Niall Ferguson's Top Book Recommendations

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

The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith

4.2

Preview Summary

In his book, Smith fervently extolled the simple yet enlightened notion that individuals are fully capable of setting and regulating prices for their own goods and services. He argued passionately in favor of free trade, yet stood up for the little guy. The Wealth of Nations provided the first--and still the most eloquent--integrated description of the workings of a market economy.

Recommended by Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and 10 others.

Niall Ferguson

If you read it closely it’s not a naive apology for unregulated markets, but he’s quite keenly aware of the problems of financial regulation. [source]

Barack Obama

Former USA President

Obama, unsurprisingly, appears to be more drawn to stories sympathetic to the working classes than is McCain. Obama cites John Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle,” about a labor dispute; Robert Caro’s “Power Broker,” about Robert Moses; and Studs Terkel’s “Working.” But he also includes Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” and “Theory of Moral Sentiments” on his list. [source]

Elon Musk

Founder/SpaceX

Adam Smith FTW obv. [source]

War And Peace

Leo Tolstoi, Louise Maude, Aylmer Maude

4.3

War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daugh

Recommended by Andrei Maylunas, Cécile Fabre, Kate McLoughlin, and 6 others.

Niall Ferguson

As a middle aged man, I react differently to Tolstoy than I did when I first read War and Peace at about 15. [source]

Andrei Maylunas

One doesn’t have to invent the bicycle, there is one: it’s War and Peace. It’s about how Russia won the Napoleonic wars, and moved into the first row of nations who dealt with European history. It’s set during the peak of Russian culture, the age of Pushkin, who created the modern Russian language. It’s the peak…The only thing I would recommend to modern readers is to skip all those parts – which are completely separate from the other parts of the book – where Tolstoy is philosophising about the role of the individual in history. It’s maybe 15 per cent of the book, in separate chapters, and I would definitely recommend to skip those because they are not interesting today. [source]

Cécile Fabre

One of the key questions that Tolstoy asks in the appendix is the central question of War and Peace: how can we explain the fact that, on orders, millions of people go out and kill one another, when they know that killing another human being is morally wrong? [source]

A Tract on Monetary Reform

John Maynard Keynes

4.2

This treatise, written in 1923 by the renowned proponent of deficit spending, is devoted to the need for stable currency as the indispensable foundation to a healthy world economy. Keynes begins by laying out data showing the serious fluctuations in the value of money that began in 1914 and subjected North America, Europe, and India to injurious cycles of inflation and deflation. He describes the

Recommended by Niall Ferguson.

Niall Ferguson

That’s true up to a point. The problem is that most developed countries went into the financial crisis with structural deficits in their budgets. When you start from that position, it’s much harder to make Keynesian policies work. [source]

Cover unavailable

The Last Days of Mankind

Karl Kraus, Alexander Gode, et al.

4.1

Kraus' masterpiece is generally considered to be the massive satirical play about the First World War, which combines dialogue from contemporary documents with apocalyptic fantasy and commentary from two characters called "the Grumbler" and "the Optimist". Kraus began to write the play in 1915 and first published it as a series of special Fackel issues in 1919. Its epilogue, "Die letzte Nacht" ("T

Recommended by Niall Ferguson.

Niall Ferguson

When I was an undergraduate I went to the Edinburgh festival, and saw a brilliant production of The Last Days of Mankind which changed my life. I was entirely riveted by Kraus’s central theme, which is that the First World War could to some extent be understood as a media-driven event. Kraus’s conceit is that the war was such a great story for the Neue Freie Presse – the New York Times of Vienna at the time – that the newspaper had an interest in perpetuating it. [source]

Cover unavailable

An Autobiography

R. G. Collingwood, Stephen Toulmin

4.5

Introduction by Stephen Toulmin

Recommended by Niall Ferguson.

Niall Ferguson

I discovered this book fairly late in life, after I had written Virtual History, which was my first standard work of historical philosophy. It was only after I came to Harvard to teach that I sat down and read his wonderful autobiography. I can’t think of many experiences in my life more exciting than that. It’s a tremendously profound reflection on history and historical method. [source]