Warren Buffett’s Reading List

Years ago, a college student asked Warren Buffett how to prepare for a career on Wall Street. The legendary investor reportedly held up a stack of publications and reports and said, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.” Yes, that’s right, 500 pages a day.

Buffett, the chairman of investment holding company Berkshire Hathaway, considers reading a core part of his job. Reading is how he knows as much as or more than those he’s speaking with.

Buffett is not the only big-name billionaire bookworm. Bill Gates…Elon Musk…Mark Cuban…Mark Zuckerberg…and Oprah Winfrey are reportedly voracious readers, too.

Warren Buffett does not have a book club like Oprah, but there are ways to determine some of the books he likes—for one, Buffett personally approves every title sold at the bookstore kiosk at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting. Here are 10 general-interest books and two about Buffett himself…

• Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street by John Brooks

• Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation by John Bogle

• No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality by Judith Rich Harris

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

• A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss

• Getting There: A Book of Mentors by Gillian Zoe Segal

• The Great Crash:1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith

• The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

• Where Are the Customer’ Yachts? Or a Good Hard Look at Wall Street by Fred Schwed, Jr.

• Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World’s Greatest Investor by Jeremy C. Miller.

• The Warren Buffett Way by Robert G. Hagstrom.

Happy reading!