Naval Ravikant's Recommended Books to Read

Explore Naval Ravikant's top book recommendations. Uncover reads that inspire wisdom, wealth, a growth mindset, and transformative thinking.

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Benjamin Gruber

12/18/2023

Naval Ravikant's recommended books to read
Naval Ravikant's recommended books to read

Naval Ravikant is a distinguished entrepreneur and investor, best known as the co-founder of AngelList. He's celebrated for his insightful perspectives on startups, business, wealth, and personal growth.

Renowned for his philosophical approach, Ravikant shares his wisdom through podcasts and social media, influencing both the tech and personal development spheres.

Naval is very active on Twitter, where you can follow him.

The Beginning of Infinity

Explanations That Transform the World

by David Deutsch

Naval:Not the easiest read, but it made me smarter.

Sapiens

A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

Naval: “Sapiens is the best book of the last decade I have read. He had decades to write Sapiens. There are lots of great ideas in there and it’s just full of them, chock-full per page.”

The Rational Optimist

How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley

Naval: “The most brilliant and enlightening book I’ve read in years. He has written four of my top twenty books. Everything else written by Matt Ridley. Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. One of my favorite authors.”

Genome

The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

by Matt Ridley

Naval: “The most brilliant and enlightening book I’ve read in years. He has written four of my top twenty books. Everything else written by Matt Ridley. Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. One of my favorite authors.”

The Origins of Virtue

Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation

by Matt Ridley

Naval: “The most brilliant and enlightening book I’ve read in years. He has written four of my top twenty books. Everything else written by Matt Ridley. Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. One of my favorite authors.”

The Evolution of Everything

How New Ideas Emerge

by Matt Ridley

Naval: “The most brilliant and enlightening book I’ve read in years. He has written four of my top twenty books. Everything else written by Matt Ridley. Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. One of my favorite authors.”

Skin in the Game

Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

by Nassim Taleb

Naval: “The best book I read in 2018, I highly recommend it. Lots of great ideas in there. Lots of good mental models and constructs. He has a bit of an attitude, but he has that because he’s brilliant, and it’s okay. So just look past the attitude and read the book, learn the concepts. It’s one of the best business books I’ve ever read. And luckily, it doesn’t masquerade as a business book.”

The Black Swan

The Impact of the Highly Improbable

by Nassim Taleb

Naval: “Another book from Nassim Taleb which is worth reading.”

The Bed of Procrustes

Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

by Nassim Taleb

Naval: “This is his collection of ancient wisdom.”

Antifragile

Things That Gain from Disorder

by Nassim Taleb

Naval: “Another book from Nassim Taleb which is worth reading.”

Six Easy Pieces

Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

by Richard Feynman

Naval: “I would give my kids a copy of Richard Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces...Richard Feynman is a famous physicist. I love both his demeanor as well as his understanding of physics.”

Poor Charlie’s Almanack

The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

by Charlie Munger

Naval: “This masquerades as a business book, but it’s really just Charlie Munger (of Berkshire Hathaway)’s advice on overcoming oneself to live a successfuland virtuous life.”

Reality Is Not What It Seems

The Journey to Quantum Gravity

by Carlo Rovelli

Naval: “This is the best book I’ve read in the last year. Physics, poetry, philosophy, and history packaged in a very accessible form.”

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

by Carlo Rovelli

Naval: “I’ve read this one at least twice.”

The Evolution of Cooperation

by Robert Axelrod

Naval: “For game theory, in addition to playing strategy games, you may want to try this one.”

The Compleat Strategyst

Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy

by J.D. Williams

Naval: “For game theory, in addition to playing strategy games, you may want to try this one.”

Jed McKenna's Theory of Everything

The Enlightened Perspective

by Jed McKenna

Naval: “Everything by Jed McKenna. Jed spits raw truth. His style may be off-putting, but the dedication to truth is unparalleled.”

Spiritual Warfare

by Jed McKenna

Naval: “Everything by Jed McKenna. Jed spits raw truth. His style may be off-putting, but the dedication to truth is unparalleled.”

Jed Talks #1

Essays, Teachings, Rants & Frivolous Frivolity

by Jed McKenna

Naval: “Everything by Jed McKenna. Jed spits raw truth. His style may be off-putting, but the dedication to truth is unparalleled.”

Jed Talks #2

Away from the Things of Man

by Jed McKenna

Naval: “Everything by Jed McKenna. Jed spits raw truth. His style may be off-putting, but the dedication to truth is unparalleled.”

A Master’s Secret Whisper

For those who abhor noise and seek The Truth about life and living

by Kapil Gupta

Naval: “Everything by Kapil Gupta. Kapil recently became a personal advisor and coach to me, and this comes from a person who doesn’t believe in coaches.”

Atmamun

The path to achieving the bliss of the Himalayan Swamis. And the freedom of a living God.

by Kapil Gupta

Naval: “Everything by Kapil Gupta. Kapil recently became a personal advisor and coach to me, and this comes from a person who doesn’t believe in coaches.”

The Book of Life

Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Naval: “Krishnamurti is a lesser-known guy, an Indian philosopher who lived at the turn of the last century and is extremely influential to me. He’s an uncompromising, very direct person who basically tells you to look at your own mind at all times. I’ll give my kids a copy of The Book of Life. I’ll tell them to save it until they’re older because it won’t make much sense while they’re younger.”

Total Freedom

The Essential Krishnamurti

by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Naval: “Krishnamurti is a lesser-known guy, an Indian philosopher who lived at the turn of the last century and is extremely influential to me. He’s an uncompromising, very direct person who basically tells you to look at your own mind at all times.”

