Ray Dalio

Decision rules from building Bridgewater: radical truth and radical transparency.

Free PDF at economicprinciples.org; first issued as A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises.

An illustrated, shortened version of the book Principles.

A template for how big debt crises unfold, with detailed case studies.

Hedge funds from Alfred Winslow Jones in 1949 through Soros, Robertson and beyond.

An investigation of Bridgewater that contradicts the firm's public image.

How people champion new ideas, and how leaders can encourage originality.

How the unconscious mind shapes perception, judgement and dealings with others.

Michael Lewis's account of the Kahneman-Tversky collaboration works as intellectual biography and as a second path through the research for readers who find academic writing slow. The friendship and its eventual fracture clarifies how two very different minds produced work that neither could have done alone.

Kahneman's synthesis of behavioral economics is the cognitive science underpinning every negotiation tactic. Anchoring, loss aversion, framing effects, and the planning fallacy — understanding why these biases operate, not just that they exist, makes you harder to exploit and more honest about your own irrationality.

Genes as a river of digital information; a short Dawkins primer

Diamond's central question — why did some civilizations come to dominate others over 10,000 years? — is precisely the kind of question that requires long-term thinking to even ask. The answer, rooted in geography and biology rather than culture or intelligence, is a model for how to reason about slow causes and fast effects.

How shared fictions such as money, nations and gods let humans cooperate at scale.

Recurring patterns drawn from world history: biology, morals, religion, economics.

Military spending measured against the economy that has to carry it.

Franklin's life as printer, scientist, diplomat and founder.

The Fed chair's memoir of his career at Treasury and the Fed, and beating inflation.

Dell's founder on the buyout, the Icahn fight and VMware

Steve Jobs's life and Apple's products, from forty interviews with him and many more.

A history of the modern state: how political order develops and how it decays.

Kegan and Lahey argue that most organizations are 'second nature' — places where people spend enormous energy managing impressions and hiding weaknesses. Deliberately Developmental Organizations build learning into daily work. A challenging read that sits at the furthest edge of what most organizations are ready for.

Decision rules from building Bridgewater: radical truth and radical transparency.

How the division of labour and free markets make a nation rich.

Nations prosper under inclusive institutions and stagnate under extractive ones.

Free PDF at economicprinciples.org; first issued as A Template for Understanding Big Debt Crises.

The few investors who saw subprime mortgage bonds would fail, and bet against them.

How a hedge fund's bond bets on borrowed money lost $4.6 billion in four months.

A contemporary's account of the long war between Athens and Sparta.

A narrative history of how the Roman Empire declined and fell.

Einstein's life and science, from the Bern patent office to relativity.

A brain scientist watches her own mind shut down during a massive stroke.

The one pattern of the hero's journey that runs through myths across cultures.

After the Cold War, conflict will follow cultural and religious fault lines.

Competing regional ideas of legitimate order and the balance of power.

Interviews with 50 investors, from Dalio to Bogle, turned into money advice.

The habit loop of cue, routine and reward, and how to change a habit by its routine.

Shackleton's men survive after the ice crushes their ship Endurance in Antarctica.