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Posted Dec. 28, 2010 10:21 a.m. by sally-haldorson
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
Business book expert (and former president of 800-CEO-READ) Todd Sattersten has picked his top 10 business books of the year. We agree heartily with his list--a mix of big idea books and practical methodology--and think that you can't go wrong choosing any of these fine books as a blueprint for your business goals in 2011.
Todd's Top 10:
Drive by Dan Pink
Switch by Chip and Dan Heath
Linchpin by Seth Godin
Rafi Mohammed's The 1% Windfall
William Poundstone's Priceless
Youngme Moon: Different
Lisa Gansky: The Mesh
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From
Gamestorming: by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo
Click over to Todd's blog to read more about each of his picks.
The Best Business Books of 2010 from strategy + business
Posted Nov. 24, 2010 10:28 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
strategy + business's "best of" list is always a special treat—in large part because it's never just a list, but a series of essays. The magazine gathers together a different team of experts each year, and each takes the task of writing on their chosen category and the books in it. I've listed their picks below, linking to the essays at the head of each category.
On the Economy, The Fog of Panic by David Warsh
- Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007 by Gary B. Gorton, Oxford University Press
- On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry M. Paulson Jr., Business Plus
- The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History by Gregory Zuckerman, Broadway Books
- More Money than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite by Sebastian Mallaby, The Penguin Press
- Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram G. Rajan, Princeton University Press
- 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown by Simon Johnson & James Kwak, Pantheon Books
On Leadership, Highlights in a Low Year by Walter Kiechel III
- Reflections on Leadership and Career Development: On the Couch with Manfred Kets de Vries by Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Jossey-Bass
- Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead by Charlene Li, Jossey-Bass
- Learning from Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response by Howard Kunreuther & Michael Useem, eds., Wharton School Publishing
- Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst by Robert I. Sutton, Business Plus
On Innovation, Innovation as a Social Act by Krisztina “Z” Holly
- Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson, Riverhead
- The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, & Lang Davison, Basic Books
- Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky, The Penguin Press
On China, Probing China’s Infrastructure by Sheridan Prasso
- China 2.0: The Transformation of an Emerging Superpower... and the New Opportunities by Marina Yue Zhang with Bruce W. Stening, John Wiley & Sons
- Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler, Harper
- The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future by Elizabeth C. Economy, Cornell University Press (2nd edition)
- The China Strategy: Harnessing the Power of the World’s Fastest-Growing Economy by Edward Tse, Basic Books
On Human Capital, Talent Redefined by Sally Helgesen
- Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People by Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones, Harvard Business Press
- Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance by Boris Groysberg, Princeton University Press
- Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce by Jody Heymann with Magda Barrera, Harvard Business Press
On the Human Mind, You Are What You Think by Judith E. Glaser
- Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face — and What to Do about It by Richard S. Tedlow, Portfolio
- Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition by Michael J. Mauboussin, Harvard Business Press
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Broadway
- Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don’t by Paul Sullivan, Portfolio
- Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink, Riverhead
On Management, The Chorus Takes a Bow by David K. Hurst
- Reinventing Management: Smarter Choices for Getting Work Done by Julian Birkinshaw, Jossey-Bass
- Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the (In)Formal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results by Jon R. Katzenbach and Zia Khan, Jossey-Bass
- The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems by Richard T. Pascale, Jerry Sternin, & Monique Sternin, Harvard Business Press
- Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads by Srikant M. Datar, David A. Garvin, & Patrick G. Cullen, Harvard Business Press
On Biography & History, True Tales of Fortune by James O’Toole
- The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century by Alan Brinkley, Knopf
- Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership by Warren Bennis, Jossey-Bass
- Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent, Scribner
- For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History by Sarah Rose, Viking
The covers below represent s + b's Top Shelf—the best books of each category.
As Theodore Kinni writes in his introduction to the essays:
Two years after the financial collapse, the idea of hunkering down and waiting for a return to business as usual—as people did in previous recessions—seems a less and less viable strategy. But what should you do instead?
In this edition of our annual review of the year’s best business books, you will find a reading list that offers intriguing and compelling answers to this question.
We've been following this list since 2003, and you can peruse past year's lists with the links below.
