What book legitimately changed your life?

Compiling Patrick OShaughnessy's tweet replies

I’m trying to be helpful by finding and listing the best books to build a big, worldwide perspective and providing links to them. 

Recommendations are from Patrick OShaughnessy's tweet: What book legitimately changed your life?

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Categories

Classic Literature & Fiction

• 1984 by George Orwell

• Animal Farm by George Orwell

• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

• A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle

• Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

• Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

• Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

• Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

• Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era by Eiji Yoshikawa

• Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton

• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

• The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• The Second Coming by Walker Percy

• The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Biographies and Autobiographies

• Am I being too subtle by Sam Zell

• Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

• Bo Knows Bo by Bo Jackson

• Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

• Fearless by Eric Blehm

• From Third World to First: The Singapore Story – 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew

• If This Is a Man and The Truce by Primo Levi

• Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

• Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard

• Life Lived Wild by Rick Ridgeway

• Made in America by Sam Walton

• Miracle In The Andes by Nando Parrado

• Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived by Laurence Shames

• No One Here Gets Out Alive by Danny Sugerman

• Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger

• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer

• The Choice by Edith Eger

• The Fish That Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen

• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

• The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Shroeder

• Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger

• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

• When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man by Jerry Weintraub

Investing, Markets, Economics

• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip A. Fisher

• Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• One Up On Wall Street by Peter Lynch

• Strategy Is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company's Future by Robert Burgelman

• Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner

• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

• The Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier

• Warren Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Science, Tech, and History

• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

• Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

• The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

Self-Improvement / Philosophy / Psychology

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Deep Work by Cal Newport

• Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

• Getting More: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life by Stuart Diamond

• Growing Back to the Land by Adrienne Dueringer

• Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard

• How to Fail by Scott Adams

• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

• How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

• Leadership and Self-Deception by Arbinger Institute

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

• Mastery by Robert Greene

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• Men Are From Mars, Women are From Venus by John Gray

• Mindset by Carol Dweck

• Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within by David Goggins

• Non-Violent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg

• On the Genealogy of Morality by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

• Reality transurfing. Steps I-V by Vadim Zeland

• Status Anxiety by Alain De Botton

• Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin

• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

• The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker

• The Good Life by Peter Gomes

• The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor

• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt

• The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey

• The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist

• The Zen Path Through Depression by Philip Martin

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig

Religion and Spirituality

• A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer Paperback by John Piper

• Atmamun: The path to achieving the bliss of the Himalayan Swamis. And the freedom of a living God. by Kapil Gupta MD

• Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament¹

• Grist For the Mill by Ram Dass

• Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

• The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

• The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Misc

• How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler

• Learning for Analysts and Future Portfolio Managers with Alix Pasquet III [Video]

• Megathreats: Ten Threats to Our Future and How to Survive Them by Nouriel Roubini

• Moneyball by Michael Lewis

• Running and Being by George Sheehan

• Steve Job’s Stanford speech [Video]

• The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist

• The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

• The Road to Self-Renewal by John Gardner

• The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander

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Disclaimer: I’ve used Amazon Affiliate Links. Feel free to help out by using them, much appreciated! 

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You can find previous posts here. I also interview legends at Compounding Curiosity, lurk on Twitter @scarrottkalani, and have a Discord server for everything Allocators Asia (I’d love for you to join our cool little community we got going).

Want to get in contact? Leave anonymous feedback, comment on Substack, or send a letter via carrier pigeon and trust that fate will deliver it.

1. Worthwhile context from

Base Hit Investing

: "is a great book that’s full of wisdom & perspective on attitude, behavior, fulfillment, regret minimization and it even touches on business & investing. Don’t need to be a Christian to get value from it. Can be read in an hour. Provokes thinking"