10 Best Books Rich People Read and Broken People Never Open

The gap between financial success and financial difficulty often depends on what people harbor in their minds. Wealthy individuals, from self-made millionaires to billionaires, share a consistent habit: They read voraciously and read specific types of books.

These are not books about get-rich-quick schemes. These are books about values, systems, psychology and history. The ten titles below repeatedly appear on the playlists of the world’s highest earners, and they share one defining trait: they change the way you see the world.

1. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Warren Buffett called it the best investing book ever written. Graham’s framework centers on the concept of “Mr. Market”, in which the stock market is personified as an unpredictable trading partner who quotes you prices every day.

Sometimes Mr. Market is rational. Other times he panics or becomes euphoric. Wealthy investors learn to use market mood swings rather than reacting to them emotionally. The book teaches you to view price and value as two entirely different things and to act only when the gap between them is in your favor.

2. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

This vast history of humanity has been endorsed by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and other business figures. Harari argues that the structures that shape modern life, including money, corporations, and nations, are “shared myths” that exist because large groups of people believe in them.

For wealthy readers, this idea reframes their thinking about markets, brand value, and institutional power. Understanding that these systems are human constructs means understanding that they can change, which allows the reader to anticipate change rather than being caught off guard.

3. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

Phil Knight’s memoir about the founding of Nike is one of the most honest accounts of entrepreneurship ever written. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Tim Cook have all praised it. Knight describes years of near-bankruptcy, manufacturing crises, and partnership conflicts with nothing softened.

What fortunate readers take away from the book is a realistic picture of what building something meaningful actually looks like. It’s rarely clean. The book replaces romantic illusions about startup success with a deep respect for resilience, ingenuity, and the will to keep going through truly difficult times.

4. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio

Ray Dalio built Bridgewater Associates into one of the world’s largest hedge funds by designing systems rather than relying solely on intuition. In this book, he shares the principles that govern his decision-making in life and business.

The central idea is that you can build a “machine” around any goal. You define the desired outcome, identify the people and processes needed, and systematically refine the system when it does not meet expectations. For anyone trying to create lasting wealth or a scalable organization, this framework offers a structured alternative to case-by-case decision-making.

5. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

This book is widely considered a favorite of Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos. Christensen’s central argument is that successful companies often fail not because they make bad decisions, but because they make good ones, based solely on the needs of their current customers.

Disruptive technologies arrive at the bottom of the market, serving customers that incumbents ignore. By the time established players notice the threat, they have already been overwhelmed. High-net-worth individuals read this book to learn how to quickly spot disruption and avoid ending up on the wrong side of technological change.

6. High Performance Management by Andrew Grove

Andy Grove, the legendary CEO of Intel, wrote this as a practical guide to managing people and organizations. It has been a seminal text in Silicon Valley for decades, cited by executives like Marc Andreessen as essential reading for anyone leading a team.

Grove’s key concept is leverage. A manager’s output is not his or her own personal work product. It is the combined result of people and the systems they influence. This means that the highest value activities are those that improve the performance of an entire team, which reframes leadership as a force multiplier rather than a job title.

7. Poor Charlie’s Almanac by Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger has spent decades collecting what he calls “mental models,” which are big ideas drawn from fields like biology, physics, economics, and psychology. This book brings together his speeches, frameworks, and philosophy into one volume. Both Bill Gates and Patrick Collison named it essential reading.

The main lesson is that better thinking comes from drawing on multiple disciplines rather than just one. A business problem appears different when you look at it through evolutionary biology and economics. Munger believed that a person who only knows his or her own domain has a dangerously narrow view of reality.

8. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Warren Buffett displays his Dale Carnegie certificate of completion on his wall rather than his college diploma. This choice says a lot about how he categorizes the skills taught in this book.

Carnegie’s main point is that success in almost any field depends on your ability to connect with people, understand their point of view, and make them feel truly valued. For high earners, this is not gentle advice. Transactions happen between people, not between spreadsheets, and emotional intelligence is one of the most valuable financial assets a person can develop.

9. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Morgan Housel’s book argues that financial success has less to do with mathematical knowledge and more to do with behavior. The same investment strategy produces very different results depending on the temperament of the person executing it.

Wealthy parents frequently give this book to their children as an introduction to the relationship between psychology and money. Housel uses short stories and historical examples to illustrate why people sabotage their own financial results and how to develop habits and mindsets that consistently work the other way.

10. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow’s biography of John D. Rockefeller is a detailed account of how systematic thinking and long-term discipline built one of the greatest private fortunes in American history. Charlie Munger has frequently highlighted this book as essential reading for anyone serious about understanding wealth creation.

Rockefeller was not a conventional genius. He was precise, patient and constantly focused on efficiency. He reinvested his profits at every opportunity and outlasted most of his competitors by several decades. This book is a true lesson in mastery of how a disciplined process, sustained over time, produces results that no single brilliant idea could have generated on its own.

Conclusion

These books don’t promise shortcuts. They teach frameworks for thinking about value, disruption, human behavior, and long-term discipline. They are demanding. They force you to revise your assumptions, sit with uncomfortable ideas, and apply what you read to real decisions.

This discomfort may be exactly why most people never open them. The wealthy tend to seek out this kind of friction because they understand that the thinking required to create wealth cannot be developed any other way.