Books on business, money, success and failure

The business story includes huge successes, epic failures, intrigue, disruption, politics and more. Below, I’ve hand-picked 12 titles that cover everyone through academic studies, history, and biography.

Money: The Story of Mankind

by David McWilliams

An academic, banker and journalist, McWilliams combines a deep knowledge of history, economics and psychology to explore how money has shaped human history and modern society. As the founder of Kilkenomics, an economics and comedy festival, the author excels at demystifying our relationship with money. The Financial Times calls the book “ambitious, insightful and readable”.

Main Street Millionaire: How to Make Extraordinary Wealth Buying Ordinary Businesses

by Codia Sanchez

A leading investor and small business expert explains how to find opportunities and profit in low-profile but reliable businesses, including how to identify and close business deals even if you’re not rich, how to grow and manage multiple small businesses after an acquisition, and what kinds of companies, which aspiring investors should not get.

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

The author explores the origins and consequences of free trade zones, tax havens, and other financial loopholes, which she argues foster inequality and injustice by allowing the rich and privileged to operate with impunity.

Be Prepared When Luck Happens: A Memoir

by Ina Garten

In her long-awaited memoir, the award-winning culinary icon, bestselling cookbook author, Internet personality, and television host shares how she overcame challenges and career twists to achieve many remarkable successes and fame.

Revenge of the turning point

by Malcolm Gladwell

The startling ideas in Gladwell’s groundbreaking debut had a huge impact twenty-five years ago. Now he revisits those lessons and reframes them to offer a new look at the dark side of the spread of social phenomena.

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari

Renowned historian Harari takes the long – very long – view of how the flow of information has shaped people and society from the Stone Age to the present. It examines how different cultures and political systems throughout history have used information to achieve their goals.

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

by Michael Lewis

The author of “The Big Short” and “Moneyball” tells the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, who quickly rose to become the world’s youngest billionaire, only to fall just as quickly as the epicenter of the cryptocurrency collapse in 2022. It was hailed by reviewers as “wildly entertaining” and tragic.

Fintech Wars: Tech Titans, Complex Crypto, and the Future of Money

by James da Costa

The author is a fintech insider and founder of a digital bank. He draws on his connections with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Capital One founder Nigel Morris and Lastminute.com’s Martha Lane Fox to shed light on the strategies and innovations that underpin the likes of PayPal and Nubank.

The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and The Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend

by Rob Copeland

Informed by hundreds of interviews with people close to his subject, Copeland details Dali’s career from the founding of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, to his departure as its leader nearly fifty years later. Critics are calling it a non-fiction thriller that is both shocking and entertaining.

Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World

by Paolo Zannoni

Using examples from Italy, Spain, England, the United States and Russia, Zannoni, an experienced banker and business executive, illustrates the origins of the modern banking industry and explores the complex relationship between public and private debt.

Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Masayoshi’s Japanese Son

by Lionel Barber

The definitive biography of Korean-Japanese tech finance wizard Mayasoshi Son and his firm Softbank, which has funded hundreds of tech startups, funded Alibaba, and made and lost fortunes many times over, yet remains largely overlooked.

Handbook of female founders

by Anne Boden

After a successful career in the banking industry, Boden founded Starling Bank in 2014 and led it from a startup to an industry leader. Her book collects the real stories, experiences and insights of women entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, dealing with innovative ideas, building a winning team and finding investors.