Great Books Distilled: Books by History's Greatest Innovators, Founders, and Investors

The page is a reading list sharing the best books written by history's greatest innovators, founders, and investors. This is a reading list for people who don’t have time for unimportant books—which should be everyone. I only list the best books I've read and recommend.

All Book Summaries

For the best books that I read, I go through the painstaking effort to put together and publish my personal notes including highlights, excerpts, and takeaways. You get the best 5% of the ideas in these books in a form that takes 20 minutes at most to read.

Great Books by Category

These are the best books to read, listed by category. Along with a few collections of rare and hard-to-find speeches, lectures, talks, interviews, letters, and memos that are a great way to go deeper.

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Daniel Scrivner

Best Wealth Building Books

Looking for good books on how to build wealth? This is my list of the best wealth building books of all-time. If you only have time to read one or two books, I recommend looking at the Top Wealth Building Books section below.

You can also find recently released books that are worth your attention in the New and Notable section. I try to carefully curate all of my reading lists and you can be sure that any wealth building book on this page is worth your time. Enjoy!

On This Page


New and Notable

This section features recently released books that are worth your attention.

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
by Morgan Housel
Print | Audiobook


The Top Wealth Building Books

This section features the all-time best books written about how to build wealth and master the art of money.

How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets
by Felix Dennis
Print | eBook | Audiobook

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
by Morgan Housel
Print | Audiobook

Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
by Peter D. Kaufman
Print Edition

The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
by Lawrence Cunningham
Print | eBook | Audiobook

Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life
by William Green
Print | eBook | Audiobook

The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society
by Eric D. Beinhocker
Print | eBook

The Wealth of Nations
by Adam Smith
Print | eBook | Audiobook

Related Reading Lists

Or browse all book recommendations →

About the author

Daniel Scrivner is an award-winner designer turned founder and investor. He's led design work at Apple and Square. He is an early investor in Notion, Public.com, and Good Eggs. He's also the founder of Ligature: The Design VC and Outlier Academy. Daniel has interviewed the world’s leading founders and investors including Scott Belsky, Luke Gromen, Kevin Kelly, Gokul Rajaram, and Brian Scudamore.

Last updated
Sep 16, 2023

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