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In the spring of 2012 Peter Thiel taught a class called CS183: Startup at Stanford, the university where he had studied philosophy and law. One of his students, Blake Masters, posted detailed notes of every lecture on his blog; they spread so widely that unofficial PDF copies circulated online. Two years later the notes became Zero to One, a #1 New York Times bestseller written by an investor who had co-founded PayPal, backed Facebook with 500,000 dollars in 2004 and co-founded Palantir. It was his second book: the first, The Diversity Myth (1995), written with his Stanford contemporary David Sacks, attacked multiculturalism on campus. This guide covers his 2 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 key books · 1995–2014 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Peter Thiel has written two books, both with a co-author: The Diversity Myth (1995), with David O. Sacks, about multiculturalism at Stanford, and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (2014), with Blake Masters. Start with Zero to One; it is the book that most readers mean, and it sets out the ideas behind his investing in 224 pages.
Where to Start with Peter Thiel
If you want the book he is known for
→ Zero to One (2014) — his Stanford startup lectures, condensed.
If you are starting or funding a company
→ Zero to One (2014) — monopoly, secrets and the seven questions every business must answer.
If you want the roots of his politics
→ The Diversity Myth (1995) — the 1995 campus polemic, written with David Sacks.
2 Peter Thiel Books, in Order
The Diversity Myth
Written by two recent Stanford graduates who had worked on the conservative student paper The Stanford Review, which Thiel co-founded in 1987, the book is an insider’s account of multiculturalism at Stanford in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It argues that the movement replaced the Western Culture courses with ideologically driven ones, encouraged grade inflation and enforced conformity through speech codes, and warns that a “culture of complaint” could become a “culture of blame”. The historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese wrote the foreword. Passages on date rape drew criticism when the book resurfaced in 2016, and Thiel apologised for them.
Zero to One
A condensed and rewritten version of Blake Masters’s notes from Thiel’s CS183 class at Stanford in 2012, published by Crown Business on 16 September 2014. Its central distinction is between going “from 0 to 1”, creating something new, and “from 1 to n”, copying what already works. Thiel argues that lasting companies escape competition by building a monopoly, that great businesses rest on “secrets” others have not seen, and that a strong founding culture matters more than most investors think. It became a #1 New York Times bestseller.
In What Order to Read Peter Thiel
The two books are nineteen years apart and do different jobs, so you can read either first. Zero to One is the practical one, on startups, technology and progress; The Diversity Myth is a political argument about one university at one moment.
If you are reading to understand Thiel himself, publication order helps. The campus book shows the contrarian habits he brought from The Stanford Review; Zero to One turns the same habit into a business question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
A reading path
1. Zero to One (2014)
2. The Diversity Myth (1995)
Everything Else Peter Thiel Published
Beyond the 2 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Essays
1
1 book · 2009
- 2009The Education of a Libertarianessay for the Cato Institute’s online journal Cato Unbound
Books about Peter Thiel
2
2 books · 2018–2021
- 2018Conspiracyon Thiel’s secret funding of the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker
- 2021The Contrariana critical biography, subtitled Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power
The years · 1967–2025
Quick facts about Peter Thiel
- Known for
- He is known as the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and an early investor in Facebook, and as a writer for Zero to One (2014), his contrarian handbook on startups and monopoly.
- 1967
- Born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany
- 1987
- Co-founds The Stanford Review
- 1998
- Co-founds Confinity, which becomes PayPal
- 2004
- Invests 500,000 dollars in Facebook
- 2014
- Zero to One
- 2025
- Lectures on the Antichrist in San Francisco
- Born
- 11 October 1967, Frankfurt am Main, West Germany; US citizen, and a New Zealand citizen since 2011
- Education
- Stanford University, BA in philosophy (1989) and JD (1992)
- Companies
- Co-founder of PayPal (sold to eBay for 1.5 billion dollars in 2002) and Palantir (2003); Founders Fund (2005)
- Early investor: 500,000 dollars for 10.2 per cent in August 2004
- Influences
- The French philosopher René Girard, who shaped his thinking as an undergraduate at Stanford
- Married
- Matt Danzeisen, in 2017
The red mark is 2014: Zero to One, the book of his Stanford startup class.
