I'm a huge fan of Jack Schwager's Market Wizards books. Most successful traders have learned a great deal from these books. Who is your favorite market wizard, why?
Perhaps Blair Hull : - began as a black jack card counter in Vegas. - Pioneer in algorythmic trading with Hull Trading Corp - Sold Hull Trading Corp to Goldman for big dough, started a new fund and a political career. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Hull
He may have derailed Obama if he weren't a wife beater. Baldwin and Dennis. They both started out undercapitalized, inexperienced and overconfident. Everybody does, don't they! For me, I felt their "paths" were the easiest to replicate. How wrong I was.
Dennis is one of the best, isn't he. A true legend!! I know a lot of people have found Michael Covel's work on the turtle method very inspiring. I'm planning to get Covel's book to get a deeper understanding of how the turtle movement was born.
Larry Hite is a great one as well. He stresses how important it is to manage risk vs. knowing what market. He gives an example of a Coffee trader who knew everything about Coffee and ended up losing over a 100mil. Larry on the other hand just looked at it as risk per trade.