Billionaire Ray Dalio thinks every new college grad should read these 3 books — and they have nothing to do with finance

0 0 Thursday, December 19, 2019 Edit this post

Ray Dalio

Ray Dalio serves as co-CIO and chairman of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund.
He's recommended quite a few books over the years, crediting them to changing the way he thinks about certain concepts, like success and failure.
Here are three he talked about with "The 4-Hour Workweek" author Tim Ferriss on an episode of Ferriss' podcast.
Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Ray Dalio stands out in a crowd of investors.

His firm, Bridgewater Associates, is the world's largest hedge fund — with about $160 billion in total assets under management — and it's run according to a culture of "radical truth" and "radical transparency."

Dalio has built a workplace according to his vision of the world, and that entails meetings that are filmed so they can be analyzed, and an iPad app where employees rate one another's performance in real time.

Dalio is the co-CIO and chairman of Bridgewater, though he's stepped away from daily office management. He's also written a best-selling book called "Principles: Life and Work." It's both a short autobiography and an expanded version of his intensive list of management principles that every Bridgewater employee reads when they're hired.

During his book tour, he spoke with "The 4-Hour Workweek" author Tim Ferriss for an episode of Ferriss' podcast. Ferriss asked Dalio which books he would recommend to any new college graduate, and Dalio responded with three titles he thinks everyone should read. The books, which have nothing to do with finance, can help anyone at any stage of their careers.

"The Lessons of History" by Will and Ariel Durant

The husband-and-wife team of Will and Ariel Durant wrote 11 volumes on Western history published from 1935 to '75, ending with the Napoleonic era only because they died weeks apart from each other. They won a Pulitzer Prize for the 10th volume of that series.

Dalio recommended their brief 1968 book "The Lessons of History," an overview of recurring themes they found through analyzing thousands of years of history.

Find it here »

"River Out of Eden" by Richard Dawkins

Dalio told Ferriss he thought evolution was "the greatest force in the universe."

"I think the purpose of everything is to evolve," he added. "I think individuals are just vessels for our DNA evolving."

He recommended "River Out of Eden," from 1995, by the prominent English biologist and New Atheist thinker Richard Dawkins.

"It just really puts things in perspective," Dalio said.

Find it here »

"The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell

Dalio told Bloomberg that several years ago his son Paul, a filmmaker, gave him Joseph Campbell's 1949 classic "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." By studying the greatest myths throughout all of human history, Campbell discovered narrative structures that resonate with the human spirit.

When Dalio read it, he said he put his own life into these perspectives, and that he thought it was useful for others to do so as well.

He decided he was about to enter the third stage of his life in which he would pass on the lessons he learned throughout his career. It's why he reluctantly is a public figure, who wants to give a "parting gift" to the world through his new book and the upcoming second volume, he previously told Business Insider.