Here are 100 books that Fooled by Randomness fans have personally recommended if you like
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After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1989 with an LAS degree in communications and a knack for artwork, I had no idea what I wanted to do. That was until my brother pulled me from my low-paid art job in Chicago to work as a clerk on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I eventually became a trader on that same floor, as well as an oil and gas dealer in New York. Screaming and yelling in the trading pits while money moved back and forth with a shout and a hand signal I learned more about investing, trading, and human nature through osmosis than I ever could in an MBA course.
This fascinating read tells the story of the rise and then spectacular fall of the once celebrated hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
What made LTCM so attractive to Wall Street investors was its stable of "dream team" quants and financial minds, led by the laconic John Merriweather. Merriweather (featured in the opening Chapter of Liar's Poker) was a former Solomon Brothers bond-trading guru, who after leaving the firm amid a scandal managed to assemble a team of financial powerhouses that included two Nobel Laureates as well as a cadre of respected traders.
From 1993 to 1997 LTCM's returns were first-rate; the sky seemed the limit for this small band of supertraders, professors, and modelers who arrogantly considered themselves a cut above the rest of The Street.
But in 1998, it all came crashing down...and right quick. Having believed their financial models could accurately predict price action not just inā¦
Picking up where Liar's Poker left off (literally, in the bond dealer's desks of Salomon Brothers) the story of Long-Term Capital Management is of a group of elite investors who believed they could beat the market and, like alchemists, create limitless wealth for themselves and their partners.
Founded by John Meriweather, a notoriously confident bond dealer, along with two Nobel prize winners and a floor of Wall Street's brightest and best, Long-Term Captial Management was from the beginning hailed as a new gold standard in investing. It was to be the hedge fund to end all other hedge funds:ā¦
People Are People: Signals from the Human Side of Systems explores what remains constant in a world defined by accelerating technology. Drawing on personal experience, recovery, family, illness, and years of conversations with founders, entrepreneurs, and builders, Jamil Hasan examines the relationship between systems and the people who create, inherit,ā¦
I have spent my career in rooms where the better answer lost because it had no tribe. Skype, Microsoft, Google, and now the work I do on quantitative models. The pattern does not change. Biology, language, then the incentive to keep the story intact. I got obsessed with that stack because I am tired of watching honest people get trained out of honesty. The leader I care about is a polymath orchestrator: someone who can hold science, people, and a P&L without turning the room into politics. These books are how I built that frame.
I recommend Sapiens because it gave me the universal timeline I still use.
Harari starts from first principles and describes the human species without the usual tribal flattery. After I read it, I stopped treating every company crisis as a unique drama.
It sits inside a much longer pattern of how we invent stories, then live inside them. That context is what I reach for when I have to hold science, people, and a P&L in the same room.
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk theā¦
Iāve spent my entire life facing and dealing with misogyny. Last year, I wrote a book on the topic which marries storytelling, research, and journalism. For the Love of Women is vulnerable, but not a memoir; well-researched but not academic; and though itās confrontive, it ends on a hopeful note. If you have any doubts that misogyny is an issue in America, you need to read this book.
The world and the worldās products are based on male bodies and menās needs, which can harm women.
Our patriarchal culture expects women to adjust and adapt in all kinds of ways. For example, PPEs (the suits worn by frontline medical workers during the pandemic) are designed for menās bodies, even though most frontline health care workers are women.
Seat belts in automobiles continue to be designed based on crash-test dummies that do not replicate the female anatomy. These male-centric designs are not simply inconvenientāthey are highly consequential.Ā
Winner of the 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Winner of the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize
Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives.
People Are People: Signals from the Human Side of Systems explores what remains constant in a world defined by accelerating technology. Drawing on personal experience, recovery, family, illness, and years of conversations with founders, entrepreneurs, and builders, Jamil Hasan examines the relationship between systems and the people who create, inherit,ā¦
I am the founder and principal of Work & Think, LLC., and help clients make complex decisions that include a realistic understanding of uncertainty. My Spangler Ethical Reasoning AssessmentĀ® (SERAĀ®) is used across industries and around the world, enabling individuals to combine critical thinking and values to make complex decisions. I am a frequent keynote speaker, a corporate consultant, a researcher, and an author. My new book is Reasoning for Business. Learn more at my website.
