10 Books Recommended by Bezos, Gates, And Musk
The ultimate book list to think like a billionaire entrepreneur. How many have you read?
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Do you wonder why successful people read so many books?
The answer is simple. Reading stimulates learning and makes creative juices flow. Bill Gates once said he reads over 50 books a year, and Mark Zuckerberg has a book club to motivate him to read.
Other famous people like Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and Warren Buffett are avid readers. Hence, we could say reading helped them be successful.
In alphabetical order, the ten books recommended by millionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk.
Jeff Bezos
The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create. — Jeff Bezos.
1. Built to Last
By Jim Collins. A book about Collins’ six-year research on eighteen lasting companies examined from their very beginnings to the present day.
2. Creation
By, Steve Grand. The author’s insights in writing Creatures. A computer game that allowed players to create brains, genes, and hormonal systems of virtual living beings breathing and breeding in real-time.
3. Good to Great
By Jim Collins. After 21 persons researched, read, and coded 6,000 articles. Collins and his team explore a company’s transformation from mediocre to excellent, producing significant results and greatness, evolving into companies “Built to Last,” and explaining why “Good is the enemy of Great.”
4. Lean Thinking
By James P. Womack. Based on Toyota’s lean model, this business classic bestseller describes a business system that overrules the mass production system of Ford, the financial control system of Sloan, and the strategic system of Welch and GE, by banishing waste and creating wealth using the lean model in your company.
5. Rework
By Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. A different look at what most business books say about writing a business plan, studying the competition, and seeking investors. Showing a better and easier way to succeed in business.
6. Sam Walton: Made in America
By Sam Walton. Walmart’s founder shares the story of how Sam and Helen Walton transformed their Ben Franklin variety store, in Newport, Arkansas, into Walmart, the largest retailer empire in the world, not with smoke and mirrors, but with good old-fashioned elbow grease.
7. The Black Swan
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The author explains why events as Google’s success and 9/11, unique by themselves, are highly improbable, unpredictable, and with a massive impact as “A Black Swan.”
8. The Goal
By Eliyahu M. Goldratt. A novel about a plant manager desperate to save his factory and his marriage. Written like a fast-paced thriller, telling Alex Rogo’s ninety days quest to save his company, saving hundreds of jobs, and his marriage in the way.
9. The Innovator’s Dilemma
By Clayton M. Christensen. The Innovator’s Dilemma sets rules capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation and why successful companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership or disappear completely missing “the next great wave.”
10. The Remains of the Day
By Kazuo Ishiguro. An English aristocratic butler narrates his memories of the events during his time at the service of Miss Kenton and Lord Darlington, leading him to fully and regretfully realize what led to his loneliness and feeling of loss, teaching the pain of regret as if you lived it.
William (Bill) Gates
Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading. — Bill Gates
1. A Promised Land
By Barack Obama. This Presidential Memoir tells the story of Obama’s journey from his earlier days to becoming President of the United States, his struggles with opposition at home and abroad, and how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters.
2. A World-Class Education
By Vivien Stewart. In past years, the United States was the leader in education. In her book, the author, a senior education advisor and former vice president at Asia Society explains how the U.S. education system rates against international standards, the policies, practices, and priorities of the world’s best-performing systems, and the new models of 21st-century teaching and leadership.
3. Blitzscaling
By Reid Hoffman. The co-founder of SocialNet.com and LinkedIn explains his idea of getting very big, very fast, called “Blitzscaling.” Explaining that it is not just about growing revenues and the customer base, but also about scaling and helping the organizations execute at a high level while facing extremely rapid growth.
4. Life Is What You Make It
By Peter Buffett. The son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a composer, musician, and philanthropist’s book asks: Which path would you choose: the one with the least resistance or the path of potentially greatest satisfaction?
5. Mindset
By Carol S. Dweck. In this book, Dweck presents her theory on how we can navigate life with growth or fixed mindsets and the difference they make. Explaining how either conscious or subconscious affects what we want and whether we’ll succeed in getting it.
6. Moonwalking with Einstein
By Joshua Foer. While writing an article about the U.S. Memory Championship finals, the journalist learns the secret of an ancient technique once employed by Cicero. After finding out that most contestants use it to increase their memory, he decides to put it to use, to become U.S. Memory Champion.
7. The Magic of Reality
By Richard Dawkins. Like the Egyptians, Vikings, Japanese, and pre-Colombian America, ancient civilizations saw simple natural phenomena as acts of pure magic. This book explains what stuff is made of. How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a puzzle? And many other natural events once seen as magic.
