“The person who does not read has no advantage over the person who cannot read.” – Mark Twain
I’ve asked the Pure Portfolios team to provide a list of influential books they’ve read in 2025, along with a brief description or takeaway.
If you’re looking for your next book to read, this list could provide your next great journey (or maybe a gift idea for a friend or loved one!).
This is one of our most popular annual posts.
Nik Schuurmans, President
Don’t Believe Everything You Think by Joseph Nguyen
This book explores how overthinking and unexamined thoughts create unnecessary suffering. It teaches readers to detach from mental noise and find clarity through awareness rather than control.
The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham
Cunningham argues that success comes from disciplined thinking, not intelligence or hard work alone. The book provides mental frameworks to avoid costly mistakes and make higher-quality decisions.
The Humble Investor by Daniel Rasmussen
Rasmussen emphasizes long-term investing grounded in humility, patience, and empirical evidence. He critiques overconfidence, forecasting, and predicting.
The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom
This book expands the definition of wealth beyond money to include time, relationships, health, and purpose. It offers a framework for building a balanced, fulfilling life across all five dimensions.
AI Guide for Beginners by Tigran Voskanyan
The book introduces artificial intelligence concepts in clear, non-technical language. It helps readers understand practical applications, risks, and how AI will reshape everyday life and work.
From Russia With Blood by Heidi Blake
This investigative work uncovers the violent rise of Russian oligarchs and their global reach. It reveals how corruption, murder, and money intertwine with modern geopolitics.
Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor
Ngor recounts his harrowing survival of the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge. The memoir is a testament to human endurance, loss, and the will to survive.
To the Edge of the Sky by Anhua Gao
This memoir follows Gao’s escape from an oppressive rural life in China through education and perseverance. It highlights resilience, ambition, and the cost of personal freedom.
The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins
Robbins introduces a mindset of releasing control over others’ behavior to reduce stress and resentment. The book empowers readers to focus on what they can control and reclaim emotional energy.
How Countries Go Broke by Ray Dalio
Dalio examines historical debt cycles and the forces that lead nations toward financial collapse. He provides a framework for understanding fiscal instability and future economic risks.
The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel
Housel explores how psychology and values shape spending decisions more than math. The book argues that purposeful spending is key to happiness and financial peace.
The Strategists – Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler by Phillips Payson O’Brien
This book analyzes how five leaders’ personalities shaped their wartime strategies and decisions. It shows how character, ideology, and circumstance influenced the course of World War II.
Toby Weber, CFO
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History by Andrew Ross Sorkin
This book reconstructs the build-up to the 1929 stock market crash, explaining how leverage, speculation, and policy missteps produced a catastrophic unraveling of Wall Street.
The Gatekeeper / Deadlock / Chain Reaction by James Byrne
Byrne’s series follows a highly capable private operative who is drawn into international conspiracies involving powerful governments, corporations, and criminal networks.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
This book distills Naval Ravikant’s ideas on building wealth through leverage, ownership, judgment, and technology-driven opportunity. It also presents his views on happiness, self-knowledge, and decision-making, emphasizing compounding benefits from clear thinking, autonomy, and long-term focus.
What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe
A major work of U.S. history covering 1815–1848, it shows how transportation revolutions, market expansion, and communications technologies transformed the country’s economy and politics.
How Not to Invest by Barry Ritholtz
Ritholtz uses case studies and data to illustrate the common mistakes that cause investors to underperform, including performance chasing, overconfidence, and ignoring basic diversification
The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom
This book argues that true wealth spans five domains—financial, social, physical, mental, and time—and that focusing solely on money produces an unbalanced life.
The Humble Investor by Daniel Rasmussen
Rasmussen contrasts evidence-based, historically grounded investing with the overconfidence and storytelling that dominate professional money management. He advocates for humility, simple rules, and statistical edge, arguing that investors should respect base rates and avoid narratives unsupported by data.
Julie Johnsen, Client Service Associate
The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
Follows a young woman who moves into a quirky Washington, D.C. boardinghouse in the 1950s, hoping to escape her past. As she grows close to the other women living there, she realizes each of them is hiding something—and danger starts creeping closer from all sides.
Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
Ina Garten shares stories from her childhood, career twists, and the moments that shaped her happiest successes. She talks about how “luck” is usually a mix of hard work, paying attention to what matters, and being open to change.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
A sci-fi adventure about a lone astronaut who wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of who he is or why he’s there—only to realize he’s on a last-ditch mission to save Earth from an extinction-level threat.
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
A mystery centered on a wealthy family whose daughter vanishes from an Adirondack summer camp, mirroring her brother’s disappearance years before. As the search widens, investigators and locals uncover buried secrets about privilege, power, and the community’s complicity.
Colin Purcell, Chief Compliance Officer
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
A dystopian social science fiction novel largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy. The novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story’s protagonist.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
This tour of the mind aims to explain two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and the faults and biases—of fast thinking and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior.
Status and Culture by W. David Marx
David Marx weaves together the wisdom from history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, cultural theory, literary theory, art history, media studies, and neuroscience to demonstrate exactly how individual status seeking creates our cultural ecosystem.
Tim Metz, Associate Advisor
A Small Band of Men: 20 Years in the Hong Kong Marine Police by Les Bird
A fascinating real-life account of a career in Colonial Hong Kong. He joins the Marine Police in 1976 and ends up with a front-row seat to a rapidly changing city in the run-up to the 1997 handover. Along the way, his unit deals with high-stakes issues like refugees fleeing Vietnam and the smuggling of guns, drugs, and people to or from Communist China.
Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
A true-adventure account of the early American push to the Pacific Northwest, as Astor and Jefferson set out to build a West Coast colony and turn the young nation into a Pacific trading power.
Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
An easy-to-read framework for understanding Asia’s role in global development through the lens of supply chains, industrial policy, and geopolitics. It is an absorbing look at how microchips became the “strategic terrain” beneath modern economic and military power.
How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement by Christine Benz
A practical book to counterweight to numbers-only planning—retirement success isn’t just math, it is behavior, purpose, and flexibility. Benz structures this book around 20 “core lessons” drawn from conversations with leading retirement thinkers, deliberately blending the financial mechanics with the non-financial realities of retirement.
Tristan Mancisidor, Paraplanner
Organize Tomorrow Today by Dr. Jason Selk & Tom Bartow
Selk and Bartow break down productivity into simple, actionable behaviors, prioritizing the “critical few,” strengthening mental discipline, and eliminating the barriers that hold people back from peak performance.
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
Housel explores how emotions, biases, and personal experiences shape our financial decisions far more than spreadsheets or data. Through engaging stories and memorable lessons, the book highlights why managing money well is more about behavior than intelligence.
The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel
Housel digs into what it means to spend money in ways that maximize happiness and fulfillment. Instead of prescribing rules, he encourages readers to align spending with values, priorities, and long-term meaning. The book prompts a refreshing reflection: not just how we earn money, but how we use it to build a better life.
Great on the Job by Jodi Glickman
Glickman delivers a practical toolkit for communicating effectively in professional environments. From crafting clear updates to navigating difficult conversations, the book outlines simple but powerful frameworks for becoming someone colleagues can rely on. It’s a standout resource for leveling up workplace communication and leadership skills.
Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems by Paul A. Czysz & Claudio Bruno
Explores the cutting edge of spacecraft propulsion, from nuclear thermal concepts to advanced plasma systems and beyond. Czysz and Bruno examine engineering, physics, and future potential of systems that could someday enable deep-space exploration.
Energy From the Vacuum by Thomas E. Bearden
Bearden presents unconventional perspectives on energy systems, zero-point theory, and emerging ideas in physics. The book challenges traditional assumptions and invites readers to consider bold possibilities in the future of energy technology. It’s a thought-provoking exploration at the intersection of science, theory, and innovation.
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Pure Portfolios wishes all of our clients, partners, and readers a wonderful holiday season!
Have a book you would like to recommend? Shoot us an email insight@pureportfolios.com.