Albert Murray's The Omni-Americans is the most valuable non-business book because it discusses how you have to draw upon everyone's creativity. America is a mash-up of cultures and traditions, and great businesses know how to tap the strengths of all their employees, whatever their background may be.

On a biological level, the brain registers money as something valuable - even a dollar bill which has no intrinsic value, it's just paper.

Money is becoming increasingly plastic and digital. If there is a major disaster, let's say an asteroid strike, we'll go back to trading meats and furs. We won't need an abstraction, a dollar bill, but real tangible goods to survive.

All organisms rely on exchange. They form symbiotic partnerships in order to obtain the energy that they need to survive. Energy is the currency of nature.

Reputation will become an even more important currency in the future.

"Begin with where you are." Everyone is looking to get ahead, but you get ahead by doing well at the things that are immediately in front of you.Start with the people around you, learn from them, and invest in them.

I don't think money can be understood through a lens limited to economics. And most books about money tell you the history of money, the instrument. But money is also an idea, one that we exchange to survive.