous diaries — setting a strong precedent for other Plath biographers to follow.

15. The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes

What if you had twenty-four different people living inside you, and you never knew which one was going to come out? Such was the life of Billy Milligan, the subject of this haunting biography by the author of Flowers for Algernon . Keyes recounts, in a refreshingly straightforward style, the events of Billy’s life and how his psyche came to be “split”... as well as how, with Keyes’ help, he attempted to put the fragments of himself back together.

16. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder

This gorgeously constructed biography follows Paul Farmer, a doctor who’s worked for decades to eradicate infectious diseases around the globe, particularly in underprivileged areas. Though Farmer’s humanitarian accomplishments are extraordinary in and of themselves, the true charm of this book comes from Kidder’s personal relationship with him — and the sense of fulfillment the reader sustains from reading about someone genuinely heroic, written by someone else who truly understands and admires what they do.

17. Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Here’s another bio that will reshape your views of a famed historical tyrant, though this time in a surprisingly favorable light. Decorated scholar Andrew Roberts delves into the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his near-flawless military instincts to his complex and confusing relationship with his wife. But Roberts’ attitude toward his subject is what really makes this work shine: rather than ridiculing him ( as it would undoubtedly be easy to do ), he approaches the “petty tyrant” with a healthy amount of deference.

18. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV by Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson might not seem as intriguing or scandalous as figures like Kennedy, Nixon, or W. Bush. But in this expertly woven biography, Robert Caro lays out the long, winding road of his political career, and it’s full of twists you wouldn’t expect. Johnson himself was a surprisingly cunning figure, gradually maneuvering his way closer and closer to power. Finally, in 1963, he got his greatest wish — but at what cost? Fans of Adam McKay’s Vice , this is the book for you.

19. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Anyone who grew up reading Little House on the Prairie will surely be fascinated by this tell-all biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Caroline Fraser draws upon never-before-published historical resources to create a lush study of the author’s life — not in the gently narrated manner of the Little House series, but in raw and startling truths about her upbringing, marriage, and volatile relationship with her daughter (and alleged ghostwriter) Rose Wilder Lane.

20. Prince: A Private View by Afshin Shahidi

Compiled just after the superstar’s untimely death in 2016, this intimate snapshot of Prince’s life is actually a largely visual work — Shahidi served as his private photographer from the early 2000s until his passing. And whatever they say about pictures being worth a thousand words, Shahidi’s are worth more still: Prince’s incredible vibrance, contagious excitement, and altogether singular personality come through in every shot.

21. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

Could there be a more fitting title for a book about the husband-wife team who discovered radioactivity? What you may not know is that these nuclear pioneers also had a fascinating personal history. Marie Sklodowska met Pierre Curie when she came to work in his lab in 1891, and just a few years later they were married. Their passion for each other bled into their passion for their work, and vice-versa — and in almost no time at all, they were on their way to their first of their Nobel Prizes.

22. Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson

She may not have been assassinated or killed in a mysterious plane crash, but Rosemary Kennedy’s fate is in many ways the worst of “the Kennedy Curse.” As if a botched lobotomy that left her almost completely incapacitated weren’t enough, her parents then hid her away from society, almost never to be seen again. Yet in this new biography, penned by devoted Kennedy scholar Kate Larson, the full truth of Rosemary’s post-lobotomy life is at last revealed.

23. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

This appropriately lyrical biography of brilliant Jazz Age poet and renowned feminist, Edna St. Vincent Millay, is indeed a perfect balance of savage and beautiful. While Millay’s poetic work was delicate and subtle, the woman herself was feisty and unpredictable, harboring unusual and occasionally destructive habits that Milford fervently explores.

24. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes

Holmes’ famous philosophy of “biography as pursuit” is thoroughly proven here in his first full-length biographical work. Shelley: The Pursuit details an almost feverish tracking of Percy Shelley as a dark and cutting figure in the Romantic period — reforming many previous historical conceptions about him through Holmes’ compelling and resolute writing.

25. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Another Gothic figure has been made newly known through this work, detailing the life of prolific horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson. Author Ruth Franklin digs deep into the existence of the reclusive and mysterious Jackson, drawing penetrating comparisons between the true events of her life and the dark nature of her fiction.

26. The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

Fans of Into the Wild and The Lost City of Z will find their next adventure fix in this 2017 book about Christopher Knight, a man who lived by himself in the Maine woods for almost thirty years. The tale of this so-called “last true hermit” will captivate readers who have always fantasized about escaping society, with vivid descriptions of Knight’s rural setup, his carefully calculated moves and how he managed to survive the deadly cold of the Maine winters.

27. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The man, the myth, the legend: Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, is properly immortalized in Isaacson’s masterful biography. It divulges the details of Jobs’ little-known childhood and tracks his fateful path from garage engineer to leader of one of the largest tech companies in the world — not to mention his formative role in other legendary companies like Pixar, and indeed within the Silicon Valley ecosystem as a whole.

28. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Olympic runner Louis Zamperini was just twenty-six when his US Army bomber crashed and burned in the Pacific, leaving him and two other men afloat on a raft for forty-seven days — only to be captured by the Japanese Navy and tortured as a POW for the next two and a half years. In this gripping biography, Laura Hillenbrand tracks Zamperini’s story from beginning to end… including how he embraced Christian evangelism as a means of recovery, and even came to forgive his tormentors in his later years.

29. Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

Everyone knows of Vladimir Nabokov — but what about his wife, Vera, whom he called “the best-humored woman I have ever known”? According to Schiff, she was a genius in her own right, supporting Vladimir not only as his partner, but also as his all-around editor and translator. And she kept up that trademark humor throughout it all, inspiring her husband’s work and injecting some of her own creative flair into it along the way.

30. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

William Shakespeare is a notoriously slippery historical figure — no one really knows when he was born, what he looked like, or how many plays he wrote. But that didn’t stop Stephen Greenblatt, who in 2004 turned out this magnificently detailed biography of the Bard: a series of imaginative reenactments of his writing process, and insights on how the social and political ideals of the time would have influenced him. Indeed, no one exists in a vacuum, not even Shakespeare — hence the conscious depiction of him in this book as a “will in the world,” rather than an isolated writer shut up in his own musty study.

If you're looking for more inspiring nonfiction, check out this list of 30 engaging self-help books , or this list of the last century's best memoirs !

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9 New Books We Recommend This Week

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Our recommended books this week include two very different kinds of memoirs — RuPaul’s “The House of Hidden Meanings,” about the drag icon’s childhood and path to superstardom, and Alexandra Fuller’s “Fi,” about the death of her 21-year-old son — as well as a biography of the art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, a study of Germany’s self-reckoning after World War II, a look at what Abraham Lincoln’s era has in common with ours and a history of baseball in New York.

In fiction, we recommend a romance novel, a twisty detective story about translators on the hunt for a missing author and a stylish story collection from Amor Towles. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

FI: A Memoir Alexandra Fuller

In her fifth memoir, Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old son. Devastating as this elegant and honest account may be — and it’s certainly not for the faint of heart — it also leaves the reader with a sense of having known a lovely and lively young man.

“A sublime writer. … This book is a mesmeric celebration of a boy who died too soon, a mother’s love and her resilience.”

From David Sheff’s review

Grove | $28

WAKE ME MOST WICKEDLY Felicia Grossman

The second of Grossman’s fairy-tale-inspired romances set among Jewish families in Regency London finds the saucy scion of a disgraced family falling for a raven-haired criminal pawnshop owner. Based on “Snow White,” a fairy tale all about trust and betrayal, “Wake Me Most Wickedly” thrives in the space between what people hide and what they reveal.

“Rich and complex and a little discomfiting, this book prefers difficult questions and nuanced truths to comfortable reductions.”

From Olivia Waite’s romance column

Forever | Paperback, $9.99

TABLE FOR TWO: Fictions Amor Towles

Towles, known for his wildly popular books like “A Gentleman in Moscow,” collects six short stories set in New York around the new millennium. There’s also one story set in Golden Age Hollywood, a continuation of his novel “Rules of Civility.”

“There’s more here than high gloss. … Sharp-edged satire deceptively wrapped like a box of Neuhaus chocolates, ‘Table for Two’ is a winner.”

From Hamilton Cain’s review

Viking | $32

THE NEW YORK GAME: Baseball and the Rise of a New City Kevin Baker

What makes New York baseball unique, the novelist and historian argues in this insightful, beautifully crafted narrative — which concludes with the end of World War II — is its role as chronicler of cultural change. Whatever baseball’s roots in cow pastures and small towns, it came of age as an urban game.

“Baseball grew as New York City grew. … One hopes for a second volume from Kevin Baker, every bit as good as this one.”

From David Oshinsky’s review

Knopf | $35

THE EXTINCTION OF IRENA REY Jennifer Croft

Croft is an acclaimed translator, and won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her English translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s “Flights.” It seems fitting that her first novel is a detective story following a troupe of translators tracking down their missing author.

“Oh my mushrooms, ‘The Extinction of Irena Rey’ is incredibly strange, savvy, sly and hard to classify. I also couldn’t put it down.”

From Fiona Maazel’s review

Bloomsbury | $28.99

THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN MEANINGS: A Memoir RuPaul

The “Drag Race” superstar has already written three books, but from its black-and-white cover photo onward, this one is serious: A study in self-creation and survival that reveals a striver high on his own supply.

“RuPaul isn’t just famous, glamorous and funny; he’s interesting. … Less a memoir than a prophecy unpacked in reverse.”

From Saeed Jones’s review

Dey Street | $29.99

CHASING BEAUTY: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner Natalie Dykstra

Isabella Stewart Gardner is best known today for the Boston museum that bears her name, but as Dykstra makes clear in her luminous new biography, the Gilded Age doyenne was herself a figure to be reckoned with. A daughter of wealth who married into more, the flamboyant Gardner quickly became the queen of haute bohemia — and in the process, one of America’s most serious collectors. A lively portrait of a moment, a woman and the power of art.

“Astutely situates her subject within Gardner’s growing web of connections. … But its deeper revelations have more to do with Gardner’s emerging attunement to the emotional affirmation to be found in art.”

From Megan O’Grady’s review

Mariner | $37.50

OUT OF THE DARKNESS: The Germans, 1942-2022 Frank Trentmann

Over the past eight decades, the public debates about guilt and suffering in the wake of World War II have structured civil society in Germany. Trentmann tracks the evolution of this moral awakening with a remarkably rich history of the country that runs from the Battle of Stalingrad to the War in Ukraine.

“Recognizes the costs and complexities of the quest for moral security. … As Trentmann captures, the post-1945 transformation has been remarkable.”

From Peter Fritzsche’s review

Knopf | $50

OUR ANCIENT FAITH: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment Allen C. Guelzo

In this beautifully written exploration of Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on democracy, Guelzo argues that the president, who fought autocratic forces in the South while restricting civil liberties in the North, can help us figure out how to sustain a free society in the face of rising illiberalism today.

“Guelzo points out the ‘uncanny’ similarities between Lincoln’s time and ours. … Reveals the fragility of democracy in such moments. But its precarity can also be a strength.”

From Parker Henry’s review

Knopf | $30

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