If You Read These 5 Books, You'll Be Richer In 2025 — Warren Buffett Swears By Them

He’s long credited reading as the cornerstone of his success. “Read 500 pages like this every day,” he once said, pointing to a stack of reports. “That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.” So when Warren Buffett points you to five books that he believes will make you richer — not just metaphorically, but materially — it’s worth more than just a glance. It’s a roadmap to understanding money, markets, and the mindset of the truly wealthy.

Here are the five books Buffett holds in the highest regard — curated wisdom that he believes could enrich your mind, and your bank account, in 2025 and beyond.

1. Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd

Buffett encountered Security Analysis during his time at Columbia University, where he studied under Benjamin Graham himself. “The book and the men changed my life,” Buffett once stated, echoing a sentiment that many disciplined investors have felt after attempting to crack open this 700-page behemoth. First published in 1934 during the thick fog of the Great Depression, Security Analysis introduced the now-sacrosanct concept of value investing — the idea of buying undervalued stocks and holding them until their real worth surfaces.

This isn’t light reading — you won’t breeze through it with a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning. But for those willing to wrestle with balance sheets, income statements, and the quirks of market psychology, the reward is a superpower: the ability to evaluate the financial strength of a company on your own, without the noise of market hype.

2. The Great Crash of 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith

There’s nothing quite like a good financial disaster to teach restraint, and The Great Crash of 1929 is a masterclass in humility. Galbraith, a Harvard economist with a gift for storytelling, dissects the madness of the 1920s boom and the blind optimism that led to the most infamous stock market collapse in history. Buffett recommends it for one reason: to teach investors how to avoid the traps of crowd psychology and euphoric risk-taking.

It’s a reminder that markets are not driven solely by earnings or innovation, but by emotion — greed, fear, and the ever-present fear of missing out (now rebranded as FOMO). And while the technology may have changed, the human impulses haven’t. The lessons from 1929 still ring alarmingly true during meme stock frenzies and crypto rollercoasters.

3. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Buffett read this gem at the age of 19 and promptly decided to model his entire investment philosophy after it. Graham, often called the father of value investing, wrote The Intelligent Investor in 1949, but it has aged like a fine (if slightly austere) wine.

Unlike Security Analysis, this one is much more accessible. Graham introduces timeless principles like margin of safety, intrinsic value, and the infamous Mr. Market metaphor — in which the market is imagined as a moody business partner offering you a daily price for your holdings. Your job? Decide whether to accept, ignore, or counter.

For anyone dipping their toes into the stock market, The Intelligent Investor is both bible and compass. It doesn’t promise instant riches. It teaches the one trait Buffett says all successful investors must cultivate: rationality.

Quirk alert: Buffett still rereads this book regularly, more than 60 years after first discovering it.

4. The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

Buffett recommends this book not only to understand how tech history unfolded, but also to grasp the minds that propelled it. What makes an innovator tick? What connects them across time? And more practically: how does innovation affect business, economics, and the way we live and work?

Buffett isn’t known for betting big on tech (he famously avoided it for decades), but The Innovators gave him a human lens through which to view a digital revolution.

Behind-the-scenes nugget: Isaacson interviewed over 200 people for this book. The result reads like a Silicon Valley soap opera — but one with astonishing real-world consequences.

5. The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America compiled by Lawrence A. Cunningham

This compilation of Buffett’s annual shareholder letters is like a long, thoughtful fireside chat with the man himself. Compiled by law professor Lawrence A. Cunningham, the book offers distilled wisdom from over four decades of investing, managing, and occasionally musing on business ethics and boardroom blunders.

What sets The Essays apart is Buffett’s plainspoken brilliance. He doesn’t hedge. He doesn’t sugar-coat. And he’s often very funny. From corporate governance to mergers and acquisitions, Buffett delivers one masterclass after another in how to run a business like you care — not just about money, but about integrity.

Mini lesson: Buffett is famously frugal. He still lives in the Omaha home he bought in 1958 for $31,500 — and he once auctioned a lunch with himself for over $19 million, donating it all to charity.

So, Will These Books Make You Rich?

Reading alone won’t make you rich — but thinking differently just might. What these five books offer is not a blueprint for a get-rich-quick scheme, but something much rarer: a quiet reprogramming of how you understand value, time, risk, and opportunity.

In a world obsessed with hot takes and short attention spans, Buffett’s list is a call to slow down, dig deep, and think long-term. Whether you’re managing £500 or £5 million, the mental models in these books are priceless tools.