Business Book Blog

Author: Dave Kansas

It seems like the Wall Street Journal Complete Money and Investing Guidebook was meant for novice/beginner investors. It plows through lots of terminology, explaining a lot of the ideas and terms that those of us who majored in say, humanities or communications (like me) missed out on. Flipping through this at Barnes and Noble, I found a lot of ideas that I had heard of but didn’t necessarily know much about,as well as seemingly straight-forward and jargon-free explanations.
I’m planning an starting to do more investing and this seems like it is going to be a good reference guide to help ward of shady brokers and financial planners (in the remote chance I use one) as well as help me do a lot of the research and decision-making myself.

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Author:James Surowiecki

Eric Schmidt from Google recommended this book in the “mistakenly” published powerpoint presentation slide notes from Google’s Analyst Day a couple of weeks ago. I had heard of it, but didn’t know much about it, so I did a little research and it seems like James Surowiecki, a writer for the New Yorker, has some great evidence (or maybe just ideas) about trusting the masses.

Surowiecki goes over types of crowd wisdom, types of crowd wisdom, and failures of crowd intelligence and how when certain factors combine, the wisdom of the crowd is much more accurate than the wisdom of individuals, even experts. One of the stories he uses to illustrate this is a study done in the 19th century by a British Anthropologist named Francis Galton. In the study he took an ox to a county fair and had people guess its weight. He also had cattle ranchers and farmer (experts) guess the weight. The general public as a whole did much better at guessing the weight than the so-called experts.

In the review snippets there is a link to Wikipedia’s entry for the book, which goes over these and other topics in a bit more detail. Also, from what I can tell, Wisdom of Crowds reads a lot like a Malcolm Gladwell book.

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Author: Vickie L. Milazzo

I found this book browsing through Amazon’s entrepreneurship best sellers. I was immediatley impressed with the quality of Vickie L. Milazzo’s blog entries. they were insightful and inspiring, without being too gender specific. I researched a bit about her company, Medical-Legal Consulting Institute Inc., and based on her experience, this book should be an interesting read, no matter your gender.

Here’s a list of the ten strengths covered in the book.

• Ignite your inner fire with passion to reach exciting, new levels of growth
• Harness your intuitive vision to attain an audacious future
• Use the power of engagement to achieve big things
• Flex your feminine agility and stretch further than ever before
• Intensify your genius for accelerated achievement
• Live with uncompromising integrity to attract authentic success
• Energize your performance with endurance
• Apply the Feminine Force of enterprise to excel at being the CEO of your life
• Reclaim your life energy through renewal
• Activate female fusion by partnering with other women to attain the impossible

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Author: Jeffrey Sachs

Though this isn’t a book about running a business, it is definitely a book about what the ends of business should be. Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, lays out a plan to eliminate serious poverty in the world by the year 2025. The basis of the plan is the level of ODA (Official Development Assistance) that developed country’s need to give to poorer countries. The book also chronicles more than 20 years of Sachs work with heads-of-state all over the world from his own perspective, which is what most piqued my interest to read it.

The End of Poverty has been accused by some as being “dangerously naive” and Sachs has a lot of critics in both the political and academic worlds, but it is compelling enough of a book and argument to warrant a look at. Oh and one more thing, Bono wrote the forward.

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Author: Seth Godin

In Permission Marketing, Seth Godin teaches his well-known idea of getting people to “raise their hands”. The problem with mass advertising, according to Godin, is that it vies for people’s attention by interrupting them rather than asking for permission and then buliding relationships based on that permission. Marketers can learn to be more effective by learning to build over time a meaningful and beneficial relationship between both a company and it’s customers/prospects.

What this book is really known for is email-marketing techniques. This seems to be the main reason this book is recommended. I’ve included a few excerpts from Fast Company’s interview with Seth Godin, in the review snippets. There is also a link to the full interview. It’s very insightful and worth reading the whole thing.

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Author: Steve Krug

If your organization has any sort of Web site or if you are in any way involved in the usability and design of software, this book is the place to learn how to make your customers enjoy using what you design. Everyone from Joel Spolsky to marketingsherpa.com recommends this book.

I’ve thumbed through it a few times but haven’t actually read it yet. It has a very conversational style of writing and should be an easy read, yet not just a bunch of fluff, judging by the types of people that recommend it.

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Authors: Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox

I had a friend in college who lived, breathed and died economics. Everything in life, no matter what the subject, could be explained by economics. He recommended this book to me and it was one of the most intriguing business books I’ve ever read.

It is a novel about a Alex Rugo, a plant manager that learns the concepts of the Theory of Constraints from an ex-physics professor named Jonah. What is most interesting is that the book uses the storyline to teach about the theory of constraints rather than explaining the concepts in a textbook or standard business book style.

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Author: Dale Carnegie

It’s crazy to think that this book was first published nearly 70 years ago, yet is still on nearly every list I’ve seen of must-read business books. To be honest, How to Win Friends and Influence People has always rubbed me the wrong way, so I have never read it (almost out of spite), but its staying power has been so strong that it is now on my list of books to read. It was a NY Times bestseller for 10 years.

It’s split into 4 sections, each of which deal with a different aspect of human interaction and persuasion. Here are the four main sections.

1. Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
2. Six Ways to Make People Like You
3. Win People to Your Way of Thinking
4. Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

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Author: Thomas L. Friedman

The World is Flat examines the flattening, or connecting, of the world over the last few years since 9-11 and the dot com bust. Thomas L. Friedman, author of the New York Times “Foreign Affairs” column, explains how the world is now flat, or connected, through the disappearance of trade and political barriers and the increase in technological breakthroughs.

According to Friedman, Globalizations 3.0 (his term) is led by freelancers and entrepreneurs who effectively compete in the new climate created by these changes. A good resource for anyone wanting to learn about new economy globalization and how to take advantage of a flat world.

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Author: Lawrence Lessig

Ok, this is two “non-business” books in a row. I apologize to those in need of the newest airport best-seller, we’ll be getting right on it next week. This one is good though. Free Culture is all about how the American tradition of mixing and remixing culture and ideas, building on those around us and that came before us, is being quashed by dramatic changes in the scope and intent of content protection, especially copyright.

Understanding the ideas regarding the nature of creativity in this book is sure to help any entrepreneur, especially any Internet entrepreneur. There is even a section on how the ideas in the book affect entrepreneurial innovation (called Constraining Innovators). The author is a Stanford Law professor that specializes in cyber-law and has amazing insight into how law affects the way society is shaped. You can get the book from Amazon or you can get a free E-book from Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture Web site.

Read a few review snippets »