Biography and Memoir
The life of a particular person, told by a biographer or by the subject, in any field. Read for the shape of a career or a character rather than for a discipline.
999 books
Books 999
Giorgio Vasari · 1550 · Vasari's lives; the origin of artistic reputation and its market
Benjamin Franklin · 1791 · Franklin's self-improvement system; the origin of thrift and deferred reward
David Ogilvy · 1963 · How an agency is actually built and paid.
Robert A. Caro · 1974 · Robert Moses and the politics of who gets to build and toll public assets.
Akio Morita, Edwin M. Reingold, Mitsuko Shimomura · 1986 · Insider memoir by Sony's co-founder; a landmark of business writing.
T1 Liar's Poker
Michael Lewis · 1989 · Salomon Brothers mortgage desk, from the inside
Jack D. Schwager · 1989 · Interviews that introduced the trend followers to a general audience.
Sam Walton, John Huey · 1992 · Insider account: the founder's memoir, dictated as he was dying.
T1 Skunk Works
Ben R. Rich, Leo Janos · 1994 · Insider account of Lockheed's advanced projects unit.
Roger Lowenstein · 1995 · The pre-Snowball standard; OL record is the 2008 reissue.
T1 Rogue Trader
Nick Leeson, Edward Whitley · 1996 · Insider: the trader's own account, written from prison.
Katharine Graham · 1997 · Washington Post publisher's Pulitzer-winning memoir of running a company
Ron Chernow · 1998 · The definitive Rockefeller biography and Standard Oil narrative.
Jean Strouse · 1999 · The definitive Pierpont Morgan biography, complementing Chernow's house history.
Lee Kuan Yew · 2000 · The founder's own account of how the development strategy was chosen.
Andrew S. Grove · 2001 · Insider: Grove's memoir of Hungary and escape, ending before Intel.
Robert A. Caro · 2002 · Caro on Johnson's mastery of an institution's levers and incentives
Louis V. Gerstner · 2002 · Insider account by the CEO who ran IBM's 1990s turnaround.
Ron Chernow · 2004 · Chernow on the man who built American public credit and its bank
Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele · 2004 · Reissue of Empire (1979); the definitive investigative biography.
David Nasaw · 2006 · The standard modern life, built on newly opened papers.
T. J. Stiles · 2009 · Pulitzer and National Book Award winner; the definitive life.
Lisa Chaney · 2011 · The best-documented modern biography.
Diana B. Henriques · 2011 · The standard account; the author interviewed Madoff in prison.
T1 Shoe Dog
Phil Knight · 2016 · Insider account: Knight's founder memoir, the best-known Nike book.
Andrew WilkinsonBill GatesMohnish PabraiWarren BuffettAlexis OhanianAlfred LinAnthony PomplianoAusten AllredBill GurleyBrad FeldBrian ArmstrongDavid CancelEric JorgensonJason CalacanisJeff BezosMichael BatkoMorgan HouselNick HuberNick MolnarPatrick O'ShaughnessyRan SegallReed HastingsSamantha WongSatya NadellaSteph SmithTerrance McArthurTrevor NcubeVlad Tenev
Edward O. Thorp · 2017 · Thorp applied Kelly to blackjack, then to convertible arbitrage.
Gregory Zuckerman · 2019 · The only substantial book on the firm.
Robert Iger · 2019 · Insider account: Iger on the Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm deals.
Henry Ford, Samuel Crowther · 1922 · Insider account: Henry Ford's own manifesto on mass production.
T2 God's Gold
John T. Flynn · 1932 · The hostile Depression-era life that Nevins was commissioned to answer.
Matthew Josephson · 1934 · The framing of Rockefeller's generation that shaped US policy.
Carl Van Doren · 1938 · The standard mid-century Franklin biography; Munger's model of a working life
Frederick Lewis Allen · 1949 · The short classic account, written while the memory was still live.
T2 Duveen
S. N. Behrman · 1952 · The dealer who moved Old Masters to American money; still the model.
Joseph Frazier Wall · 1970 · The scholarly biography Nasaw's book displaced but did not erase.
Robert Hessen · 1975 · The operator Carnegie promoted; the best view of how the mills ran.
Bob Thomas · 1976 · Authorised by the family; affectionate and incomplete.
Nicholas Fraser, Philip Jacobson, Mark Ottaway, Lewis Chester · 1977 · Sunday Times Insight team; the most rigorously reported of the lives.
Ray Kroc, Robert Anderson · 1977 · Insider account: Kroc's own telling of the takeover and expansion.
J. Patrick Wright, John Z. DeLorean · 1979 · Insider account: DeLorean's dissent, ghostwritten by Wright.
Edmund Morris · 1979 · Roosevelt before the presidency; the central figure of trust-busting
John Train · 1980 · Profiles of nine investors including Graham, Buffett and Fisher
Lee Iacocca, William Novak · 1984 · Insider memoir of the Ford firing and the Chrysler bailout.
