The Santa Fe has a lot on nonlinear dynamics in investing. Away from that there is Soros, and a few others mentioned in the comments here.

David

On similar themes, I’d definitely recommend Michael Mauboussin’s “More than you know” which has lots of good material on complex adaptive systems analogies to markets. On Austrian economics, I’d recommend Bruce Caldwell’s book on Hayek “Hayek’s challenge” which has a great summary of Hayek’s work including his work on complexity, as well as a great introduction on Austrian economics.

Minsky’s work has many parallels in ecology, in particular to CS Holling’s work on ecosystem resilience. I wrote up a short note on the similarities here http://www.macroresilience.com/2009/12/06/minskys-financial-instability-hypothesis-and-hollings-conception-of-resilience-and-stability/ .

I’m no Soros fan, but Alchemy put a permanent dent in neoclassical economics for me, and made me start thinking more independently.

Better reads would be “The Origins of Financial Crisis” by Cooper, which explains Soros’s basic idea of reflexivity in a much more readable (and relevant to current events) package and Hayek’s “The Counter Revolution of Science.” The latter critiques modern (post-war) economic theory as scientism rather than science in a more nuanced way than Soros does.

Faber is a clever guy. I met him at a conference in DC several years ago (2004-5?) where he basically called much, though not all, of what has transpired in terms of the crisis. As did Jimmy Rogers who I met at another conference in DC about the same time. Adventure Capitalist had just come out.

Their theses fit with the ideas of the firm I worked for. All that said, we were too early to the party, and I take my share of the blame there.

Also, FWIW – ‘Animal Farm’ by Orwell is an incredibly interesting book, although I have not read it in 10 years.

It’s fiction but a darn good read on statism acted out on a rural english farm when the animals take over and create a workers paradise. (haha!)

David, you must be quite the reader. I tried to wade thru the Ferguson book and found it incredibly boring, which shocked me since he is a really good public speaker.

It read more like an academic recitation of fact instead of what I thought should/could have been an interesting journey through history.

One other easy topical book: Tomorrows Gold by Marc Faber. He uses Austrian ideas in his investment thesis and tells a good story.

My picks are probably less deep theory and more application and real world. (although DeSoto is an incredibly good writer). Happy New Year!