Big Fintech Bookshelf Energy
Happy Monday, Fintech Takers!
We’ve officially entered the Out-of-Office Industrial Complex (maybe your calendar is becoming part ghost town; maybe you’re still coaxing it into one like me?)
I don’t know about you, but reading is a major priority for my holiday break!
Reading books pairs well with end-of-year energy. It’s reflective; sometimes lightly ambitious. And when a great book really lands, it can expand your perspective (perhaps even your sense of consciousness, if you’re really lucky).
As book critic David L. Ulin writes in The Lost Art of Reading: “Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction.... We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little by stepping back from the noise.”
Doesn’t that sound like exactly what we all need?
So this year, we asked the Fintech Takes Network, what did you read that stuck with you?
Finance. Technology. Business. History. Biographies. Travelogues. Romantasy. We welcomed all recommendations, compiled here for your reading pleasure!
Thanks to all who weighed in – like Emily McCormick (VP of Editorial & Research at Bank Director), Sonia Steinway (Executive Director/Product Owner at JPMorgan Chase), Rob Pacifico (SVP, Open Banking, Product Management at Mastercard), and Shreenath Regunathan (Founder of Starlight).
Plus, at the end, you’ll find a snapshot of my own classic Fintech Bookshelf, a perennial work in progress.
I’m always all ears for new titles to add to the shelves. Reply back and let me know?
- Alex
Big Fintech Bookshelf EnergyCopy anchor linkCopied
Book-Room at Dr. Wister's (1912) by Joseph Pennell.
The Fintech Takes Network’s Favorite Reads of 2025Copy anchor linkCopied
- A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains – The kind of big idea book that makes today’s AI discourse feel smaller and more legible.
- Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working – A playbook for fixing what’s broken (systems, processes, organizations, companies) in business and beyond.
- Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing, Including You – Practical about uncertainty, and generous about what it costs. Sonia glossed it as an insightful response to the inevitable changes that life brings.
- The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant – Nvidia recommendation #1: a reported history of the company.
- The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip – Nvidia recommendation #2: a biography of the co-founder and CEO.
- Leadership: In Turbulent Times – A primer (presidential history as case study) in what true real leadership costs — and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize!
- Einstein: His Life and Universe – A great portrait of a great genius, whether or not you’ve read Isaacson’s biographies on Steve Jobs and Elon Musk (anything he writes is “pure gold,” says Rob).
- The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires – If, like Shreenath, you’re drawn to companies that find an unequal edge (win-win-win) and/or run into regulatory struggles, this might be for you.
- Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI – A journalistic look at the power structures underneath the AI boom, with less mythmaking and more incentives, labor, and control.
- Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America – A history of bank regulation that feels like what it is: political, iterative, and deeply human (Runs up through roughly the Reagan era, so Emily’s hoping for a Part 2).
- Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space – Sonia says it’s a powerful reminder of how bureaucracy and groupthink can (literally) be deadly!
- The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time – Square’s origin story is told as a blueprint for a pile of hard problems solved in sequence.
My Fintech BookshelfCopy anchor linkCopied
I wanted to end today’s send by sharing an updated snapshot of what I’ve come to think of as my Fintech Bookshelf – all of the fintech and finance-related books that I have collected over the last couple of years.
Now, to be very clear, I still haven’t read all of these yet.
But still! I own them! I will read them eventually! And I thought, in the meantime, you might want to get a glance at my collection and hear why I’m excited to read each book on my Fintech Bookshelf.
So here we go.
- Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit – Not an easy read, but I’m about 60% of the way through it! Jason Mikula and Kiah Haslett recorded a podcast with the authors, if you’re interested.
- Debt: The First 5,000 Years – The history of debt. Sounds perfect for me (and almost no one else).
- This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly – Anything that digs into the history of financial speculation and the psychology behind it is likely going to be a winner with me.
- The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest – Ditto for the history of lending. Surefire winner.
- Buy Now, Pay Later – This one was published in the 1960s, but could have been published today. Spookily relevant.
- Moneyland – A book about the hidden world of Kleptocracy. Fantastic.
- Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America – I have read this one, and it’s awesome.
- How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy – Covers the racial wealth gap and the history of discrimination and exclusion in banking. Important topic.
- One From Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization – Dee Hock was the GOAT. No more needs to be said.
- Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation – More on the history of financial speculation. How did I get so lucky?
- Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World – Amazing title. Will be an amazing read, I am sure.
- Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of General Electric – GE lost its mind in the 1980s. A very interesting window into the benefits and dangers of embedded finance.
- The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley - Was lucky enough to have the author Jimmy Soni as a special guest on the Fintech Takes podcast, a forever favorite of mine.
- Billion Dollar Whale – A true-crime financial thriller focused on kleptocracy, global banking failures, and regulatory blind spots. Yes, please!
- These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs ― and Wrecks ― America – Fairly clear bias here, but I’m sure I’ll learn a lot about PE.
- A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class – A classic.
- The Unbanking Of America: How the New Middle Class Survives – The evolution of the middle class in the U.S. fascinates me.
- Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall – I read it and loved it.
- Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon – Lewis’s writing is infuriatingly good. Fuck!
- Economic Dignity – Been on my shelf for a while. Love the premise.
- American Express: The People Who Built the Great Financial Empire – Three-party schemes are hot right now, so this one is feeling very relevant.
- The Great Depression: A Diary – A collection of first-hand accounts. May be a tough read, but it should be illuminating.
- Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk – Almost more of a philosophical treatise than a typical non-fiction book. Explores the idea of risk management as a civilization-level superpower.
- Stop Harming Customers – The subtitle is “A compliance manifesto.” Do I have your interest?
- Beyond Banks – A new book on fintech from Dan Awrey. Looks very interesting.
- America’s Bank – Sign me up for a nerdy (and rather dense) history of the creation of the Federal Reserve!
- Chokepoints – This one is all about the United States’ escalating use of sanctions and other tools of economic warfare. Feels relevant, no?
- Losing Big – I wish this wasn’t a book about fintech, but it is.
- Banking on Data – Give this to the 1033 nerd in your life. And then hug that person.
- The Lost Bank – [Ben Kenobi voice] Washington Mutual. WAMU. Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.
- Last Man Standing – A profile of Jamie Dimon and the rise of JPMC, particularly in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
- The Ascent of Money – A financial history of the world! An accessible and easy-to-understand topic, I’m sure.
- Borrow – A history of consumer debt in America.
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – The author follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. An important and powerful read.
Bonus: It’s Time to Close the Gap Between Trust and Proof (by me, with Qolo) 📚Copy anchor linkCopied
Synapse exposed the flaw in pooled FBOs. But the underlying conditions persist across the industry: multi-party programs on legacy cores, tracked through omnibus accounts and manual workarounds, still powers much of B2B payments and treasury management. But a real-time, audit-ready ledger that maps every dollar down to the cent already exists, and it's a solution I explore in my new article here!
*this rec is brought to you by one of our fantastic brand partners
MORE QUESTIONS TO PONDER TOGETHER
Big news for the endlessly curious (yes, you): I’m collecting your fintech questions on a rolling basis.
What’s keeping you up at night? What great mysteries in financial services beg to be unraveled? Think of it this way, if a stranger is a friend you just haven't met yet, your question is a Fintech Takes conversation waiting to happen.
One that could headline a Friday newsletter or be answered in an upcoming Fintech Office Hours event.
Drop your question here, whenever inspiration strikes!
Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.
— Alex
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