Michael Drosnin · 1985 · Built on thousands of Hughes's own stolen memos.
Peter Evans · 1986 · The standard biography; Evans interviewed Onassis directly.
Robert Lacey · 1986 · Full-dress dynastic history from Henry I through Henry II.
Peter Collier, David Horowitz · 1987 · Four generations of the family and the succession that nearly sank the company.
Richard P. Feynman · 1988 · Feynman on the Challenger inquiry and thinking from the evidence
Axel Madsen · 1990 · The standard biography before Chaney and Vaughan.
Thomas J. Watson Jr., Peter Petre · 1990 · Insider memoir by the CEO who bet IBM on the System/360.
Herbert A. Simon · 1991 · Memoir by the Nobel laureate who founded bounded rationality
R. M. Lala · 1992 · Authorized biography of the chairman who ran Tata for fifty years.
T2 Hard Drive
James Wallace, Jim Erickson · 1992 · Subtitled Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire.
T2 Truman
David McCullough · 1992 · Pulitzer-winning presidential biography; the postwar American decisions
T2 Game Over
David Sheff · 1993 · Nintendo's licensing regime and its control of the cartridge supply.
Stephen Manes, Paul Andrews · 1993 · The more thorough of the two 1990s biographies.
Philip L. Carret, Philip Carret · 1995 · Reflections from a fund manager with a fifty-five-year record
T2 Being Direct
Lester Wunderman · 1996 · The man who named direct marketing on how its economics actually work.
Elizabeth Brayer · 1996 · The definitive life of the founder and the company he built.
Steven Watts · 1997 · Academic cultural history; Disney as the century's most effective ideologist.
Lee Kuan Yew · 1998 · The first volume of the memoirs, covering independence and the early state.
Michael Lewis · 1999 · OL lists title as 'New New Thing, The'
John Train · 2000 · Profiles of the great money managers and their differing methods.
Jack Welch, John A. Byrne · 2001 · Insider account: Welch's own version of the GE method.
T2 Just for Fun
Linus Torvalds, David Diamond · 2001 · Torvalds on why he gave the kernel away, and what that created.
T2 Memoirs
David Rockefeller · 2002 · Insider account of Chase Manhattan, the other half of the merged bank.
Michael T. Kaufman · 2002 · Written with Soros's cooperation; strongest on Hungary and philanthropy.
David E. Hoffman · 2002 · Six men and the mechanics of how post-Soviet wealth was assembled.
Walter Isaacson · 2003 · Isaacson's Franklin: printer, investor and builder of durable institutions
Doris Kearns Goodwin · 2003 · Lincoln's cabinet of opponents; a study in managing rivals
Perry Mehrling · 2005 · The option-pricing theory the fund's Nobel laureates were trading on.
Yvon Chouinard · 2005 · Patagonia's founder on running a business against conventional growth logic
Leslie Berlin · 2005 · Robert Noyce, Fairchild and the founding of Intel.
Steven Watts · 2005 · Scholarly biography placing Ford in American cultural history.
János Kornai · 2006 · Memoir by the economist who advised the reforms from inside the system.
Dan Reingold, Jennifer Reingold · 2006 · Insider account of the analyst-banking nexus that financed Ebbers's roll-up.
Paul M. Handley · 2006 · The monarchy and the Crown Property Bureau as an economic institution.
Alexander Stille · 2006 · Berlusconi, media ownership and the capture of regulation.
Neal Gabler · 2006 · Authorized-access biography of the founder and the studio.
Walter Isaacson · 2007 · Isaacson on Einstein's thought experiments and reasoning from principles
Cynthia Cooper · 2007 · Insider: the internal auditor who uncovered the fraud.
Michael Barrier · 2007 · Animation historian's corrective, strongest on the studio craft.
Spencer E. Ante · 2008 · Georges Doriot and the invention of the modern VC firm.
Martin Meredith · 2008 · The political mechanics of expropriation and monetary financing, told straight.
Lawrence G. McDonald, Patrick Robinson · 2009 · Insider account by a former Lehman convertible bond trader.
Niall Ferguson · 2010
David Carey, John E. Morris · 2010 · The standard firm history.
Harry Markopolos · 2010 · Memoir by the analyst who warned the SEC for nine years.
Harry Markopolos · 2010 · Insider-adjacent: the analyst who warned the SEC for nine years.
T2 Idea Man
Paul Allen · 2011 · Insider memoir by the co-founder, including his break with Gates.
T2 Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson · 2011 · Authorised biography; the default account of Jobs and Apple.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala · 2012 · Insider account by the finance minister who ran the debt deal and reforms.
Carol J. Loomis · 2012 · Fortune coverage by Buffett's longtime editor and friend.
