30 books that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates recommend you read

This book on innovation explains how companies can become disruptors. It's one of three books Bezos made his top executives read one summer to map out Amazon's trajectory.

Also on that list was "The Goal," in which Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox examine the theory of constraints from a management perspective.

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The final book on Bezos' reading list for senior managers, "The Effective Executive" lays out habits of successful executives, like time management and effective decision-making.

This book draws on six years of research from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business that looks into what separates exceptional companies from their competitors. Bezos has said it's his "favorite business book."

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This Kazuo Ishiguro novel tells of an English butler in wartime England who begins to question his lifelong loyalty to his employer while on a vacation.

Bezos has said of the book, "Before reading it, I didn't think a perfect novel was possible."

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the term "black swan" with this book, in which he defines such events as highly improbable, unpredictable, and impactful. 

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In his autobiography, the billionaire Walmart founder Sam Walton recalls his career building one of the world's largest retailers.

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Steve Grand discusses artificial life through the lens of his 1996 computer game Creatures in this book.

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This book imparts lessons about improving efficiency based on case studies of lean companies across various industries.

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One of Musk's most recent picks, this book tackles longtermism, which its author defines as "the view that positively affecting the long-run future is a key moral priority of our time." Musk says the book is a "close match" for his philosophy.

Musk has also recommended several books on artificial intelligence, including this one, which considers questions about the future of intelligent life in a world where machines might become smarter than people.

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On the subject of AI, Musk said in a 2014 tweet that this book, which examines its risks and potential, is also "worth reading."

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In this book, MIT professor Max Tegmark writes about ensuring artificial intelligence and technological progress remain beneficial for human life in the future.

Peter Thiel shares lessons he learned founding companies like PayPal and Palantir in this book.

Musk has said of the book, "Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how."

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Musk has said he read a lot of fantasy and science-fiction novels as a kid, including the classic J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy.

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In the same vein, Musk read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as a teenager and has even said the spacecraft in it is his favorite sci-fi spacecraft.

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Musk's reading list isn't without biographies, including this Walter Isaacson book on Benjamin Franklin.

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Musk enjoyed Isaacson's biography on Albert Einstein as well.

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In his 2022 summer reading list, Gates highlighted this work by Vaclav Smil that explores the fundamental forces underlying today's world, including matters like energy production and globalization.

"If you want a brief but thorough education in numeric thinking about many of the fundamental forces that shape human life, this is the book to read," Gates said of the book.

Also on that reading list was speculative fiction novel "The Power." Here, author Naomi Alderman explores gender roles and gender inequality by centering on a world in which young women suddenly gain the ability to shoot deadly electrical jolts from their hands, coming to wield more power, literally and figuratively, than men.

"I gained a stronger and more visceral sense of the abuse and injustice many women experience today," Gates said of the book.

Ezra Klein argues that the American political system has became polarized around identity to dangerous effect in this book, also on Gates' summer reading list in 2022, that Gates calls "a fascinating look at human psychology."

Another one of Gates' favorite books is "Tap Dancing to Work," written by one of his closest friends, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

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Gates also likes former president Jimmy Carter's "A Full Life." 

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Gates has said this is "the best business book I've ever read." It compiles 12 articles that originally appeared in The New Yorker about moments of success and failure at companies like General Electric and Xerox.

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This book investigates the thinking patterns and tendencies that distort people's perceptions of the world. Gates has called it "one of the most educational books I've ever read."

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David Christian takes on the history of our universe, from the Big Bang to mass globalization, in this book.

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"Range" explores the idea that, though modern work puts a premium on specialization, being a generalist is actually the way to go. Gates has said Epstein's ideas here "even help explain some of Microsoft's success, because we hired people who had real breadth within their field and across domains."

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Elizabeth Kolbert plumbs the history of Earth's mass extinctions in this book, including a sixth extinction, which some scientists warn is already underway.

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This Archie Brown book examines political leadership throughout the 20th century.

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Randall Munroe, creator of the hit web comic xkcd, proposes funny yet informative answers to life's wildest hypothetical questions in this book.

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