What books does Peter Thiel recommend?
Peter Thiel, the contrarian investor who co-founded PayPal and Palantir and wrote Zero to One, treats books as intellectual weapons, and his 28 book recommendations carry that argumentative charge. They surface across his long conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, his Wall Street Journal favorites, Reddit AMAs, and academic-style interviews. The reading gravitates toward society and politics, history, and philosophy, with science and technology never far behind. The writer he cites as most formative is René Girard, and the title he calls "the magisterial one" is Girard's Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. From there the shelf ranges widely: The Sovereign Individual, which he says "tremendously influenced me when I started PayPal," Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which he still thinks is "the best," and Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, once "required reading" for the early PayPal team.
Last updated January 2026 · Every recommendation cited to its original source.
byRené Girard, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, Guy Lefort
1987480 Pages“He’s the one writer who has influenced me the most. ... I think the magisterial one is probably Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Interviews / The Portal
Read by Peter Thiel, Quentin Tarantino, Joe Rogan and 2 others
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
byTom O'Neill, Dan Piepenbring
2019528 Pages“A fantastic book... shows you what they were trying to do to demonize these hippies.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Joe Rogan Experience #2190, Aug 2024
Read by Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Marc Andreessen and 5 others
The Sovereign Individual
Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
byJames Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg
1999448 Pages“One of the books that tremendously influenced me when I started PayPal.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Zero to One Notes / Interviews
Read by Peter Thiel
byTom Wolfe
1968416 Pages“I still think his greatest novel was the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which is sort of this history of the LSD counterculture movement.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Joe Rogan Experience #2190, Aug 2024
Read by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and 8 others
The Lord of the Rings
The Fellowship of the Ring / The Two Towers / The Return of the King
byJ.R.R. Tolkien
19541178 Pages(721,705)
“The classic favorite novel I always give is Lord of the Rings. I read it when I was a kid... I still think it's the best.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Business Insider Interview
Read by Peter Thiel
JFK and the Unspeakable
Why He Died and Why It Matters
byJames W. Douglass
2010560 Pages“Lee Harvey Oswald had obvious connections to U.S. intelligence... In JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass argues that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated due to his opposition to the deep state.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Joe Rogan Experience #2190, Aug 2024
Read by Peter Thiel
byNeal Stephenson
1995512 Pages“I started reading this once and was mesmerized by Stephenson’s imaginative future world.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Reddit AMA / Farnam Street
Read by Peter Thiel
The Devil's Chessboard
Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
byDavid Talbot
2015704 Pages“The Warren Commission was headed by Allen Dulles, one of JFK's enemies... [Discussed in context of the deep state and CIA history]”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Joe Rogan Experience #2190, Aug 2024
Read by Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen and 4 others
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
byBen Horowitz
2014304 Pages“Ben Horowitz knows no recipe guarantees success, and with The Hard Thing About Hard Things, he has written the first true guide for protecting a startup from self-sabotage.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Book Blurb
Read by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel and 3 others
Superintelligence
Paths, Dangers, Strategies
byNick Bostrom
2014352 Pages“The history of it... was maybe anchored on two visions of what AI meant. And one was Nick Bostrom... [who] wrote this book Superintelligence... AI was going to be this super duper intelligent thing.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Joe Rogan Experience #2190, Aug 2024
Read by Peter Thiel, Satya Nadella, Arianna Huffington and 4 others
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
byKai-Fu Lee
2018272 Pages“The book from Kai-Fu Lee represented the 'CCP rebuttal' to Bostrom's view on the future of AI.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Joe Rogan Experience #2190, Aug 2024
Read by Peter Thiel
byNeal Stephenson
1999918 Pages“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: Bookselects / PayPal History
Read by Peter Thiel
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
byTimothy Snyder
2010544 Pages(44,100)
“Even as he calculates the death toll painstakingly, Mr. Snyder reminds us that the most important number is one: Each victim was an individual whose life cannot be reduced to the violence that cut it short.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: WSJ 'Favorite Books' 2012
Read by Peter Thiel
100 Plus
How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything
bySonia Arrison
