Warren Buffett has spent over six decades building one of the greatest investment records in history. Much of that edge traces back not to Wall Street secrets but to books.
A small collection of titles, all published more than 50 years ago, has shaped his thinking from his earliest partnership days to his leadership of Berkshire Hathaway. These are the ten books Buffett has recommended and returned to again and again.
1. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham published this book in 1949, and a teenage Warren Buffett picked it up shortly after. He has called it the best book about investing ever written, crediting it with laying the foundation for everything he has built since.
The book’s chapters on market fluctuations and the concept of a margin of safety became the bedrock of Buffett’s entire investment approach. He has recommended it in every decade of his career and considers it essential reading for any serious investor.
2. Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd
Published in 1934, this is the text Buffett studied under Graham at Columbia University. He specifically points to the 1940 second edition as the version that shaped his early thinking about evaluating a business on its underlying numbers.
Buffett has described it as a road map for investing that he has followed for more than 60 years. For anyone who wants to understand the quantitative roots of value investing, this is the place to start.
3. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Adam Smith published this landmark work in 1776, and Buffett owns a first edition of Adam Smith’s other major work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). He frequently cites Smith’s concept of the invisible hand and the division of labor as foundational ideas for understanding how economies function over time.
Buffett considers it one of the few books that genuinely explain how the world works. For an investor trying to understand the long arc of capitalism, Smith’s insights remain as relevant today as they were in the 18th century.
4. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher
Philip Fisher published this in 1958, and it shifted the way Buffett thought about investing. Buffett has said he is “85% Graham and 15% Fisher,” a ratio that points to how deeply this book influenced his thinking about qualitative factors alongside raw numbers.
Fisher introduced Buffett to what he called the scuttlebutt method, the practice of researching a company by speaking with its customers, competitors, and suppliers. That approach to understanding a business from the outside in became a permanent part of Buffett’s process.
5. Business Adventures by John Brooks
John Brooks published this collection of business narratives in 1969. In 1991, when Bill Gates asked Buffett for his favorite business book, Buffett sent Gates his own personal copy, a gesture that speaks to how highly he regards it.
It remains Buffett’s top recommendation for understanding how business actually works in practice. Brooks wrote about real companies facing real crises, and the human behavior he documented has not changed in the decades since publication.
6. Where Are the Customers’ Yachts? by Fred Schwed
Fred Schwed published this sharp critique of Wall Street in 1940. Buffett has called it “the funniest book ever written about investing” and has been citing its observations about the financial industry since the 1960s.
The book’s central question, whether Wall Street genuinely serves its clients or primarily serves itself, is one every investor should sit with. Schwed’s wit and honesty cut through the surface in a way that few financial writers have managed before or since.
7. Essays in Persuasion by John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes published this collection in 1931, and Buffett has credited it with sharpening his thinking about markets and economic behavior. He has pointed to Keynes’s observations on investor psychology as genuinely useful for anyone managing money.
Keynes was not just an economist, but also a practicing investor, and his writings reflect that firsthand experience. Buffett has noted that reading Keynes makes you smarter about securities, a recommendation he has returned to across many decades.
8. The Money Game by Adam Smith (George Goodman)
George Goodman, writing under the pen name Adam Smith, published this in 1968. Buffett recommended it in his 1968 partnership letter, describing Goodman as having a unique ability to see through the surface of market behavior.
The book is a vivid portrait of the psychology driving the 1960s bull market. It captures how emotion and narrative shape investor decisions, a theme that has lost none of its relevance over the past half-century.
9. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie published this in 1936, and it has stayed with Buffett longer than almost any other book on this list. Rather than displaying his college diploma on his office wall, Buffett keeps his Dale Carnegie certificate for public speaking there, a detail he has shared publicly on multiple occasions.
He has credited this book for developing his skills in public speaking and management over more than 50 years. The ability to communicate clearly and earn the trust of others, Buffett has suggested, multiplies the value of every other skill a person develops.
10. The Theory of Investment Value by John Burr Williams
John Burr Williams published this in 1938, and it gave Buffett a rigorous framework for understanding what a business is actually worth. Williams was among the first to define intrinsic value using discounted cash flows, and Buffett has recommended the book consistently since his early partnership days.
Understanding how to estimate a business’s value in present terms is central to everything Buffett does. This book provides the theoretical foundation that supports his entire valuation process, making it indispensable for any serious student of investing.
Conclusion
These ten books represent more than a reading list. They form the intellectual architecture behind one of the most successful investment careers in history.
Each title addresses something Buffett identified as essential: the psychology of markets, the mechanics of valuation, the behavior of businesses, and the character of the people running them. The fact that all ten were published more than 50 years ago and still hold up reflects something Buffett has always believed about investing.
The core truths about markets and human nature do not change. The principles in these pages have been tested across bull markets and crashes, periods of inflation and deflation, and decades of technological change. Buffett’s continued recommendation of these books is itself an endorsement that no modern bestseller can match.
Starting with any one of them puts you on the same path Buffett walked at the beginning of his career. The knowledge he gained from these pages is still available to anyone willing to read them.