Amazon's Best of 2010
Posted Nov. 4, 2010 9:28 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
As they've done in previous years, Amazon has broken the books into separate categories and listed their editors' picks next to the customer favorites. I always enjoy seeing the differences between what editors choose and customers vote for with their pocket books. And I would enjoy it more if I were Michael Lewis, who topped both lists in the Business and Investing category.
The customer favorites were:
- The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, W.W. Norton
- Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Broadway Business
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink, Riverhead
- Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, Crown Business
- Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin, Portfolio
- The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey, Thomas Nelson Publishers
- On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry M. Paulson, Business Plus
- Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today's Profit and Drives Tomorrow's Growth by Inder Sidhu, FT Press
- 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown by Simon Johnson & James Kwak, Pantheon Books
The editors' picks were:
- The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, W.W. Norton
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath, Broadway Business
- The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar
- The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu, Knopf Publishing Group
- Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson, Riverhead
- Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan, Princeton University Press
- No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller by Harry Markopolos, John Wiley & Sons
- The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely, Harper
- When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man by Jerry Weintraub, Twelve
- Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West by Stephen Fried, Bantam
If you're interested in what's been listed in the past, I've linked to our post from previous years below.
Best of 2009 | Best of 2008 | Best of 2007 | Best of 2006 | Best of 2005 | Best of 2004
Friday Links
Posted Oct. 22, 2010 11:29 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
➻ Vanity Fair has an excerpt up about The Blundering Herd at Merrill Lynch from one of this year's most anticipated books, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. From that excerpt:
In the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, there was no more infectious disease on Wall Street than Goldman envy. Goldman Sachs, perhaps the most storied name in all of American finance, had gone public only in 1999, the last of the big firms to do so. After the I.P.O., Goldman’s mind-boggling profits were on full display. Starting in 2003, Goldman went on a run the likes of which had rarely been seen in American business. In just three years, its revenues more than doubled, to $38 billion, as its profits skyrocketed. In 2007, C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein received a bonus of more than $68 million. Even junior traders made millions. Who wouldn’t be jealous of numbers like those? UBS, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank—they were all stricken, to varying degrees, with Goldman envy.
No firm, though, had it worse than Merrill Lynch. And once the crisis struck, there was no firm for whom the disease would prove to be more fatal.
The authors of the book are Bethany McLean, a writer for Vanity Fair and the coauthor of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time), and Joe Nocera, a business columnist for The New York Times and author of Good Guys and Bad Guys: Behind the Scenes with the Saints and Scoundrels of American Business (and Everything in Between). It is due to be released next month.
➻ Scott Belsky (author of Making Ideas Happen), Daniel Pink (author of Drive and many other fine books), and Laura Vanderkam (author of 168 Hours) were chosen for GOOD magazine's GOOD Guide to Making Work Better about "productivity, procrastination, and getting off your butt and back to work." Here are each of their productivity mantras:
Scott Belsky: "Less ideas, more action."
Dan Pink: "Get to work."
Laura Vanderkam: "Do more of what matters. Do less of what doesn’t."
To get more tips from each of them and find out what each of them has to say about technology's effects on productivity, head on over to the GOOD slide show. (hat tip to the good people of Portfolio.)
➻ The New Yorker's Jenny Hendrix wrote a great review of a book I've been looking forward to for some time—Marcus Boon's In Praise of Copying.
In Praise of Copying is not an investigation of the ethical dilemmas of copying but a Stein-like affirmation of the mimesis that happens everywhere and everyday. Boon sees copying as fundamental to existence, part of "how the universe functions and manifests." Even on a molecular level, he writes on his blog, "all objects are made up of other objects." We cannot learn without mimicking (whether it’s learning to write a paper or learning how to catch a football)—but the way copying is defined in legal terms obscures this fact. Boon encourages us to rethink terms like "subject," "object," "different," and "the other," in order to "account for our fear of and fascination with copying."
If this book is anywhere near as illuminating as David Kord Murray's Borrowing Brilliance, it's worth picking up. And if you're interested in the topic from a purely business perspective, you may want to check out Oded Shenkar's Copycats.
➻ Richard Florida, author of The Great Reset and a slew of other books on the creative class—the man who, in fact, coined the term creative class—posted a gallery of the 20 Most Innovative States on The Daily Beast. He tells us in the introduction to the gallery how he defined them:
Though some argue that the rate of American innovation has declined recently, our economic recovery depends on a renewed investment in and commitment to innovation. The rate of innovation is likely to accelerate in coming years, as capital shifts back to invention and entrepreneurship in the real economy.
