Naval Ravikant

Entrepreneur, Executive, Investor

Naval Ravikant is an American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList.

Naval Ravikant's 170 Book Recommendations

• Freedom from the Known
• Thinking, Fast and Slow
• Letters from a Stoic
• The Sun Rises in the Evening
• Think on These Things
• The Compleat Strategyst
• The Origins of Virtue
• Principles
• The Evolution of Cooperation
• Homo Deus
• The Untethered Soul
• Six Easy Pieces
• The Elephant in the Brain
• Thinking Physics: Understandable Practical Reality
• V for Vendetta Book and Mask Set
• The Surrender Experiment
• Reality Is Not What It Seems
• Pre-Suasion
• Total Freedom
• Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It
• The Sovereign Individual
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• The Diamond Age
• Transmetropolitan Book One
• Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
• Convict Conditioning
• Hamlet
• The Prophet
• Wind, Sand and Stars
• Art of the Living Dead
• Man's Search For Meaning
• The Agile Gene
• Waking Up
• The Evolution of Everything
• Sapiens
• Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
• How Innovation Works
• Tao Te Ching
• A Cultural History of Physics
• The Salmon of Doubt
• The Truth about Carbs
• Nature Via Nurture
• Genome
• Meditations
• The Macintosh Way
• Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts
• The Book of Five Rings
• The Lifecycle of Software Objects
• Poor Charlie's Almanack
• Economics in One Lesson
• A Soldier of the Great War
• Flowers for Algernon
• The Rational Optimist
• The Beginning of Infinity
• War Nerd
• Calculus Made Easy
• Soon I Will be Invincible
• Who We Are and How We Got Here
• How to Change Your Mind
• The Fabric of Reality
• Vasistha's Yoga
• The Jack Vance Treasury
• The Heart of Yoga
• Math, Better Explained
• Great Short Poems
• How to Teach Your Baby Math
• No bullshit guide to math and physics
• Infinite Powers
• Exhalation
• Fallen Leaves
• Absolute Tao
• Dreamstate
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
• 100 Best-Loved Poems
• Diaspora
• The Wealth of Nations
• Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic
• At Home in the Universe
• The Order of Time
• The Path to Love
• The Lessons of History
• The Book of Nothing
• A Pattern Language
• Permutation City
• Direct Truth
• Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field
• 12 Rules for Life
• Lord of Light
• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
• The Bhagavad Gita
• Stories of Your Life and Others
• Siddhartha
• Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart
• The Tao of Philosophy
• The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
• The Power of Habit
• Live Your Truth
• The Power of Myth
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Falling into Grace
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
• What Do You Care What Other People Think?
• The Art of Manipulation
• The Story of Philosophy
• Thermoinfocomplexity
• Superintelligence
• The Undercover Economist
• Sex at Dawn
• God's Debris
• Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track
• Genius
• The Power of Now: “Start with "The Power of Now" if you haven't read it yet. If inspired, move to meditation.”
• Illusions: “Not quite. The closest is Illusions by Richard Bach, more of a midwestern-Jesus version than an eastern-Buddha tale.”
• I Am That: “It moves around. Keep coming back to I Am That, Direct Truth, Vasistha's Yoga, Jed McKenna, and Ashtavakra Gita.”
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature: “Matt is a scientist, optimist, and forward thinker. One of my favorite authors. I've read everything of his, and reread everything of his.”
• Skin in the Game: “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.”
• The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms: “This is his collection of ancient wisdom.”
• The Black Swan: Second Edition: “He is also famous for The Black Swan, Antifragile, and Fooled by Randomness, all of which are worth reading.”
• Antifragile: “He is also famous for The Black Swan, Antifragile, and Fooled by Randomness, all of which are worth reading.”
• Fooled by Randomness: “He is also famous for The Black Swan, Antifragile, and Fooled by Randomness, all of which are worth reading.”
• Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time: “I would give my kids a copy of Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces.”
• Thing Explainer: “A great book by Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd, a very science-oriented webcomic.)”
• Seven Brief Lessons on Physics: “I've read this one at least twice.”
• Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach: “The first thing I would do is start meditating, and then I would read, concurrently I would read Objective Knowledge by Karl Popper.”
• Jed McKenna's Theory of Everything: The Enlightened Perspective: “Everything by Jed McKenna. Jed spits raw truth. His style may be off-putting but the dedication to truth is unparalleled.”
• Jed McKenna's Notebook: “Everything by Jed McKenna. Jed spits raw truth. His style may be off-putting but the dedication to truth is unparalleled.”
• Jed Talks #1: Essays, Teachings, Rants & Frivolous Frivolity: “Everything by Jed McKenna. Jed spits raw truth. His style may be off-putting but the dedication to truth is unparalleled.”
• Jed Talks #2: “Everything by Jed McKenna. Jed spits raw truth. His style may be off-putting but the dedication to truth is unparalleled.”
• A Master's Secret Whispers: For Those Who Abhor the Noise and Seek the Truth About Life and Living: “Everything by Kapil Gupta, MD. Kapil recently became a personal advisor and coach to me, and this comes from a person who doesn't believe in coaches.”
• Atmamun: The Path to Achieving the Bliss of the Himalayan Swamis and the Freedom of a Living God: “Everything by Kapil Gupta, MD. Kapil recently became a personal advisor and coach to me, and this comes from a person who doesn't believe in coaches.”
