Let’s look at a few of the best Naval Ravikant book recommendations.
Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, investor, podcaster, and co-founder of AngelList. He has been an investor of prominent companies such as Uber, Twitter, Notion, Stack Overflow, OpenDNS, and many more.
He loves to read. Naval Ravikant’s most recommended books are philosophy books saying, “I’m pretty much always rereading something by either Krishnamurti, Osho, Jed McKenna, Kalil Gupta, the Vashistha Yoga, and Shopenhauer. Those are my favorite philosophers”
Philosophy isn’t the only genre of book that Naval Ravikant reads. He is also very fond of books about business and investing, which makes sense given his profession.
Naval Ravikant Book Recommendations Full List
With his love of business and philosophy books, we tried to choose a few of his favorites of each genre. Here is a full list of the best Naval Ravikant book recommendations:
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Peter D. Kaufman
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
- The Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe
- The Book of Life by Jiddu Krishnamurti
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
- The Book of Secrets by Osho
Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Peter D. Kaufman
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger was written by Peter D. Kaufman. This book was published in 2005, and is about 548. Some people consider this one of the best business books of all time.
Naval Ravikant recommended the book on Twitter, writing, “I always recommend Poor Charlie’s Almanack as my top business book. Though it is a business book, it’s really just Charlie Munger’s advice on overcoming oneself to live a successful and virtuous life. Part biography and part collection of Charlie’s speeches, this is the only book on Munger you need.”
If you aren’t sure who Charlie Munger is, he was the business partner of Warren Buffett for over a decade. Warren Buffett referred to him as the “the abominable no man.”
The book starts off looking into Charlie Munger’s childhood and family history, including a bunch of testaments written by his friends and family about the type of person he is.
It then gets into the meat and potatoes, which is his framework for investing. Charlie Munger teaches things like how to wait for the best pitches, how to look at opportunities rationally, and how to maintain discipline.
The remainder of the book is all about Charlie Munger’s great wisdom from everything he has said over the years. Not only does it have to do with business and investing, but also lessons for life itself.
Fun fact: Unsurprisingly, this is one of Warren Buffett’s most recommended books.
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was written by Yuval Noah Harari. The book was first published in Hebrew in 2011, and translated into English in 2014. The book was a New York Times Bestseller.
When Naval Ravikant recommended the book, Sapiens, he wrote, “An orthogonal and clinical examination of the human animal, from the beginning to now. Humans are story-telling alpha predators that killed the competition and domesticated the survivors. This is our story, and it’s not all pretty.”
Sapiens is an extremely popular book about the history of humankind. Yuval Noah Harari explains that there used to be several different species of humans all living together, but only Homo Sapiens remain today. Why is that? Will the same thing eventually happen to us?
He begins the book 70,000 years ago explaining how, using our cognition, we influenced the global ecosystem and harnessed the power of the earth to basically take over with our empires. He goes through the rise of civilizations and everything we have done to get to where we are today using history and science.
The remainder of the book looks towards the future to predict how long we will last. Over the last few years, we have quickly begun to figure out how to bend reality to conform to what we want it to do. We have figured out how to edit genes. Will we even be human in the future?
Fun fact: Sapiens is one of the most recommended books on the website by people like Barack Obama and James Clear.
Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life was written by Nassim Taleb. The book was published in 2018. It has 304 pages, and was a number one New York Times Best Seller.
Naval Ravikant recommended this book on his list of the best books he read back in 2018. He wrote on his website, “The best book I’ve 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 title of the book, Skin in the Game, is a phrase used to show that someone is risking their own money in order to invest in something. Risking your own money means that you really believe in whatever it is that you are investing in.
Nassim Taleb believes having skin in the game is vital for being able to understand the world better. He says you can never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. He uses examples from people in history including Seneca, Hammurabi, and even Donald Trump.
In Skin in the Game, you will learn how to focus on symmetry and risk management, that ethics are different everywhere, how minorities run the world, how you can be intellectual, yet an idiot, how to avoid complicated situations, and more.
Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words was written by Randall Munroe. This book was published in 2015, and contains 64 pages.
