These Are The Books The World's Richest People Are Reading
From Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg, here's what's on the bookshelves of the richest people in the world
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, reading remains the most reliable common denominator among the ultra-successful. Behind every empire and every audacious vision, there is a sentence that sparked it or a chapter that changed everything. A lot of people with extraordinary careers have said their biggest turning points came from things they first read, not from board meetings or business school. Some turned those insights into company values and others built entire belief systems around them.
And when you start mapping what the world’s billionaires actually read, a pattern emerges. It’s not about hustle culture or self-help. It’s about curiosity : the kind that asks why, not how. What follows is a list of titles that have been in the reading lists of some of the most influential lives on the planet.
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Elon Musk
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
A sweeping saga about the rise and fall of civilizations, Foundation explores the tension between chaos and control and how one person’s vision can alter the course of humanity. It’s less sci-fi and more prophecy. A story about empires, collapse and the audacity of one man trying to predict it all.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
What makes the book remarkable isn’t its setting on the moon, but how familiar it feels. It is about a colony trying to outgrow its maker and a machine that becomes more human than its creators. Heinlein builds a world that runs on code and conviction, the same fuel that drives real revolutions. It’s not hard to see why Musk keeps coming back to it; the book reads like a rehearsal for anyone obsessed with dismantling systems that have stopped evolving.
Jeff Bezos
Built to Last by Jim Collins & Jerry Porras
Built to Last studies why some companies become institutions while others vanish after the headlines fade. It dissects culture and long-term thinking in a way that feels both analytical and strangely human. Collins and Porras went looking for what makes a company timeless and found that it has less to do with profit and more with purpose.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro’s novel peels back the life of a man who served flawlessly and realizes too late what it cost him. it studies discipline and devotion and also the danger of mistaking service for meaning. On the surface, it’s the story of a butler; underneath, it’s a meditation on purpose and the price of loyalty.
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Bill Gates
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Rosling dismantles the idea that the world is falling apart and shows, with wit and statistics, that progress is real — if you know how to look at it. It’s a book that replaces panic with perspective.
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
An ambitious retelling of human history — from hunter-gatherers to the digital age — that asks uncomfortable questions about who we are and what we’re becoming.
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
The memoir of Nike’s founder reads like an entrepreneurial road movie — part hustle, part heartbreak. It’s brutally honest, funny in the right places, and deeply human beneath all the branding.
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
A book about progress, reason, and optimism in an age that doesn’t always reward it. Pinker argues, convincingly, that the world is getting better — one rational thought at a time.
Mark Zuckerberg
The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner
The story of Bell Labs, where modern communication was invented. Gertner captures the rhythm of invention inside Bell Labs, where collaboration was a craft and failure had purpose. It’s a portrait of innovation stripped of ego. It’s a study of how structure can spark imagination and how creativity needs discipline.
Oprah Winfrey
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
Tolle’s book asks readers to let go of old patterns and live from a place of awareness. Oprah made it part of her book club because it isn’t about reinvention, it’s about clarity. Tolle examines how ego shapes human suffering and how awareness dissolves it.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Alice Walker’s novel is raw and unflinching. It follows Celie’s journey from silence to selfhood, written in letters that feel more like confessions. Every page carries pain and the kind of emotional truth that stays under your skin. Oprah has often said the book showed her what strength looks like when no one is watching.
The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav
Zukav’s book dismantles the idea that achievement equals power and instead argues that true strength comes from alignment. Drawing from psychology, quantum theory and spiritual philosophy, Zukav builds a framework for what he calls “multi-sensory perception” It is the idea that human evolution is moving from external achievement to internal awareness.
Warren Buffett
The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
Graham writes like someone who’s seen every market frenzy and still believes in reason. The book treats emotion as the real opponent, not volatility. His ideas on intrinsic value and margin of safety are deceptively simple. Reading it feels like sitting through a masterclass on temperament.
Charlie Munger
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell unpacks why certain people reach the top while others, just as talented, don’t. He threads together stories, from The Beatles’ gruelling club nights to a young Bill Gates’ early access to computers. The book challenges the romantic idea of genius, arguing that opportunity and persistence often matter more than innate brilliance.
Peter Thiel
The Sovereign Individual by William Rees-Mogg & James Dale Davidson
Written in the late ’90s but eerily tuned to the present, The Sovereign Individual imagines a world where technology erodes the power of governments and elevates the self-sufficient. The book carries the idea that freedom might mean detachment from the very systems that built us.
Mark Cuban
Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
A short, no-nonsense book that tells you to stop overthinking and start building. It respects people who get things done. It questions every sacred rule of entrepreneurship, growth-at-all-costs to endless meetings and argues for clarity over complexity.
Richard Branson
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy is one of those rare books that makes you rethink the idea of justice itself. Stevenson writes about real people caught in an unfair system and somehow leaves you more hopeful than angry. Branson has called it transformative, and it’s easy to see why.
Ray Dalio
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
A mythologist’s exploration of the journeys that define us. Campbell’s idea of the “hero’s journey” runs through every story we tell, from religion to business to politics. It suggests that progress, in any form, is just transformation repeated.
Larry Page
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
Feynman’s stories wander from safecracking at Los Alamos to playing the bongos in Brazil, all with the same sense of childlike wonder. Feynman’s memoir moves with the energy of someone who never learned to be bored. The book feels less like a memoir and more like an open invitation to curiosity.
Sergey Brin
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Stephenson wrote Snow Crash at a time when the idea of living inside a screen still sounded absurd. The book builds a world where code replaces language and corporations run entire nations. It moves fast, full of ideas that feel half-crazy until they start coming true.
