Book recommendations by billionaires
It seems everywhere we turn these days, we’re hearing from billionaires. Whether they’re sounding off on the latest social movements, opining on government policy, or headlining a SuperBowl halftime show, the 0.01% are seemingly inescapable. But what we want to know is, what are the books billionaires read?
Recommended by Rihanna
The musician-turned-Fenty fashion/beauty mogul hasn’t had anything to say publicly about her reading life since becoming a parent and billionaire, but she once named Dave Pelzer’s memoir A Child Called It as a book she found it “emotional” and “hard to believe it was a true story.”
Recommended by Elon Musk
When Elon Musk tweeted about Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies in 2014, the CEO of Tesla believed the electric car company was just 5 years away from fully autonomous driving. That goal may still be way out on the horizon of Tesla’s current roadmap, but Musk’s warning-that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes”-still rings true today as AI gains new capabilities seemingly by the day.
Musk also says Daniel Suarez’ sci-fi thriller , about a detective trying to prevent Armageddon at the hands of an AI run amok, is “a great read.”
Recommended by Warren Buffett
The “oracle of Omaha” is known for his down-to-earth approach to investing and trying to bring his own fortune back down to earth-by giving it all away and advocating for higher taxes on the wealthy. Buffett has said on numerous occasions that Benjamin Graham’s classic The Intelligent Investor was a big influence on him, and that buying it is among the best investments he ever made.
Recommended by Jeff Bezos
When Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tweeted about the author’s best-known book, The Remains of the Day, “Long my favorite novel. Teaches pain of regret so well you will think you lived it.”
Recommended by Jack Ma
The founder of the online mega-mall Alibaba doesn’t speak a great deal about books, but Ma has said that the name of the company that made him his fortune was inspired by The Thousand and One Nights as popularized by Sir Richard Burton’s translation-particularly this story in which a young woodcutter uses his wits to seize an opportunity and change is life forever.
Recommended by Bill Gates
The Microsoft-founder & CEO-turned philanthropist is known for releasing a list of his favourite books at the end of every year, but in 2022 he changed it up and published a list of his all-time favourite books including The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey.
Says Gates of the book: “He gives excellent advice about how to move on constructively from mistakes, which I’ve tried to follow both on and off the court over the years.”
Recommended by Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey might be the billionaire who’s most open about her reading tastes, having run Oprah’s Book Club for over 20 years-starting just before she crossed the $1B line. The book that convinced Oprah that the world needed her reading recos and kicked off the eponymous book club was Jacqueline Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean.
Originally published at https://www.kobo.com on February 15, 2023.
