Reading list
Books for founders: how the first great fortunes were built
Before there were startup memoirs there were these: the men who built oil, steel, electricity and cars, explaining themselves, usually at great length and with a very good opinion of how they did it. Read them as sources, not gospel. Tarbell's history of Standard Oil is on the list because it is what happens when someone checks.
14 books, all free to read
They are ranked for a reader who builds things today, so the practical and the honest come first.
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1. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
by Benjamin Franklin
The original self-made founder: printer, publisher, inventor, diplomat, and a man with a plan to fix his own character in thirteen virtues.
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2. Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
by Andrew Carnegie
From bobbin boy in a cotton mill to the richest man in the world. Carnegie on telegraphs, railways, steel and giving it all away.
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3. The History of the Standard Oil Company
by Ida M. Tarbell
The investigation that broke up Standard Oil, built from court records and interviews. The best business book on the list, by the person who was not in business.
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4. Random Reminiscences of Men and Events
by John D. Rockefeller
Rockefeller's short, careful account of himself, written a few years after Tarbell's articles. Read the two side by side.
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5. My Life and Work
by Henry Ford
The assembly line and the five-dollar day explained by Ford. Practical and opinionated; not all of it aged well.
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6. Edison: His Life and Inventions
by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
The invention factory at Menlo Park: how Edison organised invention as a business. Long, best read a chapter at a time.
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7. My Inventions
by Nikola Tesla
Tesla's short autobiography, written for a magazine in 1919. Visions, rivalries and the induction motor.
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8. The Gospel of Wealth
by Andrew Carnegie
Carnegie's essay arguing that a man who dies rich dies disgraced. The founding text of modern philanthropy, in an hour.
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9. Up from Slavery
by Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington, born enslaved, builds Tuskegee from a shanty and an old hen house. A founder's story in the truest sense.
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10. The Americanization of Edward Bok
by Edward Bok
A Dutch immigrant boy becomes the editor who built the Ladies' Home Journal. It won the Pulitzer in 1921.
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11. Struggles and Triumphs
by P. T. Barnum
Barnum on his museum, his circus and his humbugs. The greatest marketer of his century, telling his own story.
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12. The Principles of Scientific Management
by Frederick Winslow Taylor
The short book that made management a science, for better and worse. Every productivity system descends from it.
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13. The History of the Telephone
by Herbert N. Casson
How the telephone went from Bell's workshop to a giant company in thirty years. A fast history of a startup that won.
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14. Fifty Years in Wall Street
by Henry Clews
A banker's memoir of panics, corners and the robber barons he dealt with. Gossip and history, with the warnings attached.
Read it as a path: Founders and fortunes
How the first great fortunes were built, told by the men who built them, and by one who took them on.
More lists
Read them free
Every book on this list is free in Doomreader: open one and it reads as short posts you scroll, with your place kept and its best pages a tap away. You can listen to any of them free too, read aloud by your device.