Rich Cohen · 2012 · Samuel Zemurray and United Fruit; the banana trade as empire
David Nasaw · 2012 · Joseph Kennedy: film, liquor, market operations and the first SEC chairmanship
Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, Ali Wyne · 2013 · Lee's own strategic judgements, edited into a short reference.
Timothy F. Geithner · 2014 · Insider account by the New York Fed president who ran the $182bn rescue.
Walter Isaacson · 2014 · Collaboration, not lone genius, as the engine of the digital era.
Brent Schlender, Rick Tetzeli · 2015 · Revisionist counterweight to Isaacson, built on decades of Schlender's interviews.
T2 Elon Musk
Ashlee Vance · 2015 · Contains the fullest early narrative of SpaceX's founding.
Nicholas Carlson · 2015 · The last turnaround attempt, with a long history of the decline.
T2 Red Notice
Bill Browder · 2015 · Insider account by the largest foreign portfolio investor of the era, and its end.
David McCullough · 2015 · Two bicycle makers solving flight through iteration and self-funding
Duncan Clark · 2016 · The standard history, by an adviser present from the early days.
David Coltart · 2016 · Insider account by a cabinet minister through dollarisation and the unity government.
Yanis Varoufakis · 2017 · Insider account of the 2015 Eurogroup negotiation by the finance minister; partisan but primary.
Sam Zell · 2017 · Subtitled Straight Talk From a Business Rebel.
Neil Monnery · 2017 · Cowperthwaite and the fiscal rules that produced the low-tax model.
T2 Hit Refresh
Satya Nadella · 2017 · Insider account by the CEO who repositioned Microsoft on cloud and AI.
T2 Small Fry
Lisa Brennan-Jobs · 2018 · Memoir by his daughter; the closest thing to a private record.
Michael Ovitz · 2018 · CAA's founder on building the agency that repriced Hollywood talent
T2 Edison
Edmund Morris · 2019 · Told in reverse chronological order; divisive but widely read.
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle · 2019 · Insider account of Bill Campbell's coaching of Google's leadership.
Bradley Hope, Justin Scheck · 2020 · MBS, the Ritz-Carlton detentions and the PIF's spending spree.
Jeff Bezos, Walter Isaacson · 2020 · Insider: Bezos's collected shareholder letters and speeches.
T2 MBS
Ben Hubbard · 2020 · The consolidation of power that now determines Saudi capital allocation.
T2 Red Roulette
Desmond Shum · 2021 · Insider account of doing deals through Party patronage, and losing everything.
William Green · 2021 · Contains the best published account of Nick Sleep's Costco thesis.
Mary Childs · 2022 · Bill Gross and PIMCO; no Open Library work record found for this title.
T2 Elon Musk
Walter Isaacson · 2023 · Authorised biography with substantial Starship and Starlink material.
Michael Lewis · 2023 · Written with unusual access, and controversial for it.
Rob Copeland · 2023 · Adversarial reporting on the culture and the returns.
Andre de Ruyter · 2023 · Insider: the Eskom CEO on why the power supply cannot be fixed.
Anupreeta Das · 2024 · First full modern biography, covering the post-Microsoft reinvention.
Lionel Barber · 2024 · The SoftBank side of the WeWork bet, from Son's biographer.
Stephen Witt · 2024 · Nvidia's bet on GPUs as the substrate of deep learning.
Sarah Wynn-Williams · 2025 · Insider memoir by a former director of global public policy.
T2 Optimist
Keach Hagey · 2025 · Sam Altman biography covering the November 2023 firing and return.
Michael Steinberger · 2025 · Alex Karp and Palantir's path from CIA money to the surveillance state.
Evan Thomas, Walter Isaacson
unverified
Allan Nevins · 1940 · The major revisionist defence written against Tarbell.
Wheaton J. Lane · 1942 · The standard mid-century life, still useful on the steamboat years.
T3 Insull
Forrest McDonald · 1962 · The man who invented the regulated-return utility bargain, and the holding company that killed him.
Paul Sarnoff · 1967 · The first outside biography; thin, but the earliest attempt at the facts.
T3 Hoax
Stephen Fay, Lewis Chester, Magnus Linklater · 1972 · The Clifford Irving forged autobiography, reported as it happened.
Edmonde Charles-Roux · 1975 · The foundational biography; every later book argues with it.
Peter Collier, David Horowitz · 1976 · The family and trusts that outlived the operating company.
Frank Brady · 1977 · Contemporary biography written the year after his death.
Russell B. Adams · 1978 · The founder, and the disputed origin of the give-away-the-handle story.
William Proctor · 1983 · Templeton's method: buying at the point of maximum pessimism worldwide
Lee Israel · 1985 · Unauthorised; Lauder rushed out her own memoir to pre-empt it.
Donald Trump, Tony Schwartz · 1987 · Insider account of a New York developer's own deals.
Sterling Seagrave · 1988 · Journalistic account of how the crony monopolies and offshore holdings were built.
