Peter Thiel Book Recommendations

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

by Rene Girard

"We [followers of Girard], had sort of a sense that we had figured out the truth about the world in a way that nobody else did." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Psychopolitics

Conversations with Trevor Cribben Merrill

by Jean-Michel Oughourlian

"For a fresh application of Mr. Girard’s insights into power politics, that great international theater of irrationality." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Originals

How Non-Conformists Move the World

by Adam Grant

"It can sometimes seem as if one must learn everything old before one can try anything new. [The author] does a masterful job showing that is not the case; we are lucky to have him as a guide." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Lord of the Rings (4 books)

"The classic [series] I always give." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

by Ben Horowitz

"[The author] has written the first true guide for protecting a startup from self-sabotage." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World

From Marathon to Waterloo

by Edward Shepherd Creasy

"Peter [Thiel] would, at one point, pass me a copy of [this book], the book he had read as he’d mulled his options over." - Ryan Holiday (Source)

The Decadent Society

How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

by Ross Gregory Douthat

"Sets the stakes for the most urgent public debate of the 2020s: How do we get back to the future?" - Peter Thiel (Source)

Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

"When I first read [Ayn Rand's books] in the late 80s, it felt pretty crazy. And in the last decades, it's in many ways felt much more correct." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Great Illusion

A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage

by Norman Angell

"I like the genre of past books written about the future." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Resurrection from the Underground

Feodor Dostoevsky

by Rene Girard

"The great French thinker René Girard’s classic study of Fyodor Dostoevsky." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

"The devil shows up in Stalinist Russia, [...] and gives everybody what they want, and everything goes haywire." - Peter Thiel (Source)

100 Plus

by Sonia Arrison

"Its message is evergreen: how scientists are directly attacking the problem of aging and death and why we should fight for life instead of accepting decay as inevitable." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Reasonableness of Christianity

by John Locke

"Said that Christ obviously had to mislead people, since if he had not done so, the authorities might have tried to kill him." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The American Challenge

by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber

"I like the genre of past books written about the future." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Bloodlands

Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

by Timothy Snyder

"Tells how the Nazis and the Soviets drove each other to ever more murderous atrocities as they fought to dominate Eastern Europe." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Diamond Age

Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

by Neal Stephenson

"I like the genre of past books written about the future." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Sovereign Individual

Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

by James Dale Davidson

"One of the books that tremendously influenced me when I started PayPal." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The New Atlantis

by Sir Francis Bacon

"I like the genre of past books written about the future." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Holy Bible

Peter Thiel says The New Testament has influenced him more than The Old Testament. (Source)

Life After Google

The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

by George Gilder

"The future depends on human action." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Dangerous

by Milo Yiannopoulos

"If you don't use your freedom of speech, one day you might find that it's gone. Buy this book while it's legal." - Peter Thiel (Source)

7 Powers

The Foundations of Business Strategy

by Hamilton Helmer

"[The author] understands that strategy starts with invention. He can't tell you what to invent, but he can and does show what it takes for a new invention to become a valuable business." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The City and the Stars

by Arthur C. Clarke

"One of [Peter Thiel's] favorite novels." - Ryan Holiday (Source)

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

by Thomas Piketty

"Accurately describes inequality in the past and present of countries like the United States." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Ego Is the Enemy

by Ryan Holiday

Peter Thiel quoted this book to the author. (Source)

Paradise Lost

by John Milton

"The mind is its own place and of itself can make a hell of heaven, and a heaven of hell." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

"All happy families are alike, and all unhappy families are unhappy in their own special way." - Peter Thiel (Source)

The Messianic Character of American Education

by Rousas John Rushdoony

"[The author's] best book." - Peter Thiel (Source)

Discourses on Livy

by Niccolò Machiavelli

"Something in these pages planted itself deep into [Peter Thiel]’s mind when he first read it long ago." - Ryan Holiday (Source)

Cryptonomicon

by Neal Stephenson

"The early PayPal team worked well together because we were all the same kind of nerd. We all loved science fiction: Cryptonomicon was required reading." - Peter Thiel (Source)