Start by reading anything by Ayn Rand. “Atlas Shrugged” is the most important book you’ll ever read. We also recommend “The Fountainhead” and “Anthem.” These classic novels lay the intellectual foundation for capitalism.
Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton, Triumph of the Optimists. We cannot say too often that if you read one investment book, this should be it. Ever since its publication in early 2000, it has informed our approach to the market and served as a source of trading ideas. The first comprehensive international market database, this book by three distinguished London Business School professors belongs on the shelf of every investor, trader, policy-maker and economist. In all the sciences, great strides in seeing things how they are came about after the compilation and classification of data. At last we have something that builds on the University of Chicago’s Center for Research in Securities Prices, the U.S. database that led to an explosion in market knowledge and testing a generation ago. The one book that Vic would recommend to his six daughters and that Laurel would recommend to her parents.
Paul Heyne, The Economic Way of Thinking. This modern economics text is so valuable, so readable and so important that everyone should read it to periodically chase away the mumbo jumbo, fuzzy thinking and long-discredited totalitarian ideas that against all reason are in wide circulation today.
Michael Lewis-Beck, Data Analysis: An Introduction. At last, a book on statistics that English majors can love. This little pamphlet was in fact written for sociology students. Laurel recommends it highly. Victor, a Ph.D. in statistics who finds esoteric statistical questions as invigorating as a good game of tennis, recommends George W. Snedecor’s Statistical Methods. This classic text has proved its value through most of the 20th century and has been updated so that it’s as fresh and valuable today as the day it first saw the light in 1927. It will give you the tools necessary to know what to do after you start counting in the Galtonian manner. It’s also a good starting points for other statistics books like Maurice G. Kendall’s “Kendall’s Advanced Theory of Statistics,” which those who enjoy math might find an Oxford English Dictionary-like reference.
On the subject of Francis Galton, we recommend Memories of My Life and The Art of Travel. Galton was Darwin’s cousin, and was at the scientific cutting edge of his time with countless adventures, mathematical advances and practical inventions to his name, including correlation, weather maps, fingerprinting and the whistling teapot. His spirit of reason and inquiry made him universally loved by his peers.
Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey-Stephen Maturin series on British naval life in the Napoleonic War era are among the best historical novels we’ve read. Great dialogue, fascinating writing on the science, culture and economic life of the early 19th century. The characters are subtly drawn and highly humorous. We are extremely partial to sea adventures, and these 20 books are endlessly entertaining. Start with Master and Commander, the first of the series.
Jack Schaeffer, “Monte Walsh.” A deep book on the conflict between industrialization and the life of the range, by the greatest Western novelist.