John Ensor Harr, Peter J. Johnson · 1988 · Family-archive history of the fortune across three generations.
Arthur T. Vanderbilt II · 1989 · How the heirs dispersed the fortune; written by a descendant.
Patrick Reynolds, Tom Shachtman · 1989 · Family insider account of the Reynolds fortune and the company it built.
Vance H. Trimble · 1990 · Unauthorised, published two years before Walton's own book.
Benjamin Stein · 1992 · Prosecution-side polemic; the angriest book on the shelf.
Jesse Kornbluth · 1992 · Sympathetic; written with access to Milken's circle.
Robert Maheu, Richard Hack · 1992 · Insider memoir by the man who ran the Hughes empire day to day.
Nadège Forestier, Nazanine Ravaï · 1992 · The takeover battles that assembled the group under Arnault.
Charles Higham · 1993 · Sensational and disputed on sourcing, but widely read and still cited.
T3 King Icahn
Mark Stevens · 1993 · The only full biography; Icahn cooperated then repudiated it.
T3 Murdoch
William Shawcross · 1993 · The standard biography of the first four decades.
Randall E. Stross · 1993 · Contemporaneous account of the NeXT failure.
Roger Douglas · 1993 · Insider case for the reforms by the finance minister who forced them through.
Marc Eliot · 1993 · The FBI-informant thesis; contested on sourcing but the case for the prosecution.
Janet Lowe · 1994 · Part life, part method; based on interviews with his circle.
Andrew Kilpatrick · 1994 · Sprawling, repeatedly expanded compendium of Buffett material.
Anthony B. Chan · 1995 · The only dedicated English biography; stops before the handover.
Daniel R. Fischel · 1995 · The revisionist defense case.
George Soros · 1995 · Open Library lists the short title "Soros on Soros".
Gita Piramal · 1996 · Profiles of the family houses that still dominate the index.
Peter Harry Brown, Pat H. Broeske · 1996 · Archive-based life; the standard popular biography after Barlett and Steele.
Robert Slater · 1996 · The only biography; stops two decades before indexing won.
Robert Slater · 1996 · Journalistic and secondary; Soros declined to participate.
T3 John Law
Antoin E. Murphy · 1997 · The scholarly treatment of Law as economic theorist and policymaker.
T3 Overdrive
James Wallace · 1997 · Sequel to Hard Drive, on the browser wars and the road to antitrust.
Howard Schultz, Dori Jones Yang · 1997 · Insider account: Schultz on building the company to 1997.
Roy R. Neuberger · 1997 · Memoir of a hedged-equity pioneer's seven decades on Wall Street
Mike Wilson · 1997 · Unauthorised; Ellison tried to block it.
Jay Van Andel · 1998 · Amway's co-founder's own account; read alongside the criticism.
Thomas F. O'Boyle · 1998 · The contemporaneous dissent, twenty years ahead of the consensus.
David Greising · 1998 · Biography of Roberto Goizueta and the 1980s-90s value creation.
Bob Ortega · 1998 · First major critical history by a WSJ Walmart reporter.
Jacquie McNish · 1998 · Robert Friedland and the Voisey's Bay nickel discovery.
T3 Titans
Peter C. Newman · 1998 · The next generation of Canadian owners after the Establishment volumes.
Michael D. Eisner, Tony Schwartz · 1998 · Insider account: Eisner's own memoir of the turnaround years.
Michael Dell, Catherine Fredman · 1999 · Insider account of build-to-order, negative working capital and cutting the channel.
Lawrence G. Foster · 1999 · Authorized biography by the company's PR chief; origin of the Credo.
Janet Lowe · 2000 · The only full biography; written with Munger's cooperation.
Paul Klebnikov · 2000 · Berezovsky and the looting of the Yeltsin state; the author was later murdered.
T3 Greek Fire
Nicholas Gage · 2000 · The Callas affair; Gage had the Greek sources nobody else worked.
T3 Millionaire
Janet Gleeson · 2000 · John Law, the Mississippi bubble and the invention of paper money in France.
Kim Masters · 2000 · Eisner, Katzenberg and the collapse of the succession plan.
Alan Deutschman · 2000 · The NeXT and Pixar wilderness years, written before the iPod.
Sumner Redstone, Peter Knobler · 2001 · Owner's memoir; Redstone's own case for buying and then shedding Blockbuster.
Neil Baldwin · 2001 · Open Library merges this record with Albert Lee's 1980 book of the same title.
Richard Hack · 2001 · Document-led; some sourcing has been questioned.
Richard Smitten · 2001 · The fullest straight biography, drawing on family sources.
Neil Chenoweth · 2001 · The financial engineering behind News Corp, traced by a forensic reporter.
T3 Sold Short
Manuel P. Asensio, Jack Barth · 2001 · An activist short seller's account of his campaigns.
