S+B's Best Business Books of 2009
If you want to read their reasoning, and some excellent background comments, start here. All I am going to do is list the books (and make it easy for you to buy them – choose from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net – for South Africa):
The Meltdown
David Wessel
In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic
(Crown Business, 2009)
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Mark Zandi
Financial Shock: Global Panic and Government Bailouts — How We Got Here and What Must Be Done to Fix It
(2nd ed., FT Press, 2009)
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John B. Taylor
Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis
(Hoover Institution Press, 2009)
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Gillian Tett
Fool’s Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe
(Free Press, 2009)
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William D. Cohan
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
(Doubleday, 2009)
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Richard A. Posner
A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression
(Harvard University Press, 2009)
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Gerald F. Davis
Managed by the Markets: How Finance Re-Shaped America
(Oxford University Press, 2009)
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Leadership
Kenneth Hopper and William Hopper
The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream amidst Global Financial Chaos
(revised ed., I.B. Tauris, 2009)
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Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman, and James O’Toole, with Patricia Ward Biederman
Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor
(Jossey-Bass, 2008)
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Edgar H. Schein
Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help
(Berrett-Koehler, 2009)
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Alan Deutschman
Walk the Walk: The #1 Rule for Real Leaders
(Portfolio, 2009)
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C. Julia Huang
Charisma and Compassion: Cheng Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Movement
(Harvard University Press, 2009)
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Strategy
Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckardt
The Invisible Edge: Taking Your Strategy to the Next Level Using Intellectual Property
(Portfolio, 2009)
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David J. Teece
Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management: Organizing for Innovation and Growth
(Oxford University Press, 2009)
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Malcolm S. Salter
Innovation Corrupted: The Origins and Legacy of Enron’s Collapse
(Harvard University Press, 2008)
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Globalization
Ben Simpfendorfer
The New Silk Road: How a Rising Arab World Is Turning Away from the West and Rediscovering China
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
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Nandan Nilekani
Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation
(Penguin Press, 2009)
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Nirmalya Kumar, with Pradipta K. Mohapatra and Suj Chandrasekhar
India’s Global Powerhouses: How They Are Taking On the World
(Harvard Business Press, 2009)
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Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat
The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing
(Oxford University Press, 2009)
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Robert P. Smith, with Peter Zheutlin
Riches among the Ruins: Adventures in the Dark Corners of the Global Economy
(AMACOM, 2009)
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Management
Geoff Colvin
The Upside of the Downturn: Ten Management Strategies to Prevail in the Recession and Thrive in the Aftermath
(Portfolio, 2009)
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Henry Mintzberg
Managing
(Berrett-Koehler, 2009)
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John C. Bogle
Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life
(Wiley, 2008)
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George Friedman
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
(Doubleday, 2009)
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Marketing
Shel Israel
Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods
(Portfolio, 2009)
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Chris Anderson
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
(Hyperion, 2009)
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John Gerzema and Ed Lebar
The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It
(Jossey-Bass, 2008)
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Technology
Julia Angwin
Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America
(Random House, 2009)
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Lawrence Lessig
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
(Penguin, 2008)
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Scott Rosenberg
Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters
(Crown, 2009)
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Biography
Richard Reeves
John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand
(Overlook, 2008)
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T.J. Stiles
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
(Knopf, 2009)
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Alice Schroeder
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
(Bantam, 2008)
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What are the best business books you’ve read in the last year?