• The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti: “Probably the best book is The Book of Life, which is excerpts from his various speeches and books stitched together.”
• The Book of Secrets: 112 Meditations to Discover the Mystery Within: “If you want to run through a bunch of them, you can pick up a book called The Book of Secrets by Osho.”
• The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell: “Two great books, kind of give you an idea of what you could be facing in your psychedelic trips coming up.”
• The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: “They complement James Fadiman's book very well.”
• Know Yourself: An Explanation of the Oneness of Being: “This is the best book on spirituality I've ever read by far.”
• The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness: “Alan Watts beautifully describes wu-wei which is do nothing and no mind which is mu-shin.”
• The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are: “I would recommend anything by Alan Watts, but two books in specific are The book: The taboo against knowing who you are. That's a great book”
• The Way of Zen: “The way of Zen is just awesome because Zen is beautiful”
• Ficciones: “His short story collection Ficciones, or Labyrinths, is amazing.”
• Labyrinths: “His short story collection Ficciones, or Labyrinths, is amazing.”
• Snow Crash: “Snow Crash is an amazing, amazing book. There's nothing quite similar to Snow Crash. Snow Crash is in a league of its own.”
• Counsels and Maxims: “I mean, there's ancient wisdom in Schopenhauer, read Counsels and Maxims.”
• The Boys, Volume 1: The Name of the Game: “There are actually some really good graphic novels out there. If you're open to the cartoony element of it, Transmetropolitan, The Boys, Planetary, and The Sandman ... some of these are, I think, among the finest works of art of our age.”
• Planetary, Volume 1: All Over the World and Other Stories: “There are actually some really good graphic novels out there. If you're open to the cartoony element of it, Transmetropolitan, The Boys, Planetary, and The Sandman ... some of these are, I think, among the finest works of art of our age.”
• The Sandman, Volume 1: Preludes & Nocturnes: “There are actually some really good graphic novels out there. If you're open to the cartoony element of it, Transmetropolitan, The Boys, Planetary, and The Sandman ... some of these are, I think, among the finest works of art of our age.”
• Airman's Odyssey: “I recommend him—he's a great author. He wrote Wind, Sand and Stars and Airman's Odyssey.”
• Liftoff: “So when you read these stories like Liftoff, which is a story of Musk and his team building the first SpaceX rocket ... these are incredibly inspiring.”
• The Soul of A New Machine: “there are other various books, like there's Soul of a New Machine, etc.—these are incredibly inspiring.”
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: “I remember that I would approach my other friends in college and would say, "This is a great book, you should read it."”
• The Strategy of Conflict: “The Schelling point is a game theory concept made famous by Thomas Schelling in his book, The Strategy of Conflict, which I recommend.”
• How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets: “When I was young, one of my favorite books on the topic was "How To Get Rich," by Felix Dennis, the founder of Maxim Magazine.”
• The Three-Body Problem
• Tools of Titans: “I'm reading Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss' book of what he learned from a lot of great performers.”
• Leviathan Wakes: “I'm a huge fan of The Expanse. There's a TV series and nine books”
• The Origin of Species: “Actually related to that, another great book that I would recommend is The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin.”
• The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí: “I'll throw two others in there. This one's a harder read but really fun, most egotistical author of all time, is The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, by Salvador Dali.”
• Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality: “Amazing book, love DeMello.”
• Influence: “I'm positive you've read this book: Robert Cialdini's Influence. Classic, classic book. Everybody should read it, memorize it”
• Philosophy and the Real World: An Introduction to Karl Popper: “There's a recent book that I found called Philosophy and the Real World, which is a little 100-page introduction to Karl Popper by Bryan Magee. And I found that to be a good lighter weight introduction.”
• The Science of Can and Can't: A Physicist's Journey through the Land of Counterfactuals: “His colleague Chiara Marletto wrote a great book, The Science of Can and Can't, that tries to explain it to the layperson.”
• What Is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches: “Most into “The Beginning of Infinity” and “What is Life?” at the moment.”
• The Heart of Awareness: A Translation of the Ashtavakra Gita: “Read it, loved it. Also, Vasistha's Yoga...”
• Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies: “Beautiful summary of an important book. Worth reading.”
• The Book of Elon: A Guide to Purpose and Success: “The only book an entrepreneur needs.”
• Spiritual Warfare: “They're worth reading. The second one drags a bit, the rest are great.”
• The Great Challenge: “Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love, Osho's book The Great Challenge, and I know people think Osho is a fake guru and all that, but he had some real stuff too.”
• The Way to Love: “Anthony de Mello, he's fantastic actually. If going to start with one book. Start with Anthony de Mello's A Way to Love or his book Awareness. They're both really good”
• Spiritual Enlightenment:: The Damnedest Thing: “They're worth reading. The second one drags a bit, the rest are great.”
• Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment: “They're worth reading. The second one drags a bit, the rest are great.”
• Distress: “Greg Egan, brilliant writer. Physicist I believe, who has written some very hardcore sci-fi stories. I've been reading a book from him called Distress.”