R. E. Elson · 2001 · The New Order's patronage economy, on which much of the corporate map rests.
John Rothchild · 2001 · Three generations compounding a fortune through insurance stocks
Brian Cruver · 2002 · Insider: a junior Enron employee's account of the last months.
Ben Mezrich · 2002 · The MIT blackjack team; dramatised and disputed in places.
T3 Cable Cowboy
Mark Robichaux · 2002 · John Malone and TCI; the cable industry Comcast consolidated.
T3 Carnegie
Peter Krass · 2002 · Harsher on the gap between Carnegie's preaching and his practice.
Sam Williams · 2002 · Stallman, the GPL, and the licence that shapes commercial open source.
Lamar Muse · 2002 · Founding CEO's insider account of the airline's first decade.
Florence M. Stone · 2002 · Slight management-lessons treatment; useful only for the Oracle chronology.
Karen Southwick · 2003 · Hostile counterweight to Symonds's authorised Softwar, published the same year.
Richard Bak · 2003 · Father and son; how Ford destroyed his own successor.
Harvey S. Firestone, Samuel Crowther · 2003 · Founder's account of building Firestone; business sense from the tyre trade
Matthew Symonds · 2003 · Authorised; Ellison's rebuttals run in footnotes throughout.
Kevin Maney · 2003 · Thomas Watson Sr. and the building of IBM's sales culture.
Bruce Page · 2003 · Structural argument about how the papers trade coverage for political favour.
R. M. Lala · 2004 · Life of the founder and the origins of the trust structure.
Daniel A. Strachman · 2004 · Tiger Management, the firm that set the long-short template.
Emanuel Derman · 2004 · Physicist to Goldman; the making of the volatility-surface era.
T3 Thaksin
Pasuk Phongpaichit, Chris Baker · 2004 · Telecoms billionaire turned prime minister; the clearest study of business-politics fusion in Thailand.
Gordon S. Wood · 2004 · Franklin's reinvention from imperial gentleman into American businessman
Adam Macqueen · 2004 · Biography of William Lever, who built the brand model; Open Library unreachable.
Richard Lloyd Parry · 2005 · Reporting from the 1997-98 collapse and the fall of Suharto.
Les Standiford · 2005 · Narrative of the Frick partnership and Homestead.
Elin McCoy · 2005 · Robert Parker and how one palate set global wine prices.
T3 The Tycoons
Charles R. Morris · 2005 · Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould and Morgan and the economy they built
Jeffrey S. Young, William L. Simon · 2005 · Unauthorised; Jobs had Apple pull the publisher's books from stores.
T3 Andy Grove
Richard S. Tedlow · 2006 · Full-scale biography by a Harvard business historian.
Kenny Moore · 2006 · Biography of Nike's co-founder and coach, by his athlete.
Ron Shelp, Al Ehrbar · 2006 · Pre-crisis; by a former AIG executive.
Peter M. Ascoli · 2006 · Biography of the merchant who built the mail-order machine; Open Library unreachable.
Craig Murray · 2006 · Insider account by the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan on cotton and coercion.
Masaaki Sato · 2006 · Revisionist Japanese history of Soichiro Honda and his successors.
Edward J. Renehan Jr. · 2007 · Modern rival to Stiles, two years earlier; Open Library unreachable to verify.
Jessica Livingston · 2007
Randall E. Stross · 2007 · Edison as the first manufactured celebrity.
Leander Kahney · 2008 · Management-lessons treatment of Jobs's second tenure.
Steve Weinberg · 2008 · Dual portrait of Tarbell and Rockefeller and their collision.
Paul Morand · 2008 · As-told-to: Morand's record of her 1946 conversations, published posthumously.
Michael Wolff · 2008 · Fifty hours of interviews plus the family; the closest to authorised.
Steve Miller · 2008 · Insider account from a serial restructuring CEO.
Bob Kealing · 2008 · Brownie Wise and the invention of the party-plan distributor network.
Christina Binkley · 2008 · Wynn, Adelson, Kerkorian and the megaresort capex race.
Andrew Kirtzman · 2009 · Fast first draft, published months after the arrest.
Justine Picardie · 2009 · House-access biography; good on the business, softer on the war.
Michela Wrong · 2009 · Whistleblower's account of the Anglo Leasing procurement scandals; essential country risk reading.
Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses · 2009 · The corporatist Estado Novo economy, run by an economics professor.
T3 The Big Rich
Bryan Burrough · 2009 · The Texas fortunes, including the Hunts before and after the silver trade.
Peter G. Peterson · 2009 · Co-founder's memoir; the Lehman years that produced the Blackstone partnership.
Daniel Ammann · 2009 · Marc Rich, the founder of modern commodity trading.
Erin Arvedlund · 2009 · By the reporter who publicly questioned the returns in 2001.
Quentin R. Skrabec · 2010 · The partner who did the things Carnegie preferred not to sign.
Richard Sauer · 2010 · A former SEC lawyer on naked shorting and the fights around it.
