12 Best Red Pill Books | Ranked to #1

There are so many good red pill books that it’s difficult to only pick a few ones.

However, here’s me trying to give you a good reading list of some of the best red pill books available.

Click on the “summary” link or on the title of the book for a free summary and review.

Contents

12. Workplace Poker
11. The 48 Laws of Power
10. The Dictator’s Handbook
9. The Manipulated Man
8. Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism
7. Preventive Medicine
6. Date-Onomics
5. The Millionaire Fastlane
4. The Evolution of Desire
3. Dating Power Dynamics
2. The Wisdom of Psychopaths
1. Power University
What Are Red Pill Books
More Good Red Pill Books
Final Words
Also read:

12. Workplace Poker

by Dan Rust
Summary | Audiobook | Kindle

This is one of the best red pill books when it comes to workplace strategies, office politics, boss relationship, and the social dynamics of the workplace.

Drop the corporate wool in front of your eyes with their “we love our employees” and HR’s “employees first” BS slogans.
That’s not how it really works, and this book will give you a good dose of workplace red pill realism.

For the whole list of best career strategies books, check out this list:

Best career strategies books

Oh, P.S., you can get some office red pills with these two articles:

Quote: “You can’t get inside someone else’s head until you get out of your own”

11. The 48 Laws of Power

by Robert Greene
Summary | Audiobook | Print

Now, here is a book and an author that needs no introduction.

I must preface it with a warning: getting into power reading books requires that you first understand basic social skills.

I see hundreds of men who jump into power without basic social skills, and the results are disastrous.
See an example here:

That was so common in subreddits like “The 48 Laws of Power” that I dedicated some time to pick The 48 laws of Power Apart.
Plus, I modernized with current examples and then done an article on the bad applications of the laws.
See here:

And you can also see:

The 48 Laws of Power List (+ infographic for a quick reminder)
The 48 Laws of Power cheat sheet

Now, back to us.

How is “The 48 Laws of Power” useful?

It’s useful to understand the darker, self-interested side of human nature.
And of course, it drops a substantial amount of gold on the unspoken rules of socialization.

Quote: “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter”

10. The Dictator’s Handbook

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Summary | Kindle | Print

Originally, this spot belonged to “The Prince” by Machiavelli.

In a way, consider this position as shared between the two books.

The Prince, heralded as the first treatise of political philosophy and realpolitik, is a classic.
It has boatloads of wisdom, but it’s not an easy read.

So I gave the official spot to “The Dictator’s Handbook”, which is a guide on how dictators operate to acquire and maintain power.
Hint: it’s not by instituting good governance or caring for the people.

“The Prince” and “The Dictator’s Handbook” are red pill applied to politics.

Quote: “Everyone sees what you appear to be, but few experience who you really are“

9. The Manipulated Man

by Esther Vilar
Summary | Kindle | Print

This is pure shock and awe ped pill therapy.

Not for the faint of heart and not for beginners: it will raise cognitive dissonance alarm bells left and right.

Unluckily, as much Vilar’s work hits like a kettle of gunpowder, it also comes from a place of little understanding of sexual marketplace power dynamics.
Vilar fails to see that (most) women not working and (most) men working is often a fair deal that most men enter willingly, because average women have higher sexual market value than average men.

In the wrong hands and at the wrong time, “The Manipulated Man” might push some men into the wrong path.
Which is a pity, because it’s true that women -just like men- do often manipulate their partners. And that’s especially dangerous for men who are not aware of those inborn tendencies.
But it should be put into a wider frame of sexual conflict and manipulation, which cuts both ways.

Check out this article with examples:

How women manipulate men (w/ video examples)

Quote: “Without thinking, men fight women’s wars, father women’s children and construct women’s towns. Women just sit back getting lazier, dumber and more demanding”

8. Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

By Kristen Ghodsee
Summary | Audiobook

You might be surprised to see this book here.

Why?

Because the author is a feminist.

But hear me out before you close the page.
The truth is rarely to be found wholly in one camp alone. And rarely one faction is 100% right and the other 100% wrong.

So to truly understand intersexual dynamics, or to truly understand anything, really, you should look at both camps with as much of an open mind as possible.

For true red pill enlightenment, let truth guide you, not ideology, gender belonging, or what you wish to see.

And Ghodsee has a point when she says that men, as a group, have an incentive in keeping women down.
The patriarchy is vastly overblown by feminists. But it’s not fully made up, either.
As much as some (male) researchers like to scoff at it, the patriarchy the feminist talk about has a backdrop of truth. And the backdrop of truth is that since most men cluster around the average, most men do need women to be powerless and poor (or those men would never get sex, since women want men who are more than they are).

Many men do want to keep women powerless because it increases their sexual odds of mating.
Powerful women are bad news for lower quality men. When most women also have power, then those women wouldn’t want any of those men who are now beneath them (see “female hypergamy“).

