Charlie Munger Books: Read the Almanack, Then Influence, the One Title All 16 Lists Share

Somebody forwards you a list of 40 titles Charlie Munger supposedly swore by, and you have room for two. The facts on Charlie Munger books are shorter than the list. He put his name to one, Poor Charlie’s Almanack, a collection of his talks, and only a handful of the books he recommended trace to his own words.

Our newsroom read 16 published lists of the books Munger recommended, counted every title, and checked which ones he named or praised in a transcript, a talk or a Berkshire Hathaway letter we could load. Munger died on 28 November 2023, at 99, so nothing new will be added to what he said. Every row below links to the page we read on 8 November 2026.

What We Found

Of 16 Charlie Munger reading lists we checked on 8 November 2026, all 16 include Influence, and eight of the other 15 repeat all of the first 20 titles on Farnam Street’s June 2014 list.

Those 20 run from Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field to Only the Paranoid Survive, the opening block of a Farnam Street post that now holds 42 numbered titles. Kestrel Capital, Business Insider India and Radical Reads print the 20 in the same order. Across all 16 lists, those 20 titles take 252 of the 387 title mentions we counted.

Influence is the one title that survives a stricter test. In the talk on human misjudgment printed in the Almanack, Munger wrote: “I immediately sent copies of Cialdini’s book to all my children.” Only two other titles on the lists pass the same test, and one of them appears on a single list.

How Many Charlie Munger Books Are There?

One. Poor Charlie’s Almanack collects 11 of Munger’s talks, was edited by Peter D. Kaufman, and first appeared in 2005. Stripe Press reissued it on 5 December 2023, a week after his death, at 384 pages and $30 in hardcover. The other books with his name in the title were written or compiled by other people.

Book	Author or editor	Published	Publisher	Pages (edition checked)	Source
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger	Peter D. Kaufman (editor)	2005	Donning	512	Goodreads editions
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger	Peter D. Kaufman (editor), foreword by John Collison	5 Dec 2023	Stripe Press	384	McNally Jackson
Damn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger	Janet Lowe	2000	John Wiley and Sons	304	Publishers Weekly
Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor	Tren Griffin	2015	Columbia Business School Publishing	224	Publishers Weekly

Warren Buffett sold the Almanack before most readers had heard of it. His 2004 letter announced that the shop at the annual meeting would “premiere Poor Charlie’s Almanack, a book compiled by Peter Kaufman”, and joked that it should settle whether Charlie is the reincarnation of Ben Franklin. Three years later, in the 2007 letter, he reported that “Charlie’s book has now remarkably sold nearly 50,000 copies”, without any advertising or bookstore placement.

Munger treated it lightly. In the 2006 letter Buffett recalled a shareholder asking what to do if he did not enjoy the book. Munger’s advice was to “just give it to someone more intelligent.”

The Stripe Press edition is abridged and carries a new foreword by Stripe cofounder John Collison, according to the publisher’s page. Stripe also put the entire book online, for free, alongside the hardcover, which John Gruber noted on Daring Fireball in December 2023. You can read the talks before deciding whether to own the object.

Of the books about him, Janet Lowe’s Damn Right! is the biography, published in 2000 when he was 76, and Tren Griffin’s The Complete Investor is the shorter book on method. Peter Bevelin’s Seeking Wisdom was among the Bookworm’s titles in Buffett’s 2006 letter. Seven of our 16 lists file the Almanack or a book about Munger among the books he recommended, crediting him with recommending his own talks.

Which Books Did Charlie Munger Recommend Most?

Influence by Robert Cialdini leads, on all 16 lists. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and The Warren Buffett Portfolio follow on 15, then Deep Simplicity, Fiasco, Titan and Only the Paranoid Survive on 14. Guns, Germs, and Steel and Models of My Life reach 13. Most of the shelf is science, history and biography.

The table counts each title across the 16 lists. “His own words” means we loaded a page where Munger names or praises the book or its author. “Quoted, no source” means a list quotes him without saying where he said it. A blank means we loaded no page with his words; Most Recommended Books links quotes for some of these titles to videos and retailer pages, which we did not verify.

Book	Author	Lists (of 16)	His own words	Source
Influence	Robert Cialdini	16	Yes, misjudgment talk	Farnam Street transcript
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations	David Landes	15		Farnam Street
The Warren Buffett Portfolio	Robert Hagstrom	15		Market Folly
Deep Simplicity	John Gribbin	14		Liberated Stock Trader
Fiasco	Frank Partnoy	14	Quoted, no source	Farnam Street
Titan	Ron Chernow	14		Inc.
Only the Paranoid Survive	Andrew Grove	14		Hedge Fund Alpha
Guns, Germs, and Steel	Jared Diamond	13		New Trader U
Models of My Life	Herbert Simon	13		Blinkist
The Selfish Gene	Richard Dawkins	12		Shortform
Getting to Yes	Roger Fisher and William Ury	12		Most Recommended Books
Andrew Carnegie	Joseph Frazier Wall (some lists: David Nasaw)	12		Kestrel Capital
Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field	Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon	10	Quoted; cited CNBC source would not load	Farnam Street
The Outsiders	William Thorndike	8		The Acquirer’s Multiple
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin	Benjamin Franklin	8	Yes, misjudgment talk	Farnam Street transcript
No Two Alike	Judith Rich Harris	4	Author praised, misjudgment talk	Farnam Street transcript
A Man for All Markets	Edward O. Thorp	1	Yes, “Thorp’s new book”, Daily Journal 2017 (title is our identification)	Latticework Investing transcript

