Hoodwinked



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Hardcover
243 pages
ISBN 9780307589927 Published Nov. 2009
Broadway Books
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Hoodwinked
An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded--And What We Need to Do to Remake Them
By John Perkins 

Related Blog Posts
Books as Intellectual Assets in an Economic Discourse
Posted March 18, 2010 3:30 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

Michael Lewis's latest book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, was released this week to a lot of media attention and bestseller lists. We'll review the book more in depth on this site and elsewhere over the coming weeks, but its very release is what's giving me hope this week.

You see, for all the doom-and-gloom surrounding publishing these days, publishers themselves have done a quietly masterful job of finding books that put the Great Recession, and what caused it, in focus over the last year and a half—Michael Lewis being but the latest (albeit one of the finest) voices in the choir that publishers have been directing. And I think it is a very important task they're accomplishing. In a media environment dominated by the 24 hour news-cycle, and inundated with soundbites and tweets that flutter into the crowded cultural ether, soon to be forgotten, it is important that someone documents what went wrong in depth—where, why, when and how—and, dare I say, on paper.

And we need these books and the discussions they raise not only in academic circles, not only in and our intellectual and political culture; we need it in our popular culture. An academic dissection of what exactly went wrong, by the numbers, is important. But we need more than an economist's dissertation on the situation (though many economist's have written excellent and accessible books on the crisis). Newspapers and magazines can document the events as they're happening, and often provide a invaluable insight or angle that sheds light on what's going on. But the story is ever-changing, always evolving, and their job is to follow it, to report on its latest developments—sometimes at the expense of the larger picture (though some of the best books on the recession have been from journalists that stepped back from it all to distill that picture). Cable news and the echo chamber of the political blogosphere have their place, but we need more than talking points and counterpoints.

And this is what publishers have been so good at: finding authors and books that can inform and influence all of those discussions (and, at the same time, transcend them) and then getting them out there to do so. The are capturing the larger narratives by finding authors that can write them. They have told many stories, by many authors, from many different angles, exposing the different elements and individuals involved in the crisis. The books they've put out are, generally, well-researched and written well enough to hold serious intellectual weight, but not so obscure that the general public can't understand what's going on. The stories in these books are complicated, and often insane, but these authors are making them accessible, and publishers are making them available.

It may sound like hyperbole, but I think these books can help better not only the business and financial worlds, but the world itself. They tell a story we'll need to hear before we can correct the course our economy has been on. I sincerely hope those with their hands on the levers of power are listening to (and reading) them as they're discussing how to do so.

Here is a quick list of some of the books that I'd suggest (if you have some, please add them in the comments section):

That's just a start, and I know I'm missing a lot... probably some big ones. And that's not even getting into those books that focus more on how we recover, reset and reform our financial system (and individual companies) now that all the damage has occurred—books like Anna Bernasek's The Economics of Integrity that discuss solutions on a macro level and the Boston Consulting Group's Accelerating Out of the Great Recession that do so on a micro level.

Andrew Ross Sorkin concluded his book, Too Big to Fail, with a great story:

When the post-bailout debate was still at its highest pitch, Jamie Dimon sent Hank Paulson a note with a quote from a speech that Theodore Roosevelt delivered at the Sorbonne in April 1910 entitled "Citizenship of the Republic." It reads:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

It was a remarkable quote for Dimon to have chosen. While Roosevelt's words described a hero, they were deeply ambiguous about whether that hero succeeded or failed. And so it is with Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke, and the dozens of public- and private-sector figures who populate this drama. It will be left to history to judge how they fared during their own time "in the arena."

In my opinion, publishers are doing a wonderful job of documenting "the arena" for us all (and hopefully those inside the arena) to consider... and for history to judge.



The 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards of 2009
Posted Dec. 15, 2009 3:00 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog

The 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—And Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Viking Books, 624 pages, $32.95

Even though Too Big to Fail was written during the same year the financial collapse occurred, Andrew Ross Sorkin has written what we predict will be the definitive book on the subject. Sorkin not only tells a gripping “perfect storm” story—reporting the gory details as our 401k’s disappeared and our financial system became nationalized—but he humanizes the players as well, resulting in an imminently readable, albeit lengthy, book.

It’s a sobering reflection and a critical reminder of what transpired in recent financial history. But it is the great stories and detailed, insider information—the sense one gets of being in the room while history is being made—that will place this book among the greats.