8. The Most Powerful Idea in the World
By William Rosen. The Industrial Revolution changed the world, and no machine was more responsible for it than the steam engine. This book explores the people and events that led to its invention and the history from its early days moving the wheels of mills and factories to the way transporting people and freight by rail and by sea changed, leading to interrupted progress.
9. The Ride of a Lifetime
By Robert Iger. In this book, Iger relates his time as Walt Disney Company’s CEO, and how, in his 15 years leading the company, Disney became one of the world’s largest media entertainment empires. During this time, he was responsible for Disney’s acquisition deals with Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox, and increasing the company’s value almost five times.
10. Why We Sleep
By Matthew Walker. A neuroscience perspective on how, with sleeping techniques, we can have a better night’s sleep. Also, harnessing sleep improving learning, regulate hormones to prevent cancer, slows the effects of aging, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and increases longevity.
Elon Musk
“I learned how to build rockets by reading books.” — Elon Musk
1. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
By Walter Isaacson. Benjamin Franklin’s fresh and fascinating biography, of one of the first founding fathers and who we could say was the first American entrepreneur, tells his chronicles from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back — exploring the wit behind the man responsible for the Poor Richard’s Almanac, the Declaration of Independence, and the treaty ending the Revolution.
2. Einstein: His Life and Universe
By Walter Isaacson. Few men changed history and science as this German-born theoretical physicist, acknowledged as the greatest physicist of all time. Based on his released personal letters, Einstein’s biography explores this patent clerk’s journey from Germany to the United States, including his struggles, family, and success becoming the man behind the most famous formula, E=mc2.
3. Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness
By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. Originally published under the title Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes. This book, reviewed by experts as “The most responsible and authoritative biography of Hughes,” tells the whole story of the life and death of Howard Hughes, the bizarre billionaire who had everything — and nothing, ever published, not as gossip but as a beautifully researched book.
4. Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down
By J.E. Gordon. Have you ever wondered why eight lanes bridges don’t collapse, how dams hold thousands of gallons of water, or why an airplane flies? This book explains what holds together the ordinary things of this world, including buildings, the human body, aircraft, and eggshells. As Elon Musk says, “It is really, really good if you want a primer on structural design.”
5. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
By Nick Bostrom. A book with the forms, history, and future of Artificial Intelligence, and the answer to: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? And if AI is potentially more dangerous than nukes?
6. The Foundation Series
By Isaac Asimov. The series of books tells the story of The Galactic Empire, an interstellar empire spread across the Milky Way and with almost 25 million planets. It Started as a trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation) but later included two sequels (Foundation’s Edge and Foundation and Earth), and two prequels (Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation), winning four Hugo Awards and beating J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings among others.
7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
By Douglas Adams. A novel about the journey of two space travelers, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, an out-of-work actor, both start a trip seconds before an intergalactic crew demolishes Earth to make way for a galactic freeway. They begin a journey through space aided by a two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie, a girl Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party, and a chronically depressed robot.
8. The Lord of the Rings
By J. R. R. Tolkien. One of the most beloved epic high-fantasy novels. Set in Middle-earth, a place in a distant time in the past. The story is a sequel to Tolkien’s children’s book The Hobbit and developed into a much larger work, which became the Middle-earth’s trilogy.
9. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
By Robert Heinlein. A science fiction novel about a lunar colony’s revolt against absentee rule from Earth: the story expresses in three acts or books Luna’s rebellion, independence from Earth, and its ultimate victory.
10. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
By Peter Thiel. We live in an age of technological dependence, distracted by mobile devices. There is no reason you limit your success only towards computers and IT. You can achieve it in any industry or business. There are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. Zero to One shows how you can find new ways to create your future endeavors.
Take Away
People say, “You are what you eat.” So maybe we could say, “Your success depends on what you read”.
If you go through life reading only gossip magazines at the groceries store, you will be an expert on the life of famous people and maybe win a TV trivia show.
But if you start reading some books on the side, you might learn something new from the books you learn and say, “Wow, I never thought of that, maybe I’ll give it a try.”
The previous list has 30 different books, covering from science, to politics, including, humor, epic battles, engineering, and even food tips, if you consider having a “Hagro Biscuit”, and water it down with a “Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster” using The Hitchhiker’s Guide’s recipe.
So, why not add at least one of them to your reading list?
