I Asked Claude for the Top 10 Investing Books. It Gave Me 10 White Men.
I asked Claude to generate a list of the top ten finance and financial literacy books. It did exactly what I thought it would do: produce a list without any women or people of color listed. So, then I adjusted the prompt: no blogs, no Wikipedia. Source content from Harvard, Standard, Forbes, the Wharton School of Business, New York Times Best Sellers list, the Wall Street Journal, and other credible resources of similar caliber. Below, you will find that list written by women for everyone, as well as learn about the content of our Q3 Financial Literacy Ebook.
Download the Top 10 Investing and Money Mindshift Books by Women for Everyone HERE.
The Part Where I Want You to Stop Scrolling
Here's the thing about a list like that. It doesn't look wrong. It looks thorough. Every name on it has actually shaped how modern investing works. Graham trained Buffett. Bogle basically invented the index fund. Lynch made stock picking feel human instead of impossible. If you didn't stop to count, you would nod along and move on to the next task on your list.
That's what makes this kind of gap so easy to miss. Nobody sat down and decided to leave out every woman and every person of color who has ever written a word about money. The list built itself that way because of what gets called credible in the first place. Wall Street Journal, Harvard, Wharton, CFA Institute, those institutions have spent seventy years canonizing the same handful of voices, and an AI trained on the internet is just reading the room they built.
So I told Claude to go back and look again. And it did find them. Rachel Rodgers. Tiffany Aliche. Bola Sokunbi. Jannese Torres. Michelle Singletary. Women who are out here right now teaching six and seven figure wealth building to people who look like the NPs in this community. They exist. They are credentialed, published, and successful. They were just never going to surface first, because "credible" was never built to include them by default.
I am not telling you this so you distrust research tools. I'm telling you this because if it can happen inside a search for book recommendations, it is happening inside every list you have ever been handed without questioning it. Your CE curriculum. Your CPA's suggested reading. The "best of" roundup some publication put out last quarter. Somebody decided what counted as credible long before you got there, and you inherited their blind spot along with the recommendation.
The wealth-building knowledge from women and NPs of color is out there. It just doesn't get handed to you by default. You have to go looking, or you have to be the one who hands it to somebody else.
So here's me handing it to you.
The Financial Literacy Reading List by Women for Everyone
You may have heard of Graham and Bogle already. Everybody's CPA has mentioned The Intelligent Investor at least once. I'm not spending your time re-explaining books you can find on any "best of" list from here to Forbes. Start with these instead:
A Black attorney, business owner, and mother of four on why earning more is not selfish, it is how you stop asking permission to take care of your family and yourself.
Co-CEO of Ariel Investments, the first Black-owned mutual fund company in the country. Her first book is for kids, an instant New York Times bestseller, and a great place to start the next generation early.
Buppert is an attorney who has spent her entire career on the legal issues specific to nurse practitioners, employment contracts, malpractice risk, prescribing authority, starting a private practice. Investing your money means nothing if you have not first protected your license and your business. Read this before you sign your next contract.
Why This Matters More Than a Book List
I built the Financial Literacy Series because nursing school ignores this entirely. Health and wealth are our two greatest assets, and yet, most of us don't learn about either at home or in school, and yet we are given all the responsibility to manage them. We see the lack of this type of literacy in our poor health outcomes and lack of generational wealth. Even the resources meant to fill that gap come pre-filtered by a system that wasn't built with you in mind. You can do everything right, ask the right questions, request the most credible sources available, and still get handed a list that erases the exact people who look like you and built wealth anyway, against odds the men on the original list never had to face.
Financial literacy is a clinical competency. So is knowing whose voice you're actually listening to when you read the word "credible."
Your Turn
I want to build this list out further, and I can't do it alone. Who taught you how to invest? Whose book, podcast, or Instagram post is the reason you understand your money differently today than you did five years ago? Drop the name in the comments. I will read every single one, and I will add the ones that hold up to a running list on the blog, credit intact. If we're going to experience freedom, we have to help each other.
About the Author
Dr. Kimberly Madison, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, WCC is a Board-Certified, Doctorally-prepared Nurse Practitioner, educator, researcher, and author dedicated to advancing dermatology nursing education with an emphasis on skin of color, business acumen, and digital literacy. She is the founder of Mahogany Dermatology Nursing | Education | Research™ and the Alliance of Cosmetic Nurse Practitioners™, the first dermatology nursing organization in the country built at the intersection of clinical excellence, skin of color care, and financial literacy for nurses. Through peer-reviewed research, published books, and a growing community of nurse entrepreneurs, Dr. Madison is building the infrastructure that makes this profession sustainable for the people who choose it.
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