2011272 Pages“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: WSJ 'Favorite Books' 2012
Read by Peter Thiel
The Decadent Society
How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
byRoss Douthat
2020272 Pages“Choosing agency over boomer complacency, The Decadent Society sets the stakes for the most urgent public debate of the 2020s: How do we get back to the future?”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Book Blurb
Read by Peter Thiel
byTom Wolfe
1979436 Pages“It's both a great history of the space race and a meditation on how to steel yourself to take risks.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: The Week
Read by Peter Thiel
The Great Illusion
A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage
byNorman Angell
1910408 Pages“A tightly reasoned and broadly historical perspective challenging the reigning view that man’s nature is inherently evil.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Reddit AMA
Read by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and 8 others
byAyn Rand
19571168 Pages“When I first read them in the late 80s, it still felt pretty crazy, and then the last decade, it’s in many ways felt much more correct.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Conversations with Tyler
Read by Peter Thiel
Psychopolitics: Conversations with Trevor Cribben Merrill
Conversations with Trevor Cribben Merrill
byJean-Michel Oughourlian
2012110 Pages“For a fresh application of Mr. Girard's insights into power politics... try Jean-Michel Oughourlian's 'Psychopolitics'.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: WSJ 'Favorite Books' 2012
Read by Peter Thiel
The New Atlantis
A Work Unfinished
byFrancis Bacon
162680 Pages“Bacon focuses on the duty of the state toward science... [and] anticipate many advances in medicine and surgery.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Reddit AMA
Read by Peter Thiel
byMilo Yiannopoulos
2017288 Pages“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: Book Blurb
Read by Peter Thiel
Life After Google
The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
byGeorge Gilder
2018256 Pages“I thought I would try to double these three ideas up as a sort of a book review of a Gilder's terrific book Life After Google.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Interview / Speech
byMikhail Bulgakov
2016448 Pages“If you want something a little more intellectual, it’s probably the Bulgakov novel The Master and Margarita where the devil shows up in Stalinist Russia.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Recommentions / Interviews
Read by Peter Thiel
The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World
From Marathon to Waterloo
byEdward Shepherd Creasy
1851424 Pages“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.”
— Peter Thiel
Source: Ryan Holiday Interview
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Frequently asked questions
What books does Peter Thiel recommend?
His 28 recommendations include Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by René Girard, The Sovereign Individual by Davidson and Rees-Mogg, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.
What is Peter Thiel's favorite book?
He names René Girard as "the one writer who has influenced me the most," and singles out Girard's Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World as "the magisterial one." For fiction, he still calls The Lord of the Rings "the best."
Where do Peter Thiel's book recommendations come from?
They span his August 2024 appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, his 2012 Wall Street Journal favorite-books feature, Reddit AMAs, and interviews such as Conversations with Tyler.
Has Peter Thiel written any books?
Yes, two: the bestselling startup guide Zero to One, and the earlier The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus.
What genres does Peter Thiel read most?
His recommendations concentrate on society and politics, history, and philosophy, with a steady interest in science and technology and psychology and human behavior.
All 28 Books Peter Thiel Has Recommended
- Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World · René Girard
- Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties · Tom O'Neill
- The Sovereign Individual · James Dale Davidson
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test · Tom Wolfe
- The Lord of the Rings · J.R.R. Tolkien
- JFK and the Unspeakable · James W. Douglass
- The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer · Neal Stephenson
- The Devil's Chessboard · David Talbot
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things · Ben Horowitz
- Superintelligence · Nick Bostrom
- AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order · Kai-Fu Lee
- Cryptonomicon · Neal Stephenson
- Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin · Timothy Snyder
- 100 Plus · Sonia Arrison
- The Decadent Society · Ross Douthat
- The Right Stuff · Tom Wolfe
- The Great Illusion · Norman Angell
- Atlas Shrugged · Ayn Rand
- Psychopolitics: Conversations with Trevor Cribben Merrill · Jean-Michel Oughourlian
- The New Atlantis · Francis Bacon
- Dangerous · Milo Yiannopoulos
- Life After Google · George Gilder
- The Master and Margarita · Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World · Edward Shepherd Creasy
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable · Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- The Messianic Character of American Education · R. J. Rushdoony
- Ego Is the Enemy · Ryan Holiday
- Discourses on Livy · Niccolò Machiavelli