Books for understanding money

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• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds · The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs in real life, people who risk everything to earn more, and faster.

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• Robinson Crusoe · Two castaways far from home. Ulysses gets through with cunning; Robinson, with work and accounts.

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• David Copperfield · Two debtors. Antonio pledges his own body as collateral; Micawber ends up in debtors' prison.

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• The Merchant of Venice · Two comedies about moneylenders. Shylock asks for a pound of flesh as collateral; Harpagon hides 25 % interest behind 5 %.
• The Richest Man in Babylon · Mathon, Clason's moneylender, lends with care; Harpagon lends with tricks. Two opposite portraits of the same trade.

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• Steppenwolf · Two men alone. Robinson's solitude is forced on him by a shipwreck; Harry Haller chooses his.

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• Robinson Crusoe · Two ways of keeping accounts, Micawber's rule and Robinson's list of evils and goods.

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• David Copperfield · Poverty with dignity. The colonel and Micawber keep up appearances even though they have nothing to do it with.

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• The Merchant of Venice · Italian merchants and loans. Fibonacci taught them to do the sums; Shakespeare showed what happens when a loan goes wrong.
• Essay on the Nature of Trade in General · Two books written for merchants, five centuries apart.

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• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds · Cantillon got rich from the John Law bubble that Mackay tells about, and sold before it burst.

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• No One Writes to the Colonel · Two Colombian stories about what the state owes people, a tax nobody was consulted on and a pension that never arrives.
• Essay on the Nature of Trade in General · Cantillon explains how a change in money and prices hits some people first and others later; in Socorro, the new taxes hit first those who sold at the market.

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• Liber Abaci · Ferguson begins his history of banking with Fibonacci, who brought to Europe the numbers used to calculate interest.
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds · Both tell of John Law's bubble and the Mississippi Company, Mackay in 1841 and Ferguson with what is known today.
• The Signal and the Noise · Ferguson wrote just before the 2008 crisis; Silver explains why almost nobody saw it coming.

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• The Art of Thinking Clearly · Dobelli lists thinking errors; Kahneman explains where they come from, with the theory of two systems.
• Nudge · Kahneman describes how the mind goes wrong; Thaler and Sunstein, how to design decisions so those errors weigh less.
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds · The bubbles Mackay tells about are overconfidence and social proof on the scale of a country.

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• Thinking, Fast and Slow · The same story seen from two sides, Kahneman from psychology and Thaler from economics. They worked together.
• Nudge · Misbehaving tells how the idea of nudges was born and how it reached governments.
• Pequeño cerdo capitalista · Macías teaches you to see small daily expenses; Thaler explains why they slip away, because we do not treat all money the same, it depends on the mental drawer we put it in.

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• Atomic Habits · Both say surroundings matter more than willpower. Clear applies it to yourself; Thaler and Sunstein, to whoever designs other people's choices.
• The Odyssey · Save More Tomorrow is tying yourself to the mast, committing today to save the pay raises still to come.
• Pequeño cerdo capitalista · Saving automatically, so you do not depend on remembering or on willpower.

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• Algorithms to Live By · Both teach Bayes' rule and overfitting, updating what we believe with each new piece of data without mistaking noise for signal.
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds · Mackay tells of the 18th-century bubbles; Silver, of the 2008 one, and why almost nobody saw it coming.
• Thinking, Fast and Slow · Experts are wrong with great confidence. Kahneman explains why; Silver shows how to forecast better.

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• Misbehaving · Thaler studies with experiments the money mistakes that Housel tells with anecdotes.
• The Good Life · Housel says the hardest skill is knowing when you have enough; the Harvard study shows what matters more than money in a good life.
• Pequeño cerdo capitalista · Two widely read books on saving. Housel says wealth is what you do not spend; Macías teaches you to find that money in small daily expenses.

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• Aesop's Fables · Small daily expenses and the ant in the fable, two ways of explaining that small things, repeated, become big.
• David Copperfield · Micawber's rule and Macías's budget say the same thing 160 years apart, spend a little less than what comes in.
• Atomic Habits · Saving as a small, automatic habit, not as a heroic effort.

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• The Odyssey · A savings account that does not let you withdraw money early was studied under Ulysses' name, tying yourself to the mast so as not to spend.
• Nudge · Both show that saving depends more on how choices are designed than on willpower.
• The Lean Startup · Two faces of entrepreneurship, the business tested in order to grow and the one started because there are no jobs.

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• Designing Your Life · The same idea applied to different things, testing small before deciding. Ries with a business, Burnett and Evans with your own life.
• The Signal and the Noise · Both ask you to treat what you believe as a hypothesis and change your mind when the data says so.
• Pequeño cerdo capitalista · Macías teaches you to look after your own money; Ries, not to spend it on a business before knowing if anyone wants it.

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• Man's Search for Meaning · Frankl held on by thinking of his wife; 85 years of data say relationships are what matters most in a good life.
• Nonviolent Communication · Waldinger says relationships are cared for like health; Rosenberg gives a concrete way to do it when there is conflict.
• Pequeño cerdo capitalista · Money does matter for well-being, but it does not replace friends. A good pair for the Need or want? lesson.

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• Aesop's Fables · Two books of parables about saving, Aesop's ant and Clason's Arkad, who keeps one of every ten coins.
• Nudge · Clason asks you to pay yourself first; studies of automatic saving show why it works.
• Rich Dad Poor Dad · Two widely read money parables, written by people who profited from selling what they recommend.

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• Pequeño cerdo capitalista · Two money books widely read in Latin America. Macías teaches you to keep accounts; Kiyosaki sells a formula for getting rich. Comparing them is a good lesson.
• The Art of Thinking Clearly · An inspiring story and a "rich dad" nobody has been able to identify. Dobelli teaches you to distrust exactly that kind of tale.

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• Poor Economics · Yunus promises that microcredit will end poverty; Banerjee and Duflo tell of the experiments that put it to the test.
• The Merchant of Venice · Two ways of securing a loan, Shylock's pound of flesh and the pressure of a group of neighbors.