I find this book answers questions many people ask: Why arenāt we always logical? What gets in the way of our making effective decisions?
I first read this book when I started my consulting practice and realized I needed to combine psychology with philosophy in teaching critical thinking in professional settings. People want to understand why we can be unreasonable in the first place.Ā Kahnemanās book helped me improve my own thinking, making me aware of the ways my previous experiences quickly provide interpretations of new experiences.
I find the ability to āhit the pause buttonā regarding my response to a specific situation and to ask myself, āIs my immediate, intuitive response useful or misleading me?ā is one of my most important insights from this book.
The phenomenal international bestseller - 2 million copies sold - that will change the way you make decisions
'A lifetime's worth of wisdom' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Thinking, Fast and Slow' Financial Times
Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast,ā¦
Iāve always loved solving problems. Over 30 years ago, I worked for a company that had high employee turnover and an inability to recruit. The problem was the worst in the company backboneāthe employees who made us money. I moved from Finance to HR even though I didnāt know anything about HR. Quickly, I identified the root causes of our turnover, developed plans, and implemented them. Within six months, weād shut down the exodus, which immediately made recruiting easier. Over the years Iāve worked with a wide variety of firms in many industries. I have demonstrated my process with continued success while moving beyond much of HRās dogma.
I loved this book because it put the onus of building a well-run organization right where it belongsāon management.
Iāve had the opportunity to see multiple organizations work through this book with varied results. The results were based exclusively on how management individuals responded to the challenges presented in the book.Ā
________________________________ Can a good company become a great one? If so, how?
After a five-year research project, Jim Collins concludes that good to great can and does happen. In this book, he uncovers the underlying variables that enable any type of organisation to make the leap from good to great while other organisations remain only good. Rigorously supported by evidence, his findings are surprising - at times even shocking - to the modern mind.
Good to Great achieves a rare distinction: a management book full of vital ideas that reads as well as a fast-paced novel. It is widely regardedā¦
I work in the venture capital (finance) space but have a long-time passion for and involvement with charity and philanthropy work, having founded several non-profits including most recently Lever Foundation which works to create a more humane and sustainable food system in Asia. Iām a big believer in and advocate for applying quantitative, analytical thinking and an outcome-focused mindset to efforts to make the world a better place. Itās something I think about every day, and itās what I write about as well.
Ray Dalio is one of the most successful hedge fund managers of all time. You might ask what that has to do with doing good in the world, but I think itās abundantly clear that many of the same principles and approaches that lead to quantifiable success in the business world can contribute to increased success in efforts to make the world a better place.
I donāt agree with Dalio on everything, but I found his core messages such as focusing on results, being direct and candid with colleagues, weighing the credibility of someoneās opinion based on their history of performance, and continually reassessing and adjusting our approach, very wise and a way of thinking and working that is too often absent in the charity sector.
"Significant...The book is both instructive and surprisingly moving." -The New York Times
Ray Dalio, one of the world's most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he's developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business-and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedgeā¦
When I was younger, I got into a lot of trouble.Ā Many good-hearted people helped me.Ā In part, this inspired me to become a clinical psychologist. When I was in graduate school at Harvard, I became disillusioned with clinical psychology and inspired to figure out why people are motivated to help others.Ā During this process, a lecturer from the Biology Department, Robert Trivers, approached me and we exchanged drafts of papers we were writing.Ā Triversā ideas caused me to see altruism and morality in an entirely different, and much more valid, way.Ā In Survival of the Virtuous I demonstrate how psychological findings on altruism and morality can be gainfully interpreted from an evolutionary perspective.Ā Ā
More than thirty years ago, when I was conducting research on the psychology of altruism and moral development, a biologist recommended that I read The Selfish Gene.Ā
Reading Dawkinsā book caused me to change my theoretical orientation completely. It enabled me to see that if I wanted to understand altruism and morality, I needed to understand how the genes that guide the construction of the mental mechanisms that cause us to help others evolved.Ā
Although the title of the book implies that we are selfish by nature, the contents explain how selfish genes can guide the development of unselfish animals.Ā Ā
The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages.
