The Bookshelf

Read what the
dealmakers read

Every profile and playbook on this site stands on a shelf of books. These are the ones worth owning, organised the way we’d hand them to a first-year analyst.

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The Raider Era

The deals and dealmakers of the 1980s — the decade that invented modern M&A.

Cover of Barbarians at the Gate

Barbarians at the Gate

Bryan Burrough & John Helyar

The $25B RJR Nabisco LBO — still the best business narrative ever written.

Cover of The Titans of Takeover

The Titans of Takeover

Robert Slater

The 1987 classic on the original corporate raiders — the book behind the name of this site.

Cover of The Predators' Ball

The Predators' Ball

Connie Bruck

Milken, Drexel, and the junk-bond machine that financed the entire takeover era.

Cover of Den of Thieves

Den of Thieves

James B. Stewart

Pulitzer-winning account of how the 1980s boom ended in handcuffs.

Cover of King Icahn

King Icahn

Mark Stevens

The only serious biography of the most feared name in corporate America.

Billionaire Playbooks

How the largest fortunes in finance were actually built — told by, and about, the builders.

Cover of King of Capital

King of Capital

David Carey & John E. Morris

Schwarzman and Blackstone: from two men and $400K to the dominant PE franchise.

Cover of How to Get Rich

How to Get Rich

Felix Dennis

The publishing tycoon’s brutally honest anti-guru guide to building wealth.

Cover of How to Be a Billionaire

How to Be a Billionaire

Martin Fridson

Proven strategies from the titans of wealth — the patterns behind self-made fortunes.

How to Make a Few Billion Dollars

Brad Jacobs

The serial billionaire behind XPO and QXO on building seven billion-dollar companies.

Cover of Hess: The Last Oil Baron

Hess: The Last Oil Baron

Jessica Resnick-Ault & Tina Davis

Leon Hess built an oil empire from a single delivery truck — and kept it in the family.

Life on the Desk

What the job is actually like, from the people who survived it.

Cover of Liar's Poker

Liar's Poker

Michael Lewis

Salomon Brothers at its peak — the book every analyst reads before the first seat.

Cover of Monkey Business

Monkey Business

John Rolfe & Peter Troob

The unsanitized truth about the analyst years at DLJ. Funny, brutal, accurate.

Crisis & Risk

What happens when leverage, genius, and hubris collide.

Cover of When Genius Failed

When Genius Failed

Roger Lowenstein

LTCM: two Nobel laureates, 25x leverage, and the fund that nearly broke the system.

Cover of Too Big to Fail

Too Big to Fail

Andrew Ross Sorkin

The hour-by-hour reconstruction of 2008 from inside the rooms where it was fought.

The Technical Shelf

The reference that never leaves the desk.

Cover of Investment Banking: Valuation, LBOs, M&A, and IPOs

Investment Banking: Valuation, LBOs, M&A, and IPOs

Joshua Rosenbaum & Joshua Pearl

Comps, DCF, LBO modeling, and sell-side process exactly as used on the job. The technical bible.

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