Alan C. Greenberg, Mark Singer · 2010 · Memoir by the firm's longtime chairman 'Ace' Greenberg.
Mahathir bin Mohamad · 2011 · Memoir by the architect of the industrial policy and the capital controls.
Alistair Darling · 2011 · Chancellor's memoir covering the guarantee and nationalisation; Open Library unreachable.
Douglas Edwards · 2011 · Insider memoir by Google's first brand manager, employee 59.
Neville Isdell, David Beasley · 2011 · Insider memoir by the CEO who ran the 2004 turnaround.
James L. Witherell · 2011
Howard Schultz, Joanne Gordon · 2011 · Insider account: Schultz's 2008 return and the store closures.
Hal Vaughan · 2011 · Declassified files on her Abwehr connection; contested by the house.
Jared Dillian · 2011 · Insider memoir by a Lehman ETF trader.
Stephanie Madoff Mack · 2011 · Insider memoir by Mark Madoff's widow; the collapse from inside the family.
Tom Lyons, Brian Carey · 2011 · Anglo Irish Bank's chairman in his own words, from recorded interviews.
Chuck Sudetic · 2011 · Authorised account of the Open Society foundations, his second career.
Christopher Risso-Gill · 2011 · Peter Cundill's deep-value practice, drawn from his own journals.
Laurie Sandell · 2011 · Family cooperation; Ruth and Andrew Madoff on the record.
Timothy S. Susanin · 2011 · The Kansas City failures, 1919-1928; how the first company went bust.
Adele Ferguson · 2012 · Iron ore, royalties and family control at the top of the resource sector.
David McKnight · 2012 · Argues the politics drove the business, not the reverse.
Robert E. Price · 2012 · By his son: the man who invented the warehouse club and taught Costco.
Maneet Ahuja · 2012 · Profiles of the managers who ran the strategy at scale after 2008.
Joe Carlen · 2012 · The only full biography; workmanlike rather than definitive.
Greg Smith · 2012 · Insider resignation memoir that began as an op-ed.
T3 Comandante
Rory Carroll · 2013 · Reported from inside the Chávez government as expropriation accelerated.
Richard Snow · 2013 · Tight narrative of the Model T years; the best short account.
Whitney Tilson, John Heins · with John Heins · 2013 · Open Library unreachable from this session; Wiley edition confirmed elsewhere.
Julian Guthrie · 2013 · His America's Cup campaign; the only book covering the later Ellison.
Rhonda K. Garelick · 2014 · Reads the brand as politics; the most intellectually serious account.
Guy Spier · 2014 · Spier on the psychology and habits behind durable value investing.
Porter Erisman · 2015 · Insider account: an early Western executive on the eBay fight.
Tren Griffin · 2015 · Synthesis of his mental-models framework, not a life.
Dana Thomas · 2015 · Galliano and McQueen inside the LVMH and Kering machine.
Ben S. Bernanke · 2015 · The Fed chair's own account; read against Leonard and Greider.
Antonio Garcia Martinez · 2016 · Insider account of Facebook's ads business by a product manager.
T3 Game Over
George Papaconstantinou · 2016 · Insider: the finance minister who signed the first bailout.
Bradley Birkenfeld · 2016 · Insider: the UBS banker whose disclosure ended cross-border Swiss secrecy.
T3 Ray & Joan
Lisa Napoli · 2016 · The Krocs, the fortune, and the philanthropy it funded.
Jeremy C. Miller · 2016 · Miller reconstructs Buffett's partnership-era rules and results.
Paul Lendvai · 2017 · How the post-2010 government allocates contracts, media and banking licences.
Soner Cagaptay · 2017 · How Erdogan's consolidation reshaped who wins contracts.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala · 2018 · The same author on what happened when the reforms were resisted.
Christian Davenport · 2018 · SpaceX against Blue Origin and the legacy contractors.
T3 Alpha Girls
Julian Guthrie · 2019 · Four women venture capitalists and the deals the industry forgot
T3 Backstage
Montek Singh Ahluwalia · 2019 · Insider memoir by the architect of much of the reform programme.
Hannah Lucinda Smith · 2019 · Reporting on the construction-and-credit growth model and who benefited.
Howard Schultz, Joanne Gordon · 2019 · Insider account: later memoir on social responsibility and politics.
Cornelius C. Bond · 2019 · Biography of the man who named and institutionalised growth investing.
Girish Kuber · 2019 · Readable outside history of the family and the group.
T3 Tim Cook
Leander Kahney · 2019 · The operations chief who scaled Apple past a trillion dollars.
Stephen A. Schwarzman · 2019 · Subtitled Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence.
Leonard A. Lauder · 2020 · Insider memoir by her son, who scaled the company she founded.
Susan Fowler · 2020 · Insider memoir by the engineer whose blog post triggered the reckoning.
