Best Audiobooks Recommended by Elon Musk

Elon Musk once posted a reading list on X that got a lot of attention. Not because it was surprising that he reads — everyone knows he reads — but because of what he reads.

No self-help. No productivity books. No "how to build a startup." Just empires, wars, and civilizations collapsing. His words at the end of the post: "Admittedly, this is a list that appeals to those who think about Rome every day."

Here's every book on that list, what it's actually about, and whether you can find it as an audiobook.

1. The Story of Civilization – Will Durant

Musk specifically called this one out and warned it "will take a while to get through." That's putting it lightly. This is an 11-volume, roughly 10,000-page history of human civilization — from ancient India and China through Greece, Rome, the Renaissance, and Napoleon.

Durant spent 50 years writing it with his wife Ariel. It won the Pulitzer. There's nothing else like it.

What makes it different from most history books is that Durant isn't just listing events. He's connecting philosophy, art, religion, economics, and warfare into one long coherent story. Reading it genuinely changes how you see everything else.

2. The Iliad – Homer (Penguin Edition)

Musk specifically mentioned the Penguin Classics edition. It's the most readable modern translation — doesn't feel like homework.

Most people think the Iliad is a war story. It's not really. It's about what happens when the best soldier on your side refuses to fight because his ego got bruised. Achilles sulks in his tent, thousands of his own men die, and everything falls apart. It's a 3,000-year-old story about leadership and pride that still reads like it was written last week.

3. The Road to Serfdom – Friedrich Hayek

Written in 1944, this is Hayek's argument that central economic planning — even when well-intentioned — always ends up eroding individual freedom. He wrote it while watching fascism and Stalinism rise across Europe, and his point was that the two weren't as different as people wanted to believe.

You don't have to agree with all of it to find it valuable. It's one of the most serious intellectual cases for economic freedom ever written, and it's surprisingly readable for an economics book.

4. American Caesar – William Manchester

A biography of General Douglas MacArthur. If you don't know much about MacArthur, the short version is: one of the most brilliant military strategists of the 20th century, and also one of the most insufferable human beings to ever hold a command. He was eventually fired by President Truman mid-war for being insubordinate.

Manchester doesn't try to make him likable. He just shows you the full picture — the genius and the catastrophic ego coexisting in the same person. It's one of those biographies where you end up admiring and resenting the subject at the same time.

5. Masters of Doom – David Kushner

This is the one non-history book on the list. It's about John Carmack and John Romero — the two programmers who built Doom and essentially created the modern video game industry in the process.

It reads like a thriller. Two obsessive, wildly talented people build something that changes culture, then watch their partnership fall apart under the weight of their different visions. If you've never read it, it's probably the most purely entertaining book on this list.

6. The Wages of Destruction – Adam Tooze

This one changed how a lot of historians think about World War II. Tooze's argument is that the Nazi war machine wasn't the industrial powerhouse it's often portrayed as — it was actually economically fragile from the beginning. Hitler knew Germany couldn't win a long war against the Allies, which is why the whole strategy was built around winning fast before they could mobilize.

It's a dense, heavily researched book, but it reframes the entire war around economics and resource constraints rather than ideology. Genuinely eye-opening.

7. Storm of Steel – Ernst Jünger

Most WWI memoirs are about horror and trauma. This one isn't. Jünger was a German officer who wrote about frontline combat with something closer to fascination than revulsion — almost like he found the whole experience clarifying.

It's a strange book. A lot of readers find Jünger's attitude toward war unsettling. But it's honest in a way that more sanitized accounts aren't, and it's one of the most striking war memoirs ever written. Hemingway loved it.

8. The Guns of August – Barbara Tuchman

Pulitzer Prize winner. This covers the first month of World War One and how a regional dispute turned into a global catastrophe through a combination of rigid military plans, miscommunication, and leaders who couldn't adapt when reality didn't match their expectations.

JFK read it during the Cuban Missile Crisis and apparently kept referencing it — basically as a manual of what not to do.

Tuchman writes like a novelist. It's one of those history books where you forget you're reading history.

9. The Gallic Wars – Julius Caesar

Caesar wrote this himself, about his own campaigns. He wrote it in the third person, which tells you something about the man.

It's part military dispatch, part political PR — he was writing for the Roman public back home while simultaneously conquering Gaul. But underneath the self-promotion, you're getting firsthand insight into how one of the best military minds in history approached strategy, logistics, and rapid decision-making under pressure.

10. Twelve Against the Gods – William Bolitho

The most obscure book on the list and probably the one that explains Musk's self-image most directly.

Published in 1929, it's a study of twelve great adventurers — Alexander, Napoleon, Columbus, Casanova and others — and what Bolitho calls the "adventure spirit." His argument is that what separates these people from everyone else isn't intelligence or ambition, it's that they're genuinely immune to the social pressures that stop most people from attempting the impossible.

It has a cult following among founders for a reason. Once you read it, you understand why.

11. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World – Jack Weatherford

Weatherford's book is revisionist history done right. The Genghis Khan most people know is the monster of legend — just destruction and death. Weatherford shows a completely different picture: a leader who built the largest land empire in history, established religious tolerance as state policy, created the first Eurasian free trade network, and promoted people based on ability rather than birth.

It's one of the most surprising books on this list. You come in expecting a story about conquest and leave thinking about organizational design.

Two Books Musk Wants Someone to Make Into Audiobooks

At the end of his post, Musk said he hoped someone would make audiobooks of two specific titles:

The Encyclopedia of Military History by R. Ernest and Trevor Dupuy — More reference book than narrative, but an exhaustive resource covering military history from 3500 BC onward.

The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World by Sir Edward Creasy — Published in 1851, argues that fifteen battles were the actual turning points that shaped the modern world. Still compelling 170 years later.

Neither has a quality audiobook version yet. If you have either as an ebook or PDF, you can actually convert them to audio yourself using Warblize — upload the file, pick a voice, and have a full audiobook in about 20 minutes.

Where to Start

If you want to work through this list, the most accessible starting points are Genghis Khan, Masters of Doom, and The Guns of August. All three are great in audio format and easy to get into.

Save The Story of Civilization for when you're ready to commit to something long-term. It's not a book you finish — it's more like something you live with for a year or two.

The easiest way to get through a list like this is as audiobooks. Most of them are available on Audible or your library app. For anything that isn't, Warblize can turn any ebook into a narrated audiobook — which is exactly what these older, harder-to-find titles need.Share