Ice Age

John and Mary Gribbin's accessible history of the earth's ice ages — what causes them, how they shape the planet, and what they reveal about climate systems operating across tens of thousands of years.

The second Gribbin title on Munger's list reflects his habit of reading popular science steadily and without embarrassment, treating it as the cheapest available way to import models from fields he would never study formally. Ice Age is about earth systems operating on timescales that make business cycles look like blips — a model for thinking about the long tail of decisions whose effects compound over decades. For founders, the book's central insight — that small, persistent forcings (changes in earth's orbit) produce massive, nonlinear effects (glaciation) — is the same logic that governs how small compounding advantages in pricing, culture, or distribution eventually produce market dominance.