The Best Books I Read in 2023

I skipped this last year for some reason. But I’m back with the best books I read in 2023. Some business, history, longevity, investing, and a little golf. View past lists (2017 through 2021) here. Enjoy!

1/ Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. In the late 1920s, the Osage Indians in Oklahoma were the richest people in the United States. This wonderful book chronicles terrible crimes committed against various tribes and the formation of the FBI that ultimately solved and exposed the atrocities. You forget that the FBI (and police departments in general) are a 19th and 20th-century phenomenon. Apparently, they just made this book into a movie. Looking forward to it.

2/ Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis. The story of Sam Bankman Fried and the collapse of FTX. I knew most of the story before reading this one so I didn’t learn all that much but Michael Lewis is just so good. More people would read if more authors wrote like him.

3/ Greatest Game Ever Played, The: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf by Mark Frost. I’ve been meaning to read this one for a long time. The story of a young caddie who wins the US Open in Brookline, Massachusetts, against all odds. Tremendous read.

4/ Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia MD. Sort of a bible for those interested in longevity (we all should be!). He dives deep into what he calls the Four Horsemen, or chronic diseases of aging: heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and type 2 diabetes. Fun fact: for every human over the age of 100, there are about nine billionaires.

5/ The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing by Ben Graham. I read this because I saw that Warren Buffett said that chapters 8 and 20 are the “bedrock of my investing activities for the last 60 years.” The whole thing is good. Lots of fundamental truths investors need to know.

6/ The Little Book of Valuation: How to Value a Company, Pick a Stock and Profit by Aswath Damodaran. A great primer on how to value companies. It's sort of a textbook, but it doesn’t go too deep and is a relatively easy read on the fundamentals of companies at the earliest stages to post-IPO.

7/ When Money Destroys Nations: How Hyperinflation Ruined Zimbabwe, How Ordinary People Survived, and Warnings for Nations that Print Money by Phillip Haslam. An excellent history of the inflation crisis in Zimbabwe where the government was forced to raise interest rates to over 5000% to bring it under control. So many factors contributed to this crisis, not the least of which was the terrible wars in Zimbabwe that took so many men out of the workforce and forced the government to provide enormous amounts of government assistance, contributing to massive increases in prices.

8/ A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution by Jeremy D. Popkic. I guess I never studied the French Revolution in school because this was mostly new content for me. Just a fascinating time in history and such an important step forward for liberal democracy across the world.

9/ The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World by James Burnham. A fascinating and important book written in 1941 on the shaping of society that has turned out to be very true. Burnham argues that capitalism is dead and that it has been replaced not by socialism but by a new economic system called managerialism — rule by administrators in business and government.

10/ Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio. Really solid insights and perspectives from the founder and CEO of Bridgewater Associates. He talks a lot about truth-seeking, which is so critical to be successful in business. He pushes the reader to be “radically open-minded” and have a genuine worry that their ego might be getting in the way of seeing the world as it is and making the optimal decision. Great read.