T3 Aiming High
Atsuo Inoue · 2021 · Authorised, translated from Japanese; admiring in tone.
Joe Coulombe · 2021 · Founder's account of a private-label, limited-SKU, high-turn grocery model.
Jeff Immelt, Amy Wallace · 2021 · Insider account: Immelt's defence of his sixteen years as CEO.
Jim Campbell · 2021 · Built on prison correspondence and interviews.
Indra Nooyi · 2021 · Insider account: Nooyi's memoir of twelve years as CEO.
Michael Dell · 2021 · Dell's founder on the buyout, the Icahn fight and VMware
Max Chafkin · 2021 · Peter Thiel biography with substantial Palantir founding material.
Lori Garver · 2022 · NASA insider on the policy fight that funded commercial crew.
Eric Balchunas · 2022 · Bloomberg analyst on Vanguard's economics; Open Library unreachable to verify.
David Gelles · 2022 · Polemic treating Welch's GE as the template for shareholder primacy.
Brady Dale · 2023 · Crypto-trade reporter's mechanics-first account.
Tim Schwab · 2023 · Investigative case against the foundation's power.
Ralph Watson McElvenny, Marc Wortman · 2023 · Tom Watson Jr. and the bet-the-company System/360 decision — Open Library has no work record; only a 'Summary of Ralph Watson Mcelvenny's...' study guide by IRB Media
unverified
T3 Burn Book
Kara Swisher · 2024 · Memoir by the reporter closest to Altman through the board crisis.
T3 Gray Matters
Theodore H. Schwartz · 2024 · A neurosurgeon on how medical decisions and hospital incentives actually work
Alok Sama · 2024 · Insider memoir by SoftBank's former CFO; Open Library unreachable to verify.
Tyler Shultz · 2024 · Whistleblower memoir — No Open Library work record; author Tyler Shultz has no records
unverified
T3 Who Knew
Barry Diller · 2024 · Media executive's memoir spanning Paramount, Fox and IAC
Amey Stone, Mike Brewster
unverified
Henry S. Randall, J. B. Lippincott, Company · 1858
Edwin Lefevre · 1925 · Based on the career of broker John K. Wing.
Harvey Samuel Firestong, Samuel Crowther · 1926
M.K. Gandhi · 1927
Paramahansa Yogananda · 1946
Irving Stone · 1956 · Narrative of the American West's mining and railroad fortunes
Viktor E. Frankl · 1968
Frank MartinMohnish PabraiNat EliasonRyan HolidayAlex and BooksAntonio García MartínezBrené BrownBryan JohnsonCodie SanchezDavid Heinemeier HanssonEv WilliamsJames AltucherJason CalacanisJulie StevanjaMaria PopovaNathan MurphyNaval RavikantSahil BloomSam AltmanShane ParrishSimon SinekSteph SmithSuperbook reading listsTerrance McArthurThe Rational WalkTim FerrissTom BilyeuTony Robbins
John H. Dessauer · 1971 · Insider memoir by the research chief who backed xerography.
James Thomas Flexner · 1974
Sol W. Sanders · 1975 · Early Western biography, written while Soichiro Honda still ran the company.
Irving Kahn, Robert D. Milne · 1977 · Short monograph by a student and colleague.
Peter F. Drucker · 1979 · Memoir in the form of portraits
Hollis Limprecht · 1981
James Grant · 1983 · Open Library unreachable during build; title listed on grantspub.com books page
William Manchester · 1983
Richard P. Feynman · 1984
Kathleen Brady · 1984 · Biography of the journalist whose reporting broke the trust.
Les Schwab · 1986 · Tire-shop founder's memoir on profit sharing and dealer economics
Robert Wright · 1988 · Information theory as a unifying idea across three scientists' work
Nadège Forestier · 1990 · The French original of the above.
Li Lu · 1990 · Memoir of the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen; his only English-language book.
Terry Tempest Williams, Dan Frank · 1991
Cass Warner Sperling, Cork Millner · 1994 · Family insider history of the studio's founding generation.
Robert Goldberg, Gerald Jay Goldberg · 1995 · Turner Broadcasting, absorbed by Time Warner in 1996.
Benjamin Graham · 1996 · Published posthumously; edited by Seymour Chatman.
Andrew Tobias · 1997
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin · 1997
Bob Thomas · 1998 · The brother who did the financing; useful counterpart.
David Remnick · 1998
Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos · 1998 · Insider memoir by his personal assistant; domestic detail, little business.
Ulysses S. Grant · 1999
Richard Smitten · 1999 · Smitten's first Livermore volume, largely superseded by his 2001 biography.
Bernard Arnault, Yves Messarovitch · 2000 · Insider account: Arnault interview book; French only.
Ulf Olsson · 2000 · Marcus Wallenberg and the bank-industry structure that still controls Swedish capital.
