Marc Faber's Top Book Recommendations

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

A History of Interest Rates (Wiley Finance)

Sidney Homer, Richard Sylla

4.2

A History of Interest Rates presents a very readable account of interest rate trends and lending practices over four millennia of economic history. Despite the paucity of data prior to the Industrial Revolution, authors Homer and Sylla provide a highly detailed analysis of money markets and borrowing practices in major economies. Underlying the analysis is their assertion that "the free market lon

Recommended by Marc Faber and Simon Johnson.

Marc Faber

Investors should realise that interest rates move in long cycles and this is fairly well documented in Homer’s history of interest rates. I think that in general — because I go to lots of seminars and so forth — investors and professional fund managers may have a CFA, but they have no clue about history. [source]

Simon Johnson

Some of my favourite books are just about data. This history shows us that interest rates can go down for a very long time – and then they go up. [source]

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

Charles P. Kindleberger

4.1

The best known and most highly regarded book on financial crises

Financial crises and speculative excess can be traced back to the very beginning of trade and commerce. Since its introduction in 1978, this book has charted and followed this volatile world of financial markets. Charles Kindleberger's brilliant, panoramic history revealed how financial crises follow a nature-like rhythm: they peak a

Recommended by Charles Morris, Larry Summers, and Marc Faber.

Marc Faber

He describes very well how these manias occur and what the symptoms are of manias in terms of excessive speculation, overleverage, borrowing, fraud, embezzlement, high trading volumes, and so forth. [source]

Charles Morris

Kindleberger’s great virtue is that he was both a respected economist and a student of human nature, and he knew that human nature could never be bottled up in an economic model. His book is a terrific narrative of a series of bubbles, going back to pre-industrial days – the Dutch tulip craze, the South Sea bubble, and so forth.. [source]

Larry Summers

Kindleberger’s message is that complacency can be a self-denying prophecy. [source]

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Booms & Depressions: Some First Principles

Irving Fisher

3.9

This book is an 'historical document' and explains Booms and Depressions from the point of view and analysis of a highly respected American economist of the twentieth century who has lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Fisher writes: "This book grew out of an invitation to speak on the Depression of 1929-32 before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is an elabor

Recommended by Marc Faber.

Marc Faber

This is a very good account of how the Boom occurred and how the Great Depression followed. I think it’s a historical document, so I list it as one of my favourite books. It was written after the Depression, in 1932, and the author, Irving Fisher himself, essentially went bust. At that time I think he was a Professor at Princeton. He was very optimistic about America and about the economy, and so he had long positions in equities. But during the crash he suffered badly: he had mortgages on his house and so he had a financial problem. But because he was such a well-known economist, I think, Princeton bailed him out. [source]

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The Economics of Inflation: A Study of Currency Depreciation in Post-War Germany, 1914-1923

Constantino Bresciani-Turroni

4.0

The Economics of Inflation provides a comprehensive analysis of economic conditions in Germany under the Great Inflation and discusses inflationary conditions in general. The analysis is supported by extensive statistical material.
• For this translation the author thoroughly revised the original work
• Includes an appendix on German economic conditions in the years following the monetary reform,

Recommended by Marc Faber.

Marc Faber

Correct. Bresciano-Turroni was an employee at the time, I think, in Germany, and he followed this hyperinflation development very closely. He describes the impact of inflation on equities, on real estate, on wages and on the exchange rate. [source]

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Jules Verne: The Essential Collection

Jules Verne, Allen Grove

4.3

This superb collection of classic science fiction features the best of Jules Verne’s epic adventure stories, including Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), and The Mysterious Island (1875).

Often called the “father of science fiction," Verne was a masterful storyteller and vi

Recommended by Marc Faber.

Marc Faber

Most of Verne’s predictions were realised – travel to the moon, travel to the bottom of the ocean, and so forth… Nobody has a clue how the world will look in 20 years’ time. [source]