Our ranking of the most innovative states is based on two metrics: (1) the number of patented innovations per capita, and (2) the share of high-tech companies.
Unfortunately, Wisconsin did not make the cut. Apparently cheese curds aren't innovative.
➻ Stewart Quealy recently interviewed Aaron Goldman, author of Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned From Google about, well... Marketing Lessons From Google. From that interview:
SQ: When it comes to consumer mindshare, you claim it's a zero sum game. What does that mean for the Facebook vs. Google rivalry as these two giants cross into each others' domains?AG: It means all-out war. There are only so many hours in the day and attention span in the hours. The company that can help people make better, faster decisions will win. To be sure, those decisions can be related to information, commerce, and/or entertainment. Help me find quick answers, buy stuff I want, and connect with cool people and content, and I'll give you the lion's share of my time and attention.
I would give you a list of more books on Google, but that would take days to get through. Just check out Ken Auletta's Googled and Jeff Jarvis's What Would Google Do?
➻ Rebeca D. Costa, author of The Watchman's Rattle, did a fantastic job of Reframing the Issue over at The Powell's Books blog, asking one simple question:
So the central issue we must now face is this: what happens when the complexity of the problems we need to solve exceed the cognitive capabilities we have evolved to this point?
Read on to find the answer.
➻ With a thousand kisses...
Friday Links
Posted March 12, 2010 11:35 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
➻ Portfolio, publisher of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, announced the formation of a new imprint this week. It will be called Current, and will focus on popular science titles. And, if it does half as good as Portfolio does with business titles,* we all have a lot to look forward to. (*Here is a list of Portfolio's current and upcoming titles.) Portfolio also put out a new issue of the Business Beat recently, featuring (as always) Jack Covert in the Just Jack corner.
➻ Fresh from victory over Amazon in the famous price wars, Macmillan CEO John Sargent has entered the arena of the Internets with a new blog. His post on the agency model, availability and price has generated quite a debate so far, with over 100 comments.
➻ As Claire Kirch reported in Publisher's Weekly, A Colorado Group is calling for a boycott of Amazon. Kirch writes "ProgressNow Colorado is urging its members to make online purchases at Colorado-based retailers, such as the Tattered Cover Bookstore and Ultimate Electronics, explaining that these businesses employ 'thousands of' Colorado residents and pay Colorado sales taxes."
➻ In announcing the Vook release of Unleashing the Idea Virus, Seth Godin smartly discussed what he calls The Wordperfect Axiom, or how "When the platform changes, the deck gets shuffled." You should also check out Seth's recommended reading for March, including Tom Peters' The Little Big Things, released this week.
➻ "Fascination has little to do with what you say, and everything to do with what you inspire others to say and do (and buy)." So says Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, in her guest post over on the Bullish on Books blog. After working with her on her ChangeThis manifesto, I was hoping for more Jägermeister mentions in the article.
➻ The New Yorker's book club is reading Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Dan Pink this month. If you decide to join them, they'll have a live chat with Dan on the 25th. (Drive was a Jack Covert Selects in December.)
➻ Economist Robert Schiller is a fan of Anna Bernasek's The Economics of Integrity, writing "This book is a reminder that our economy functions as it does not just because of a profit motive, or because of regulations, but also because, fundamentally, people believe in what they are doing and have a personal sense of integrity." He wrote that for a recent series of guest posts for Paul Solman's Business Desk blog, in which various economists reviewed some of their favorite recent books. Schiller also chose Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being by George A Akerlof and Rachel E Kranton.
➻ New Zealander Ralph Brown has self-published a new fable, The Village That Could, and posted it as a free podcast on his website. Author Scott Sigler of Dark Øverlord Media believes in both self-publishing and podcasts. He built his very substantial audience that way, and recently asked Who Needs You, Big Publishing? in a presentation at this year's TOC Conference. (Head over to the conference site to view a video of the presentation.)
➻ I wanted to embed this video, because it was created by two of the people I love most in the world, but I couldn't, so you get Megafaun, The Tallest Man in the World and Jaw Lesson doing Bon Iver's "Creature Fear."