Charles D. Ellis, James R. Vertin · with James R. Vertin · 2001 · Edited anthology, two volumes
Janet Browne · 2002
Louis V. Gerstner · 2002
William J. O'Neil · 2003 · Compiled from Investor's Business Daily profiles.
Robert E. Rubin, Jacob Weisberg · 2003
Ronald Reagan, Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, Martin Anderson, George P. Shultz · 2003
Mark Arax, Rick Wartzman · 2003
Murray B. Light, Warren E. Buffett · 2004
T4 Running Money: Hedge Fund Honchos, Monster Marke12: 12 PM 2/12/2008ts and My Hunt for the Big Score
Andy Kessler · 2004 · Manager's memoir of running a technology long-short book through a bubble.
Sebastian Mallaby · 2004 · Open Library unreachable during build; title confirmed on his CFR expert page
James Grant · 2005 · Open Library unreachable during build; title listed on grantspub.com books page
Morrie Schwartz · 2005
Richard P. Feynman · 2005
Giorgio Vasari · 2005
Andrew Carnegie · 2006
Michael Gates Gill · 2007 · Insider account: a fired ad executive's memoir as a barista.
Walter Pavlo, Neil Weinberg · 2007 · Insider: a convicted MCI/WorldCom finance manager.
Sam Wyly · 2008 · Entrepreneur's memoir of building and selling successive companies
Bob Thompson · 2008
T4 Alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the World's Biggest Online Marketplace
Liu Shiying, Martha Avery · 2009 · Early Chinese-sourced account, admiring and lightly sourced.
Wesley R. Gray · 2009 · Naval Institute Press memoir, not an investing book. Open Library unreachable this pass.
Jacqueline Novogratz · 2009
Katherine Burton · 2010
Henry M. Paulson · 2010 · Insider memoir: the Treasury Secretary's version of the same weeks.
Stephen H. Greer · 2010
Derek Sivers · 2011
Ezra F. Vogel · 2011
Jennifer Clark · 2011
James Grant · 2011 · Open Library unreachable during build; title listed on grantspub.com books page
T4 One Click
Richard L. Brandt · 2011 · Short Bezos biography written before the Everything Store era.
Howard E. Wasdin, Stephen Templin · 2011
William Novak · 2012 · Insider account: authorized biography of the founder.
Colin Powell, Tony Koltz · 2012
Mark Owen, Kevin Maurer · 2012
Alasdair Nairn, Jonathan Davis · 2012
Covadonga O'Shea · 2012 · Amancio Ortega and the fast-fashion supply chain he built at Inditex.
Jerry Oppenheimer · 2013 · Family history rather than company analysis; gossipy in tone.
Naoki Higashida · 2013
T4 Routines and Orgies: The Life of Peter Cundill, Financial Genius, Philosopher, and Philanthropist
Christopher Risso-Gill · 2014
Bill McDermott · 2014
Ta-Nehisi Coates · 2015
Stef Wertheimer · 2015
Tom Rubython · 2015 · Popular retelling; foreword by Paul Tudor Jones.
William Green, Michael O'Brien · with Michael O'Brien · 2015 · Green wrote and edited the 33 profiles; O'Brien supplied the photographs. Open Library unreachable
David Brooks · 2015
Richard Davenport-Hines · 2015
T4 Beer Money
Frances Stroh · 2016 · Family memoir of a brewer undone partly by its distribution position.
T4 Rising Above
Gregory Zuckerman, Elijah Zuckerman, Gabriel Zuckerman · with Elijah Zuckerman, Gabriel Zuckerman · 2016 · Sports book for young readers
T4 Slim
Diego Enrique Osorno · 2016 · Carlos Slim, telecoms concessions and the economics of a licensed monopoly.
Sebastian Mallaby · 2016 · Open Library unreachable during build; title confirmed on his CFR expert page
James Grant · 2019 · Open Library unreachable during build; title listed on grantspub.com books page
Ken Langone · 2019
Lori Gottlieb · 2019
T4 How to Lead
David M. Rubenstein · 2020 · Interviews with founders, CEOs and public figures.
Jamie Fiore Higgins · 2022 · Insider memoir of the trading floor culture.
James Grant · 2025 · W. W. Norton, August 2025; confirmed by his 2026 WSJ author bio line
Sebastian Mallaby · 2026 · Penguin Press, March 2026; listed on CFR books page
Adrienne M. Harrison · Open Library returns no work record for this title and author.
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Warren Buffett
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Nathaniel Eliason
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Alfred Lansing
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Lee Kuan Yew Unread, but I saw this
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Lawrence J. Haas
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Jon Krakauer
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Peter Adamson, Carol Bellamy, Kul Gautam, Richard Jolly, Nyi Nyi, Mary Racelis, Richard Reid, Jon Rohde
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Bryan Stevenson
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Sunil Sheoran
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Mark Greenberg
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Caroline Weber
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Robert A. Caro
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Candice Millard
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Paul Cronin
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Lesley Hazleton
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