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Howard Marks' Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Howard Marks recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Howard Marks' favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail book cover1

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

Clayton M. Christensen

4.3
The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, renowned author Clayton M. Christensen.

His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller—now updated with a fresh new package—innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership. Read th
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts book cover2

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

Annie Duke

4.1
In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a hand off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carro
Principles: Life and Work book cover3

Principles: Life and Work

Ray Dalio

4.4
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 apa
The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses book cover4

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Eric Ries

4.3
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned profes
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future book cover5

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Ashlee Vance

4.4
Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, sold one of his internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius's life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits. Vance uses Musk's story to explo
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future book cover6

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Peter Thiel

4.3
If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.

Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation,
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think book cover7

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Hans Rosling

4.5
Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently o
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets book cover8

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

4.2
Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, and The Bed of Procrustes.

Now in a striking new hardcover edition, Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth se
The Warren Buffett Way: Investment Strategies of the World's Greatest Investor book cover9

The Warren Buffett Way: Investment Strategies of the World's Greatest Investor

Robert G. Hagstrom

4.4
The Warren Buffett Way offers investors their first in-depth look at the innovative investment and business strategies behind the spectacular success of living legend Warren E. Buffett. Tracing Warren Buffett's career from the beginning, Robert G. Hagstrom, Jr., tells us exactly how, starting with an initial investment of only $100, Buffett built a business empire worth $19.4 billion. Offers a clo
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk book cover10

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Peter L. Bernstein

4.2
With the stock market breaking records almost daily, leaving longtime market analysts shaking their heads and revising their forecasts, a study of the concept of risk seems quite timely. Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians P
A Short History of Financial Euphoria book cover11

A Short History of Financial Euphoria

John Kenneth Galbraith

4.2
The world-renowned economist offers "dourly irreverent analyses of financial debacle from the tulip craze of the seventeenth century to the recent plague of junk bonds."—The Atlantic.
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Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

Ben Mezrich

4.2
An exclusive blackjack club came up with a system to take the worldUs most sophisticated casinos for all they were worth. In two years, this ring of card savants earned more than three million dollars. Filled with tense action and incredibly close calls, this is a real-life adventure that could have stepped straight out of a Hollywood film.