In a post on his website, Naval Ravikant recommended the book, Thing Explainer, saying, “A great book by Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd, a very science-oriented webcomic.) In this book, he explains very complicated concepts, all the way from climate change to physical systems to submarines while only using the 1,000 most common words in the English language. He called the Saturn Five rocket “Up Goer Five.” You can’t define a rocket as a spaceship or a rocket. It’s self-referential. He says “up goer.” It’s this thing that goes up. Kids get it right away.”
Thing Explainer is a very unique book. The goal of the book is to explain extremely complicated concepts in a simple way using only the top 1,000 most common English words. What results is an amazingly simple way to view the world.
The book describes things like food-heating radio boxes (microwaves), bending computer (laptop), hand computer (smartphone), power boxes (batteries), computer buildings (data centers), the shared space house (International Space Station), the other worlds around the sun (solar system), the big flat rocks we all live on (tectonic plates), sky boats with turning wings (helicopters), the bags of stuff inside you (human organs), the tiny bags of water you are made of (cells), and many, many more.
The book is also fully illustrated with diagrams of everything it’s trying to explain making it even easier to understand. The artistic style is in that unique xkcd style that we all love.
Thing Explainer is perfect to help kids (and adults) understand the complicated world better in an extremely fun way.
The Book of Life by Jiddu Krishnamurti
The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti was written by Jiddu Krishnamurti. This book is about 400 pages long, and was published back in 1995.
When he recommended The Book of Life, Naval Ravikant said, “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 have been hugely influenced by him. Probably the best book is The Book of Life, which is excerpts from his various speeches and books stitched together. 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.”
The Book of Life provides 365 meditations and wisdoms, one for each day of the year. Each month is divided into different themes. For example, January is about listening, learning, authority, and self-knowledge, while July is about happiness, grief, hurt, and sorrow.
The book is designed to be read little by little and reflected on each day. Each page is a small, yet philosophical chunk of text that will make you think about life in another way.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Meditations was written by Marcus Aurelius. The book was technically never written as a book, but it was written sometime between 161 and 180 CE. The book is less than 100 pages long depending on the version.
Naval Ravikant said, “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 that success and power don’t improve your internal state, you still have to work on it.”
Meditations is the private writings of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. In the writings he talks about how to live a great life, how to deal with private and public affairs, and most importantly, how to live a tranquil life.
He also introduces the philosophy of Stoicism, which is leaving emotions out of decisions and thinking rationally about solving problems. It is inner peace despite a chaotic life. Using this philosophy, Marcus Aurelius was able to live a life of virtue.
There are many other ideas that he touches on in Meditations like despair, conviction, human rationality, and his wisdom as a great leader on moral ethics.
Fun fact: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius was also a Ryan Holiday book recommendation.
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet was written by Kahlil Gibran, published in 1923, and is a short read at just 96 pages.
Naval Ravikant had quite a lot to say when recommending the book, stating: “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, non-denominational, and non-sectarian. I loved this book.”
He also said, “He has a gift for poetically describing what children are like, what lovers are like, what marriage should be like, how you should treat your enemies and your friends, how you should work with money, what can you think of every time you have to kill something to eat it. I felt, like the great religious books, it gave a very deep, very philosophical, but very true answer to how to approach the major problems in life. I recommend the prophet to anybody, whether you’re religious or not. Whether you are Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or Atheist. I think it’s a beautiful book, and it’s worth reading.”
In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran gives us his thoughts about many aspects of life including love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
The 28 chapters of The Prophet are told through the eyes of the prophet, Al Mustafa, who is about to board a ship to go back to his hometown. Before he is able to board the ship he is stopped by a group of people and he starts to discuss life and the human condition with them.
The Prophet is one of the most popular philosophical books of all time.
The Book of Secrets by Osho
The Book of Secrets: 112 Meditations to Discover the Mystery Within was written by Osho. It was originally published in 1974 and is quite a big book at 1328 pages in length.
When Naval Ravikant recommended The Book of Secrets, he wrote on his website, “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 Book of Secrets is a guide of 112 methods of meditation. The goal is to use the methods in this book to find the best way to meditate for you. Osho believes that you can find the perfect form of meditation in just half an hour.
Once you have found the method of meditation, Osho says that you should keep doing the method for 21 days until you master it. He then says that once you succeed in one technique you can succeed in any technique.
This book is for those who are looking to change the outlook of their life, to think more about their life, and find themselves.