We counted 55 different titles across the 16 lists, and eight appear on only one. How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Living Within Limits and Genome also reach 12 lists and are left out of the table for space; we found no page with Munger’s own words naming them either.

The second table is the dataset behind the headline: every list we counted and the number of titles we counted on it, after removing books by or about Munger. The last rows were dropped and sit outside every count.

List	Date on page	Titles counted	Source
Farnam Street, Book Recommendations That Will Make You Smarter	2 Jun 2014	42	Farnam Street
Market Folly, Charlie Munger’s Recommended Reading List	16 May 2016	17	Market Folly
Inc., 10 Book Recommendations From Warren Buffett’s Right-Hand Man	18 May 2016	10	Inc.
Business Insider India, 25 Books Billionaire Charlie Munger Thinks Everyone Should Read	Not shown	20 (title claims 25)	Business Insider India
Kestrel Capital, 20 Book Recommendations	Updated 12 Apr 2022	20	Kestrel Capital
Radical Reads, Charlie Munger favorite books	18 Aug 2021	20	Radical Reads
The Acquirer’s Multiple, 32 Books That Every Investor Should Read	19 Aug 2018	30	The Acquirer’s Multiple
X thread by Alex Brogan, via Thread Reader	24 Nov 2022	19	Thread Reader
Blinkist, Charlie Munger’s reading list	9 Jun 2023	7	Blinkist
The Ways to Wealth, The Charlie Munger Reading List	13 Oct 2025	50	The Ways to Wealth
New Trader U, Essential Reading List	11 Feb 2026	9	New Trader U
Shortform, Charles T. Munger’s Top Book Recommendations	Not shown	32 (page claims 34)	Shortform
Most Recommended Books, Books Recommended by Charlie Munger	Updated 2 Aug 2025	40 (page claims 43)	Most Recommended Books
Glasp, Charlie Munger	Not shown	39	Glasp
Hedge Fund Alpha, Charlie Munger’s Books	Not shown	21 (page says 20)	Hedge Fund Alpha
Liberated Stock Trader, 12 Favorite Books	Not shown	11	Liberated Stock Trader
Reddit, Every Book Charlie Munger Has Ever Recommended (dropped)		Reddit blocked our fetch
Medium republication of Farnam Street, 2017 (dropped)		Same list, counted once
Benzinga, Fasterthannormal, Shepherd, Let’s Data Science (dropped)		No countable list of recommendations

Where the Lists Come From

Most published lists of Charlie Munger books come from one blog post. Farnam Street published its Munger list on 2 June 2014 with the line “Find below a list of all the books he’s recommended over the years”, and gave sources for almost none. Two years later Inc. credited Shane Parrish, who “rounded up a few dozen suggestions from the tycoon”, and printed ten of them.

The repeats are easy to trace. Business Insider India’s headline promises 25 books and the page prints 20, the same 20 in Farnam Street’s order. Radical Reads credits Business Insider and links its 2014 article. A list repeated eight times is one source counted eight times, and a reader who sees the same titles everywhere takes repetition for confirmation.

We have seen the pattern before. Our count of Peter Thiel books traced his most repeated titles to two answers from 2012 and 2014. Of 16 guides to the Feynman technique we read, only one named a book by or about Feynman as its source.

The Ways to Wealth is the most careful of the 16. It files 20 titles under “From Poor Charlie’s Almanack”, 18 under shareholder letters and annual meetings, and flags several of the rest as unverified. Its 20 match Farnam Street’s block except one, Franklin’s autobiography in place of Faraday. We could not open the Almanack’s text to confirm the 20, so the table does not mark them as his own words.

The Titles Munger Named in His Own Words

Three titles pass the strict test, and Influence is the strongest. In the misjudgment talk, as Farnam Street reproduces it, Munger described Influence as a book “aimed at a popular audience, by a distinguished psychology professor, Robert Cialdini”. He sent copies to his children, and added: “I also gave Cialdini a share of Berkshire stock [Class A] to thank him for what he had done for me and the public.”

The same talk carries the second. “Ben Franklin, to my great benefit, left behind his autobiography, his Almanacks, and much else,” Munger wrote. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is on eight lists, and the title of his own book borrows from Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack.

