Arnold Van Den Berg recommends books

The books that I would recommend reading can be divided into three categories: investing, philosophy and health.

For investing, I would recommend reading "The Intelligent Investor." I also believe reading Berkshire Hathaway’s current and historical annual reports (located on the Berkshire website), "The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America" by L.A. Cunningham, and the "Cardozo Law Review Volume 19" is well worth the time. The late Philip Fisher wrote several books that are very good: "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits", "Conservative Investors Sleep Well," "Pathways to Wealth Through Commons Stocks," and "Developing an Investment Philosophy." Seth Klarman’s "Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor" is a good book about risk. An easy, but good, read for those just getting started would be "Value Investing Made Easy" by Janet Lowe. Then there is Roger Lowenstein’s "When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management;" there are some great lessons in that book. And for a more in-depth understanding, lifetime study, and reference is "Security Analysis" by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd.

As for philosophical books, I would like to recommend several that have had a major influence on my life: "From Poverty to Power," "Eight Pillars of Prosperity" and "As a Man Thinketh." These are written by James Allen who is my favorite author. James Allen was a man who devoted his life to seeking the truth. He wrote many other books that are all worth reading. Each of these books has tremendous lifetime principles – you must read these books over and over because each time you do, you will get more out of them. I have been reading James Allen’s "From Poverty to Power" for more than 30 years. It’s only after you experience something that you can go back and say, “Oh! Now I understand this!”, so I prefer to read his and other good books many times over, rather than just reading more books that don’t seem to add more than the original great works.

A sub-category of philosophy is goal setting. Here, I would recommend "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill, and "The Wisdom of Your Subconscious Mind" and "The Knack of Using Your Subconscious Mind," both by J.K. Williams. J.K. Williams spent over 50 years studying the subconscious mind.

In the area of health, I would recommend "The China Study" by Dr. Colin Campbell. It is my personal feeling that this book will be as important to health one day as "Security Analysis" is to stocks.