Warren Buffett has spent decades building one of the greatest investment track records in history, and he has consistently credited books as one of his most important tools. Across shareholder letters, interviews, and annual Berkshire Hathaway Q&A sessions, certain titles have surfaced again and again.
These are not casual suggestions. They are books that shaped how Buffett thinks about money, business, and life. Here are 20 he has recommended repeatedly.
1. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
Buffett discovered this book as a teenager and has never stopped pointing people toward it. He has called it “by far the best book on investing ever written”.
Graham’s principles of value investing and margin of safety form the foundation of everything Buffett has done as an investor. He has recommended it in virtually every decade of his career.
2. Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd
The deeper academic companion to The Intelligent Investor, this text taught Buffett to analyze businesses and balance sheets with genuine rigor. He studied directly under Graham at Columbia University.
Buffett has cited this book repeatedly as the technical foundation for his disciplined, precise evaluation of a company’s intrinsic value.
3. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher
Buffett has described himself as “85% Graham and 15% Fisher”, and this book explains Fisher’s half of that equation.
Fisher’s focus on management quality, competitive moats, and long-term thinking pushed Buffett beyond pure number-crunching into understanding what truly makes a great business.
4. Business Adventures by John Brooks
When Bill Gates asked Buffett to name his favorite business book, Buffett mailed him his personal copy of this 1969 collection of New Yorker essays. Buffett has called it “the best business book I’ve ever read”.
Its case studies of corporate failures and human misjudgment remain strikingly relevant decades after they were first published.
5. Poor Charlie’s Almanack edited by Peter Kaufman
Buffett has consistently directed people to his partner Charlie Munger’s collected speeches and wisdom. This book captures Munger’s multidisciplinary approach to decision-making and investing.
Buffett has said no person has influenced his thinking more than Munger over their long decades of partnership at Berkshire.
6. Where Are the Customers’ Yachts? by Fred Schwed Jr.
Written in 1940, Buffett has recommended this sharp satirical look at Wall Street culture over the years and across many different interview settings.
Its central observation, that financial intermediaries routinely profit at the client’s expense, is one Buffett has cited as a truth that never goes out of date.
7. The Outsiders by William Thorndike
Buffett praised this book in his 2012 annual shareholder letter, calling it “an outstanding book about CEOs who excelled at capital allocation”.
The eight executives profiled built exceptional long-term value by ignoring Wall Street noise and focusing on rational capital deployment, a philosophy that mirrors Berkshire’s own culture.
8. Tap Dancing to Work by Carol Loomis
Fortune editor Carol Loomis compiled decades of articles covering Buffett’s career and thinking into this book. Buffett wrote the foreword and has recommended it as an accurate chronicle of his evolving philosophy.
Loomis also edited his annual letters for many years, thereby giving her perspective on his thinking a unique vantage point.
9. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Buffett took Carnegie’s public speaking course as a young man and has credited it with genuinely transforming his confidence and communication ability. He still displays his Carnegie course certificate in his Omaha office.
He has recommended both the course and this book as tools whose value compounds across a lifetime in ways most people underestimate.
10. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Buffett has returned to Franklin repeatedly over the course of decades of conversations and interviews. Franklin’s discipline, frugality, and lifelong commitment to self-improvement resonated with Buffett from an early age.
He cites Franklin as one of the most instructive historical figures for anyone serious about building wealth and character over a long life.
11. Essays of Warren Buffett by Lawrence Cunningham
Cunningham organized Buffett’s shareholder letters by subject into a coherent, readable book. Buffett endorsed the project and has recommended it as an accessible entry point into his investment thinking.
He has noted that his letters are designed to be read as a body of work, and Cunningham’s structure makes that easier for new readers to absorb.
12. The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith
Buffett has recommended this history of the 1929 collapse as essential reading for understanding how speculative manias develop, peak, and unwind. Its lessons about crowd psychology and market euphoria are ones he has returned to repeatedly.
The book’s account of overconfidence and borrowed money fueling disaster directly informed his warnings during later periods of market excess.
13. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle
Buffett has praised Bogle as one of the most important figures in the history of American finance and has recommended this book as the clearest case for low-cost index investing ever written.
He has argued that Bogle’s approach would far better serve most individual investors than paying for active management that rarely justifies its cost.
14. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Buffett has recommended Cialdini’s examination of the psychological triggers that drive human decisions as essential reading for investors and business leaders alike.
Understanding how persuasion, social proof, and scarcity work helps an investor recognize when they are reacting to emotion rather than evidence, a distinction Buffett considers central to rational decision-making.
15. Dream Big by Cristiane Correa
This biography of Brazilian investor Jorge Paulo Lemann and the 3G Capital model drew Buffett’s attention and praise. He has spoken about the book’s portrait of building world-class businesses through relentless focus on talent and operational discipline.
Those values closely align with his long-held approach to evaluating management and business culture in the companies Berkshire owns.
16. The Clash of the Cultures by John Bogle
Buffett has expressed deep respect for Bogle’s broader critique of short-term speculation replacing long-term investment culture in American finance. This book advances that argument with clarity and force.
Buffett’s own philosophy of patient, long-term ownership reflects the values Bogle spent his career and writing defending, making this a natural extension of the investment worldview Buffett has championed for decades.
Extra Bonus Read:
Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders
“If you want to understand Berkshire, the best place to start is with the letters.” – Warren Buffett.
Not a book, but the source from which many books have been written: Buffett has consistently pointed investors toward his own annual letters, available free on Berkshire’s website, calling them a complete education in value investing and business thinking.
Reading them from the earliest years forward reveals how his thinking developed and deepened across more than five decades of writing to shareholders.
Conclusion
The books on this list share a common thread. They reward patient reading and reveal truths that hold across decades and market cycles. Buffett’s habit of returning to the same titles year after year reflects his belief that sound thinking does not expire.
Building a reading discipline grounded in these works won’t guarantee the results Buffett has achieved, but it will develop the kind of mind that gives a serious investor a genuine and lasting edge.