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John Lanchester's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books John Lanchester recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of John Lanchester's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
Recommended by John Lanchester, James Meek, and 2 others.

John LanchesterIt’s about our relationship with money, and money as one of humanity’s most amazing, extraordinary inventions: This thing which is so useful, and which is also a form of imagination, that frees us in so many ways, and at the same time enslaves us. (Source)

James MeekJames Buchan talks about what money is and its use. But he also adds this extra layer, which is his own experience of money. (Source)

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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 Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he demonstrates that understanding risk underlies everything from game theory to bridge-building to winemaking. less

Jason ZweigIn the book, he explores risk at every conceivable level – what it is mathematically and what it is psychologically, how it has played out historically, how people have thought to measure it and also to control it. (Source)

John Lanchesterit’s an absolutely fascinating, for-the-layman account of how humanity mastered risk and came to understand probability. (Source)

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3

The Money Game

"This is a modern classic." —Paul A. Samuelson, First American Nobel Prize Winner in Economics

"The best book there is about the stock market and all that goes with it." —The New York Times Book Review

"Anyone whose orientation is toward where the action is, where the happenings happen, should buy a copy of The Money Game and read it with due diligence." —Book World

" 'Adam Smith' is a veteran observer and commentator on the events and people of Wall Street.... His thorough knowledge of financial affairs gives his observations a great...
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Recommended by Brendan Moynihan, John Lanchester, and 2 others.

Brendan MoynihanThe first book I read on the markets. (Source)

John LanchesterAdam Smith is a pseudonym – he was an extremely successful professional investor called George Goodman, who also wrote a newspaper column. This is a real insider’s account of the way that the money markets and trading works. (Source)

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4
In this shrewd and wickedly funny book, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progress through a powerful investment bank. From an unlikely beginning (art history at Princeton?) he rose in two short years from Salomon Brothers trainee to Geek (the lowest form of life on the trading floor) to Big Swinging Dick, the most dangerous beast in the jungle, a bond salesman who could turn over millions of dollars' worth of doubtful bonds with just one call.

With the eye and ear of a born storyteller, Michael Lewis shows us how things really worked on Wall Street....

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Recommended by John Lanchester, Audrey Russo, and 2 others.

John LanchesterIt’s still a wonderfully entertaining book: An absolutely hilarious, very, very dark, vivid account of how Michael Lewis came out of Princeton and, with basically no qualifications, got a job in the bond trading department of Salomon Brothers (Source)

Audrey RussoQuestion: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: Anything by Peter Senge. The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz Once you are Lucky, Twice you are good – Sara Lacey Revolutionary Wealth – Alvin Toffler Black Swan – Taleb Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, by Ellen Pao. Creative Class – Richard Florida Creativity Inc. by Ed... (Source)

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5
Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.

“We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!” a sleepless Timothy Geithner,...
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Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2011.] (Source)

Max Levchin[Max Levchin recommended this book as an answer to "What business books would you advise young entrepreneurs read?"] (Source)

John LanchesterThis is a minute-by-minute account of how the whole financial system nearly went over the brink in 2008, and the astonishing sense of tension and danger involved. (Source)

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