As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research.ā¦
Iāve spent my career studying the paradox that low-risk investing can lead to high returns. As an author and a multi-billion-dollar fund manager, Iāve seen firsthand how markets reward patience, discipline, and avoiding unnecessary risks. These books shaped my thinkingāchallenging conventional wisdom, deepening my understanding of risk, and reinforcing why defensive investing works. I love uncovering ideas that go against the grain, especially when theyāre backed by data. Whether youāre an investor or just fascinated by how we make decisions under uncertainty, these books will change the way you see marketsāand maybe even the way you invest.
Bogleās philosophy is simple yet powerful: focus on the long term, keep costs low, and let compounding do the heavy lifting. Iāve always believed that great investing is about avoiding unnecessary risks and staying disciplined, and Bogleās book distills that wisdom better than anyone else.
While I take a different approach than pure indexing, his principles of cost efficiency and long-term thinking are universal. Every investorāwhether a stock picker or a passive indexerāshould read this book at least once.
The best-selling index investing "bible" offers new information and is updated to reflect the latest market data The Little Book of Common Sense Investing is the classic guide to getting smart about the market. Legendary mutual fund veteran John C. Bogle reveals his key to getting more out of investing: low-cost index funds. Bogle describes the simplest and most effective investment strategy for building wealth over the long term: buy and hold, at very low cost, a mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500 Stock Index. Such an index portfolio is the only investment that guarantees your fair share ofā¦
Iām a mathematics professor who ended up writing the internationally bestselling novel The Death of Vishnu (along with two follow-ups) and became better known as an author. For the past decade and a half, Iāve been using my storytelling skills to make mathematics more accessible (and enjoyable!) to a broad audience. Being a novelist has helped me look at mathematics in a new light, and realize the subject is not so much about the calculations feared by so many, but rather, about ideas. We can all enjoy such ideas, and thereby learn to understand, appreciate, and even love math.
A primary reason to love math is because of its usefulness. This book shows two sides of mathās applicability, since it is so ubiquitously used in various algorithms.
On the one hand, such usage can be good, because statistical inferences can make our life easier and enrich it. On the other, when these are not properly designed or monitored, it can lead to catastrophic consequences. Mathematics is a powerful force, as powerful as wind or fire, and needs to be harnessed just as carefully.
Cathy OāNeilās message in this book spoke deeply to me, reminding me that I need to be always vigilant about the subject I love not being deployed carelessly.Ā Ā
'A manual for the 21st-century citizen... accessible, refreshingly critical, relevant and urgent' - Financial Times
'Fascinating and deeply disturbing' - Yuval Noah Harari, Guardian Books of the Year
In this New York Times bestseller, Cathy O'Neil, one of the first champions of algorithmic accountability, sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life -- and threaten to rip apart our social fabric.
We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives - where we go to school, whether we get a loan, how much we pay for insurance - are being madeā¦
I was recruited right out of college to work at one of the largest data firms in the US., I went from new grad to consulting director in record time. Along the way, I read each of these books, which all played a critical part in my development and ability to continually adapt. Society only gets better if we collectively become better humans, and reading books, sharing ideas, discussing, and ultimately testing plans of action is how we get there. Weāre all in this together, and the more we read and share great ideas, the better we are all going to be in the long run.
I loved this book because the author has such an incredible, authentic voice. Being a professional poker player turned consultant; she helps readers get comfortable with not knowing the outcome, being uncertain, and ultimately getting used to the idea of placing bets.
I loved the book because it helped me relax. Rather than stressing if the countless decisions I made every day were the right ones, it helped me see that I was making bets, running experiments, and constantly testing what worked. It helped me take myself less seriously, and it helped me see that even if an experiment failed, it would provide valuable learning and growth. As she references from her time on the world poker circuit, losing is not the end of it as long as you learn from your losses.Ā
A Wall Street Journal bestseller, now in paperback. Poker champion turned decision strategist Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions.
Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there's always information hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10%ā¦
