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Vintage International/Amazon
This Kazuo Ishiguro novel tells of an English butler in wartime England who begins to question his lifelong loyalty to his employer while on a vacation.
Bezos has said of the book, “Before reading it, I didn’t think a perfect novel was possible.”
Bantam Books/Amazon
In his autobiography, billionaire Walmart founder Sam Walton recalls his career building one of the world’s largest retailers.
HarperCollins Publishers/Amazon
This book draws on six years of research from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business that looks into what separates exceptional companies from their competitors. Bezos has said it’s his “favorite business book.”
Amazon
Steve Grand discusses artificial life through the lens of his 1996 computer game Creatures in this book.
Harvard Business Review Press
Clayton Christensen examines various companies’ successes and failures in disruptive innovation in this book.
Amazon
Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox examine the theory of constraints from a management perspective in this novel.
Simon & Schuster/Amazon
This book imparts lessons about improving efficiency based on case studies of lean companies across various industries.
Random House
Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the term “black swan” with this book, in which he defines such events as highly improbable, unpredictable, and impactful.
Amazon
Peter Thiel shares lessons he learned founding companies like PayPal and Palantir in this book.
Musk has said of the book, “Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.”
Amazon
Musk has said he read a lot of fantasy and science fiction novels as a kid and once quoted a line from Tolkien’s famous trilogy on Twitter.
Amazon
In the same vein, Musk read “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as a teenager and has even said the spacecraft in it is his favorite spacecraft from science fiction.
Amazon
Musk’s reading list isn’t without biographies, including this Walter Isaacson book on Benjamin Franklin.
Amazon
Musk enjoyed Isaacson’s biography on Albert Einstein as well.
Musk has also recommended several books on artificial intelligence, including this one, which considers questions about the future of intelligent life in a world where machines may become smarter than people.
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Penguin
One of his favorites is Warren Buffett’s “Tap Dancing to Work.”
Amazon
Gates also likes former president Jimmy Carter’s “A Full Life.”
Amazon
This book probes the thinking patterns and tendencies that distort people’s perceptions of the world. Gates has called it “one of the most educational books I’ve ever read.”
David Christian takes on the history of our universe, from the Big Bang to mass globalization, in this book.
“Range” explores the idea that, though modern work places a premium on specialization, being a generalist is actually the way to go. Gates has said Epstein’s ideas here “even help explain some of Microsoft’s success because we hired people who had real breadth within their field and across domains.”
Amazon
Elizabeth Kolbert plumbs the history of Earth’s mass extinctions in this book, including a sixth extinction, which some scientists warn is already underway.
Amazon
Gates has said this is “the best business book I’ve ever read.” It compiles 12 articles that originally appeared in The New Yorker about moments of success and failure at companies like General Electric and Xerox.
This Archie Brown book examines political leadership throughout the 20th century.
Amazon
Vaclav Smil examines the materials and processes that made our modern world in this book.
Randall Munroe, creator of the hit web comic xkcd, proposes funny yet informative answers to life’s wildest hypothetical questions in this book.