Ghodhee makes a good case that men want capitalism with restricted female access to resources because that gives them an advantage.
And she’s right.

Unluckily, except for what I’ve just described and a few more important nuggets of wisdom, the book as a whole is only average as it’s weakened by heavy feminist and leftist biases.

Quote: “Ultimately, this thing we call government, is not inherently good or bad, it is a vessel that is steered by those who happen to control it at any one moment in time”

7. Preventive Medicine

by Rollo Tomassi
Summary | Audiobook

If we’re talking about heavyweights in the Red Pill community, then Rollo Tomassi is one of the heaviest.

I preferred “Preventive Medicine”, the second installment of Rollo’s trilogy to the first one, “The Rational Male“, which was a bit more basic.

I particularly liked the take on games women play, the true meaning of women’s manipulation attempts, and how women control providers.

Quote: “Men need to man up is the battle cry of every single woman older than 30”

6. Date-Onomics

by Jon Birger
Summary | Kindle | Print

Guys, if you’re serious about unplugging, taking the Red Pill and looking for the truth, then get some actual numbers on the truth.

Quick disclaimer here: I’m not a number nazi.
Science and data can be highly misleading while at the same time giving a semblance of rationality and accuracy, making them even more dangerous. I believe that an acute, highly observing mind with lots of experience is better than most researches.
Yet, data and researches still have a central place in any serious quest for truth.

And Date-Onomics is a real eye-opener.

A few key takeaways:

Feminism happens when women have fewer high-quality mating options
Men become more romantic when there are few women
“Making him chase“, the mantra of female dating advice, is terrible advice when there are few high-quality men

Few books will make you understand dating as much as this highly underrated gem.

Quote: “When sex ratios are balanced (..) males have a strong genetic incentive to stick with their original mates (…). When females are more abundant, the mating game shifts”

5. The Millionaire Fastlane

by Mj DeMarco
Summary | Audiobook | Kindle

The best red pill book on personal finance bar none.

The two biggest takeaways:

The paradox of practice: It tears apart all the “I will make you rich” courses and books. MJ says that the only way those guys are getting rich is by.. Selling said courses.
They don’t know squat about getting rich in any other way. If you want to learn from them, learn how they sell the courses, not what’s in the courses.
Saving & Investing is for suckers: The central tenet of the personal-finance literature is the famous “compound interest”.
DeMarco flips the script claiming that compound interest is trading invaluable time today for distant (and uncertain) riches (a distant) tomorrow.

I couldn’t agree more with both of them.

Quote: Dump the damn job. The job sucks

4. The Evolution of Desire

By David Buss
Summary | Amazon

If the red pill is about truth, here is an idea for you:

Skip all authors with manosphere or feminist background -they’re biased against the opposite gender-.
Skip all authors with too strong a sense of belongings to specific groups or ideologies (any group is a set of “basic rules” set in stone is an ideology).

And pick a book based on science and evidence, instead.
“The Evolution of Desire” perfectly fits the bill.

There are many evolutionary psychology books I could recommend.
But if I had to pick just one, “The Evolution of Desire” is the briefest and most compact overview of intersexual dynamics.

You can get the juiciest content on these articles for free:

Or just go for this website’s ebook, which is a mix of experience, on top of solid science (next entry).

Quote: “Desirable people are always outnumbered by those who desire them”

3. Dating Power Dynamics

By Lucio Buffalmano
Overview

Obvious disclaimer:

I am the author of that book.

But the reason it’s there, and the reason why it features higher than Buss, is because it has the same scientific grounding, plus personal experience (Buss is not a player :).
And it’s designed to be more practically-oriented, including effective dating strategies for both men and women.

What Dating Power Dynamics does is to provide you with a shortcut to all the very best information pertaining to sexual dynamics (both intrasexual and intersexual), sexual power dynamics, and what’s been proven to work in seduction.

Quote: “If I got a dollar for everytime a woman self-rejected and blocked me after too quick sex… I could have given you this ebook for free :)”

2. The Wisdom of Psychopaths

by Kevin Dutton
Summary | Audiobook

“The Wisdom of Psychopaths” has lots of negative reviews online.

And it couldn’t have been any different.

After all, telling people that amorality, drive to power and ruthlessness can provide an edge in life was bound to ruffle some feathers.

Yet, we do know that dark-triad men get laid more than the average man.
And I have personally also shown that Machiavellianism and ruthlessness help you get to the top in business.

Dutton is clear that it’s not boundless psychopathy that provides an edge in life.
It’s low to medium doses of psychopathy plus the ability to decide where and when to be pro-social or ruthless that provide an edge.
And both Dutton and I espouse the theory that it’s possible to be “good psychopaths”, such as to use psychopathic traits without harming innocent people -or even to add value to society-.
As a matter of fact, I have long said on this website that to be good, you need to know how to be bad.