The third is the one almost nobody copied. At the 2017 Daily Journal meeting, in the transcript Latticework Investing posted, he said: “I’ve just read this new book by Thorp, the guy who beat the dealer in Las Vegas.” Then: “I recommend Thorp’s new book.” The transcript gives no title. Our identification is Edward Thorp’s memoir A Man for All Markets, which EarlyWord listed as a new Random House title on 31 January 2017. One of our 16 lists has it.

Two more are close. The misjudgment talk praises Judith Rich Harris by name, “a person like Ms. Harris, who can provide an insight of this quality and utility”, without naming a book; her No Two Alike is on four lists. Farnam Street quotes Munger on Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field, “It’s just the best book of its kind I have ever read”, and on Fiasco, “I remember reading this shocking book and thinking, holy crap”, without saying where he said either. Most Recommended Books ties the Faraday quote to a CNBC transcript from 5 May 2014 that would not load for us, and a Value Investing World post the next day listed the book among those Munger recommended on CNBC, in its own paraphrase.

Late in life Munger often turned the book question down. Asked at the 2021 Daily Journal meeting what he was reading and what he could recommend, he answered: “I think I’ll skip that one.” At another Daily Journal meeting he said, “Well you people send me books, like 30 a week,” and added, “But I’m no longer a good book source.” The transcript we read does not give that meeting’s year. The lists kept growing anyway.

Warren Buffett’s books are easier to check because he put his recommendations in the letters. We used the rule we applied to Mark Wahlberg’s morning routine: count what the person said, dated, and leave out what was said about him.

What Should an Investor Read First?

Read the Almanack first, starting with the talk on the psychology of human misjudgment, then read Influence, the one title every list and Munger’s own text agree on. After that, add one science book and one business biography from the lists, and read each for the model it teaches.

The order is practical. The talk sets out the tendencies that cost people money, from incentives to social proof. Influence shows the same tendencies being used on you by people selling something, which is most of what an investor or an operator faces in a working week. Our piece on Charlie Munger’s mental models cuts his models to the five an operator uses most.

For the business biography, Titan and Andrew Carnegie are on 14 and 12 lists. The Outsiders, on eight, is the one an operator who allocates capital will use soonest. For science, Deep Simplicity or Guns, Germs, and Steel. Judge each on its own merits, without assuming Munger stood behind it.

Set a test before you start. Our Rich Dad Poor Dad summary checked 15 money claims against public data, and our test of the Simon Sinek golden circle read 20 About pages. A claim that a famous investor swore by a book deserves the same check: find where he said it, or treat the book as a stranger’s suggestion.

Lists of an author’s own books, like our counts of Jocko Willink books and Mel Robbins books, can be checked against a publisher’s catalogue. Lists of what someone else reads have no publisher’s page to settle them, so they drift. Summaries drift as well; our Atomic Habits summary counted what 17 others leave out. The Almanack is free to read online, so the original costs you nothing.

Munger’s habit is the part worth copying, more than his titles. He read across fields to collect models. For an operator that means one book a quarter from outside your own industry. Two blocks a week of the kind our Cal Newport time blocking piece describes will finish a 384-page Almanack in a month, and leave room for the 150 minutes of exercise our zone 2 training guide treats as the floor. If the science shelf feels far from work, our list of best books for decision-making covers the same tendencies in business settings.

How We Did This

On 8 November 2026 we read published lists of books Charlie Munger recommended, chosen from the US top 10 for “charlie munger books” that day and the first pages of searches for “Charlie Munger recommended books”. Sixteen lists loaded with titles and were counted. Reddit blocked our fetch; Benzinga listed only books by or about Munger; Fasterthannormal, Shepherd and Let’s Data Science showed no countable list; a 2017 Medium post republished Farnam Street and was counted once; a second list from New Trader U and a second from The Acquirer’s Multiple were dropped so that each publisher counts once. Books by or about Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack and Seeking Wisdom included, were removed from the counts. We treated the two Andrew Carnegie biographies as one title. We marked a title as his own words only where we loaded a page with Munger naming or praising it: the misjudgment talk on Farnam Street, the 2017 Daily Journal transcript on Latticework Investing, and Berkshire Hathaway letters for the Almanack. The full dataset, with the supporting quote and source for every row, is available on request.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Charlie Munger’s most famous book?

Poor Charlie’s Almanack, a collection of 11 of his talks edited by Peter D. Kaufman and first published in 2005. Stripe Press reissued it in December 2023 and put the full text online free. It is the only book of his own; the books by Janet Lowe, Tren Griffin and others are about him.

What book did Charlie Munger recommend most?

Influence by Robert Cialdini. It is on all 16 lists we checked, and it is the one title his own words back most strongly: in his talk on human misjudgment he wrote that he sent copies to all his children and gave Cialdini a share of Berkshire stock.

Is Poor Charlie’s Almanack worth reading?

Yes, for the talk on the psychology of human misjudgment, which works as a checklist of the mistakes that cost money in business and investing. Earlier print editions run past 500 pages, so start with the free online text and read the misjudgment talk before anything else.

Before you buy anything off a list of Charlie Munger books, read the misjudgment talk and Influence, and ask of every other title where Munger said it.