How Peter Thiel Writes: The Contrarian Question
Neither book is written by Thiel alone. The Diversity Myth was a joint project with David Sacks; Zero to One began as Blake Masters’s lecture notes, which the two then cut to about half their length and rewrote. What carries over from the classroom is the format: short chapters, each built around one claim, often stated as a provocation.
His habit is to start from a question that invites disagreement. Zero to One opens with “Every moment in business happens only once” and asks readers what important truth very few people agree with them on. From there he argues against received wisdom: that competition is healthy, that lean iteration beats a plan, that the future will simply arrive. The examples come mostly from his own career, PayPal above all.
The same contrarian stance runs through his political writing, and it is where he has been most criticised: The Diversity Myth and his 2009 essay “The Education of a Libertarian” both contain lines he later qualified or apologised for. Behind much of it sits René Girard, whose theory that people learn what to want by imitating each other runs through his thinking about competition.
Watch
Peter Thiel in Conversation with Tyler Cowen
Economist Tyler Cowen talks with Peter Thiel about technological stagnation, innovation and naming companies, in the first episode of Conversations with Tyler, recorded live at George Mason University in 2015. From the official Mercatus Center channel.
Frequently asked questions about Peter Thiel’s books
How many books has Peter Thiel written?
Two, both with a co-author: The Diversity Myth (1995), with David O. Sacks, and Zero to One (2014), with Blake Masters. He has also published essays, including “The Education of a Libertarian” (2009).
What are Peter Thiel’s books in order?
The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus (1995), then Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (2014).
Where should I start with Peter Thiel?
With Zero to One. It is short, self-contained and the source of the ideas he is known for: monopoly over competition, secrets, and going from 0 to 1.
What is Peter Thiel’s most famous book?
Zero to One (2014), a #1 New York Times bestseller based on the startup class he taught at Stanford in 2012.
Did Peter Thiel write Zero to One himself?
He wrote it with Blake Masters, a Stanford student who took his CS183 class in spring 2012 and posted detailed notes of each lecture online. The book is a shorter, rewritten version of those notes. Masters later worked at Thiel Capital and reads the audiobook.
Who is David Sacks, co-author of The Diversity Myth?
A Stanford contemporary of Thiel’s from The Stanford Review, who later worked with him at PayPal. Sacks went on to found other companies and became the Trump administration’s adviser on AI and crypto.
What is the CS183 class?
CS183: Startup, a course Thiel taught at Stanford in spring 2012. Blake Masters’s notes from it circulated so widely online that they were turned into Zero to One.
Why are Peter Thiel’s writings controversial?
The Diversity Myth contains passages questioning accounts of date rape; when they resurfaced in October 2016 Thiel said: “I wish I’d never written those things. I’m sorry for it. Rape in all forms is a crime.” In “The Education of a Libertarian” (2009) he wrote that he no longer believed “freedom and democracy are compatible” and linked this partly to the extension of the vote to women; in a follow-up he said no class of people should be disenfranchised. Separately, in 2016 he confirmed paying about 10 million dollars in legal costs for lawsuits against Gawker Media, including Hulk Hogan’s, after which Gawker closed.
Has Peter Thiel written a new book?
No. Zero to One (2014) is his most recent book. In September and October 2025 he gave a series of four lectures on the Antichrist in San Francisco, but they were off the record and no text was released.
Footnotes
- Peter Thiel — Wikipedia
- Zero to One — Wikipedia
- Zero to One — Penguin Random House
- Zero To One: How Blake Masters went from student to co-author — TechCrunch, 2014
- The Diversity Myth — Independent Institute
- Peter Thiel apologizes for attacking diversity, questioning rape — The Advocate, 2016
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system.”
— Peter Thiel, Zero to One (2014), the opening of the preface
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