Siddhartha

by Herman Hesse

Naval: “I love this as a classic book on philosophy, a good introduction for someone starting out. I’ve given out more copies of this book than any other.

The Book of Secrets

112 Meditations to Discover the Mystery Within

by Osho

Naval: “Most meditation techniques are concentration methods, and there are many,many meditation techniques. If you want to run through a bunch of them, you can pick up a book called The Book of Secrets by Osho. I know he’s gotten a bad rap recently, but he was a pretty smart guy. It’s actually a translation of an old Sanskrit book with 112 different meditations. You can try each one and see which one works for you.”

The Way to Love

The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello

by Anthony de Mello

The Untethered Soul

The Journey Beyond Yourself

by Michael Singer

Meditations

by Marcus Aurelius

Naval: “Marcus Aurelius was absolutely life-changing for me. It’s the personal diary of the emperor of Rome. Here’s a guy who was probably the most powerful human being on Earth at the time he lived. He’s writing a diary to himself, never expecting it to be published. When you open this book, you realize he had all the same issues and all the same mental struggles; he was trying to be a better person. Right there, you figure out success and power don’t improve your internal state—you still have to work on it.”

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It

The Positive Self-Help Phenomenom

by Kamal Ravikant

Naval: “I’ve actually been reading my brother’s book, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. I thought it was very succinctly written. (Obviously a plug for my bro.) He’s the philosopher in the family—I’m just the amateur.

Ficciones

by Jorge Luis Borges

Naval: “I love Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine author. His short story collection Ficciones, or Labyrinths, is amazing. Borges is probably still the most powerful author I have read who wasn’t just outright writing philosophy. There was philosophy in there with the sci-fi.”

The Prophet

The Original 1923 Edition with Complete Illustrations

by Kahlil Gibran

Naval: “This book reads like a modern-day poetic religious tome. It’s up there with the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, and the Qur’an. It is written in the style where it has a feel of religiosity and truth, but it was very approachable, beautiful, nondenominational, and nonsectarian. I loved this book.”

Striking Thoughts

Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living

by Bruce Lee

Naval: “Oddly enough, Bruce Lee wrote some great philosophy, and Striking Thoughts is a good summary of some of his philosophy.”

How to Change Your Mind

What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

by Michael Pollan

Naval: “There’s a good book Michael Pollan wrote recently called How to Change Your Mind, and I think it is a brilliant book everybody should read. The book discusses psychedelics. Psychedelics are a bit of a cheat code in self-observation. I don’t recommend drugs for anybody—you can do it all through pure meditation. If you want to accelerate ahead, you know, psychedelics are good for that.

The Three-Body Problem

by Cixin Liu

Stories of Your Life and Others

by Ted Chiang

Naval: “My current favorite sci-fi short story: probably “Understand” by Ted Chiang. It’s in a collection called Stories of Your Life and Others. “Story of Your Life” was made into a movie called Arrival.”

Snow Crash

by Neal Stephenson

Naval: “Snow Crash is an amazing, amazing book. There’s nothing quite similar to Snow Crash. Snow Crash is in a league of its own. Stephenson also wrote The Diamond Age.”

The Complete Stories of Isaac Asimov

by Isaac Asimov

Naval: “I quote “The Last Question” all the time. I loved it as a kid.”

Tools of Titans

The Tactics, Routines and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Performers

by Tim Ferriss

Naval: “I’m reading Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss’s book of what he learned from a lot of great performers.”

Man’s Search for Meaning

by Viktor Frankl

Exhalation

Stories

by Ted Chiang

Naval: “This contemplates the marvel of thermodynamics from the best sci-fi short story writer of our age.”

Pre-Suasion

A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

by Robert Cialdini

Naval: “ I just finished reading Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, or I should say I just finished skimming Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini. I don’t think I needed to read the entire book to get the point, but it was still good to read what I did.”

The Story of Philosophy

The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosophers

by Will Durant

Naval: “ I just finished reading Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, or I should say I just finished skimming Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini. I don’t think I needed to read the entire book to get the point, but it was still good to read what I did.”

God’s Debris

A Thought Experiment

by Scott Adams

Tao Te Ching

by Lao Tzu

Become What You Are

by Alan Watts

How to Win Friends & Influence People

The Only Book You Need to Lead You to Success

by Dale Carnegie

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

by Dale Carnegie

FAQ

How long should one read each day, as suggested by Naval Ravikant?

While the book doesn’t prescribe a specific duration for daily reading, it highlights the importance of lifelong learning and curiosity, suggesting that consistent and focused reading is more beneficial than the length of reading sessions.

What are some key habits or mindsets for achieving happiness, according to Naval Ravikant?

Ravikant advocates for self-awareness, continuous learning, and detachment from societal status games, emphasizing the importance of internal rather than external validation for true happiness.

How does Naval Ravikant suggest one should approach the creation of wealth?

The book outlines Ravikant's belief in creating wealth through leveraging specific knowledge, ethical entrepreneurship, and long-term investment in oneself and one's ventures.

How has Naval's background influenced his philosophy and career?

Naval's unique blend of Eastern and Western philosophies, combined with his experience in Silicon Valley, shapes his perspectives on life, happiness, and entrepreneurship.

What is Naval's approach to decision-making and risk in business?

He advocates for high-risk, high-reward opportunities, emphasizing the importance of long-term thinking and decision-making based on deep personal understanding.

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