Machiavelli said it first:

A good person is ruined among the great numbers who are not good

So, yes, there is plenty we can learn from psychopaths. Especially if you want to be a force for good.

Also from Dutton:

The Good Psychopath Guide
Sorted! How to Get What You Want in Life (The Good Psychopath Guide II)

Quote: “There are two things that rises at the top: the cream, and the scum”.

1. Power University

By Lucio Buffalmano
Overview | Curriculum

Power University is a course.

So, technically not a “red pill book”, but a “red pill course”.

But if you are looking for an edge in life, you are probably not going to be too squeamish about definitions.

As per “Dating Power Dynamics”, be warned of the conflict of interests: I am the author of this list and the author of this course.

That being said, I put it here because I honestly believe it deserves to be here.
This is my life’s work of an endless quest on getting to the truth of how power dynamics and personal success really work (including amoral strategies).
So Power University combines all of the above resources and many more, teasing out all the practical applications. So you get all the best life strategies.
And it’s a course, with lots of videos, self-assessments, and quizzes. So I believe it’s better to understand the concepts than a book.

When it comes to red pill credentials, this website is one of just a handful to be featured in “The Red Pill Archive”:

And the reactions people have going through Power University prove the genuininity of top notch red pill content:

This is a public comment, and you can read it here.

The angry reaction to good red pill content is a textbook example of phase 2 of red pill awakening, as per Rollo Tomassi’s phases.

So, yeah, I truly think this is the best course available on red pill wisdom for life success.

Quote: “True enlightnment for effective life strategies start by understanding both the conflict of interets and the opportunities for collaboration. And then working to remove the conflict, while playing up the cooperation advantages with collaborative frames “.

What Are Red Pill Books

What were the criteria for this red pill book list?

What does it take to be labeled as “red pill”?

First of all, intersexual dynamics is one of the major topics of the red pill, so this list prominently features the best books on intersexual dynamics.

But “red pill” also refers to any deep and truthful wisdom that people don’t openly talk about. Truths and realities that, for various reasons, society either hides, or refuses.

In its wider meaning, “red pill’ refers to anything which helps us reach a higher level of knowledge and/or effectiveness by going beyond the mainstream information.
This reading list embraced that wider meaning of “red pill”.

Some people say the Red Pill can bring to the surface uncomfortable truths which can make people depressed.
But I never bought that.
I think that anything “Red Pill”, by definition, makes us more effective human beings. And that, in my book, will always mean empowering, not disheartening.

More Good Red Pill Books

Somewhat outside of the TOP 16, but no less top-notch red pills books:

No More Mr. Nice Guy: For me the biggest eye-opener was that nice guys focus hard on making women sexually happy because they come from a place of personal insecurity. A huge change of perspective if you think that being an orgasm-provider is a trait most people associate to lovers and ladies’ men. Yet, if you think about it, it’s also at the essence of the nice guy mentality: the mindset of having to over-provide to make up for the value imbalance
The Art of Seduction: Not just about seduction, but social seduction as well.
The Moral Animal: written in 1994, it’s old. But it’s still one of the best overviews of evolutionary psychology ranging from sexual dynamics to general social dynamics
How to Lie with Statistics: A great primer on how numbers and data can lead us astray and how statistics can be willfully abused to sway us.
Secrets to Winning at Office Politics: Awesome red pill text on power in businesses and how to navigate and leverage office politics
The Power of Now: Get the audiobook if you can, not the book. Tolle’s soothing voice will help you get in the now.
The Book of Pook: Honestly, I don’t particularly enjoy Pook’s writing style. It was a bit too flowery and convoluted for me: I prefer straight talk. However, I put it here for your reference because he has been a highly influential writer in the Red Pill community.
The Feminist Lie: Let me start with the cons first: it felt at times too bitter for me and the author sounded too much like complaining. But that doesn’t mean that a lot of what he says isn’t true. Great resource on feminist lies myth-busting and, unluckily, on the sad reality of the judicial system most of us live in.
Men on Strike: Similar to The Feminist Lie, equally powerful and even written by a woman.
Practical Female Psychology: Some made up evolutionary psychology and some conjectures passed as science. But also much gold available to be undug.
No Logo: Capitalism has done a lot of great things for the world. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. No Logo uncovers the seedy underbelly of marketing and capitalism. And it will give you pause the next time you’re about to overpay for a sweatshop-made garment.

Final Words

As usual, I like to conclude all “list” posts with a warning on the ranking.

And this is the warning: don’t read too much into the order and rankings.

Any of the books on this reading list is top-notch and all of them have the potentials to (further) open your eyes and improve your life for the better.

Best Red Pill Books