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Leadership

best in category ➻ Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading By Listening by Roger Nierenberg, Portfolio, 128 pages, $19.95 | Leadership is something that can be learned. However, the most respected leaders are not textbook cases, but those who wield the necessary traits and knowledge with a very personal sense of purpose. A parable, which Maestro is, is an ideal way to create a scenario for that sense of purpose to develop, as ideas are presented in ways that are interpreted personally by those who read them, rather than listed as bullet points or chapter summaries. By using the metaphor of a conductor and his orchestra, important details are revealed, from interpersonal communication skills, individual effort to benefit the group, group dynamic to celebrate the individual, and the role that listening (both physically and intuitively throughout all experience) plays in creating the most successful results.

best of the rest:

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Management

best in category ➻ The Four Conversations: Daily Communication That Gets Results by Jeffery Ford & Laurie Ford, Berrett-Koehler, 238 pages, $19.95 | At the core of management is the practiced skill of communication. The Fords present four kinds of the conversations and the best situations to use each of them. More performance conversations (asking for promises) and less understanding conversations (are you OK with all of this?) are needed, they say.

best of the rest:

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Marketing & Advertising

best in category ➻ Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan & Julien Smith, John Wiley & Sons, 271 pages, $24.95 | Social Media took off in big ways this year, and while technology has become an important tool for communication, marketing, and advertising, Trust Agents reels the tech-excitement back in by advocating a not-so-new element that is essential: trust. If the people who put out the messages aren’t people we’d like to work with and buy from, their messages, no matter how easy to broadcast, won’t hold their weight. It’s not about how to master technology, but about being the kind of person, the kind of company, that people like to do business with. This book is filled with prime examples, great stories, and hard facts that convince us not to be blinded by innovation as we communicate with our audiences.

best of the rest

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Sales

best in category ➻ A Seat at the Table: How Top Salespeople Connect and Drive Decisions at the Executive Level by Marc Miller, Greenleaf Publishing Group, 174 pages, $19.95 | In A Seat at the Table, Marc Miller shows that selling is based on the simple concept that the only thing a customer desires is value. The value this book will have for salespeople is that in the discussions of the customers need for value, Miller guides the reader step by step how to provide strategic help for their customers and deliver new and different forms of value.

best of the rest

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Finance & Economics

best in category ➻ False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World by Alan Beattie, Riverhead Books, 321 pages, $26.95 | Alan Beattie not only provides engrossing snapshots of mankind’s economic history; he demonstrates how naturally fragile economies are—and continue to be—and how they are guided by the choices we make, not by some invisible hand. It’s a great lesson in these uncertain times that we are—or at least can be—in control of our own economic future.

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Entrepreneurship & Small Business





best in category ➻ Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur by Pamela Slim, Portfolio, 340 pages, $25.95 | “Should I go solo?” The collapse of companies and careers over the last year has many asking themselves exactly that question. It’s the avalanche of concerns that follow like “What would I do?” to “Do I have enough money?” that stop most. The power of Escape from Cubicle Nation is that it removes all the roadblocks to saying “Yes.”

best of the rest

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Biographies & Narratives

best in category ➻ The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy, PublicAffairs, 272 pages, $26.95 | In The Match King, Frank Partnoy brings Ivar Krueger, the match king, and exciting (though terrifying) time to life. We learn how he cornered the market on matches in his native Sweden and using “creative” accounting was able to ride that success to riches beyond belief until the market collapsed and so did his house of cards. So brilliant is Partnoy’s portrayal that I wanted to keep reading the book even as I walked to my car from the office at night. A great story, told well—there is nothing better.

best of the rest

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Current Interest

best in category ➻ Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—And Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin, Viking Books, 624 pages, $32.95 | How could we not pick a book on the financial crisis to lead the Current Interest category this year? And if we are going to pick a book on it, how could it not be this one? Too Big To Fail is the definitive book on the events leading up to, as well as on the characters involved in, the financial meltdown. In his reporting, Andrew Ross Sorkin has managed to weave together an entertaining narrative and recreate a nearly unbelievable sequence of events on Wall Street and in Washington—one that will likely be referenced as long as the topic is studied.

best of the rest

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Personal Development

best in category ➻ Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life by Rodd Wagner & Gale Muller, Ph.D., Gallup Press, 243 pages, $24.95 | Wagner and Muller contend that it is a myth, or a rarity at least, that the best work happens when one heroic person who is somehow more superiorly gifted than average wrestles an insurmountable task and wins. Instead, Power of 2 proposes that a great partnership can more reliably produce transcendent work by capitalizing on the strengths of both persons engaged in the venture. It’s not a surprise then that Power of 2 was published by Gallup Press, the experts on strengths theory, and it is a pleasure to read a book that encourages collaboration based on strong research and communicated through enjoyable stories, particularly at time when many people are more often encouraged to “look out for #1.”

best of the rest

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Innovation & Creativity

best in category ➻ The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger L. Martin, Harvard Business Press, 191 pages, $26.95 | Design thinking is a popular trend in innovation thought this year and a number of good books submitted to this category offer various and useful treatments. The Design of Business by Roger Martin lays out the most applicable system to integrating design thinking into an organization or applying it to a singular problem. Martin also shows just how design thinking can reside harmoniously with more analytical or quantitative approach to strategy. Using memorable metaphors, Martin brings his professorial experience to the topic teaching the uninitiated and the theorist alike this new way of problem solving.

best of the rest

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Big Ideas

best in category ➻ What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis, HarperBusiness, 257 pages, $26.99 | Don’t be confused. This book is not about Google. Jarvis is delivering the virtues of clickable, linkable, searchable, and transparent using the Internet powerhouse as the metaphor. The thought experiments in the final third of the book (Google Cola, Google Capital, and The United States of Google to name a few) make concrete the ways in which the web is quickly changing what we expect from those who serve us.

best of the rest

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