Books
Here are some interesting business, history, biography and psychology books I have read recently in no particular order.
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Title: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Author: David Allen
My Rating:
5
My Comments: The hottest trend in being organized, GTD is acheiving cult status. This book will change the way you work, and how you think about being “organized.”
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Title: The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
Author: Gary Chapman
My Rating: 5
My Comments: This book is like a relationship virus. Everyone I know who read it was impressed. I have given away a bunch of them. Read it now, before it is too late for your relationship.
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Title: Over The Top
Author: Zig Ziglar
My Rating: 5
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Title: Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast-Growth Firm
Author: Verne Harnish
My Rating: 5
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Title: Competitive Strategy : Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
Author: Michael E. Porter
My Rating: 5
My Comments: A classic and required reading IMHO.
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Title: Competitive Advantage : Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance
Author: Michael E. Porter
My Rating: 5
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Title: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
Author: Michael E. Gerber
My Rating: 5
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Title: The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses
Author: Amar V. Bhide
My Rating: 5
My Comments: Contains great statistics on new business.
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Title: The Leadership Challenge, 3rd Edition
Author: Barry Z. Posner
My Rating: 5
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Title: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay
Author: Adam Cohen
My Rating: 5
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Title: The Game Makers: The Story of Parker Brothers, from Tiddledy Winks to Trivial Pursuit
Author: Philip E. Orbanes
My Rating: 5
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Title: Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People, Revised and Updated Edition
Author: Bradford D. Smart
My Rating: 5
My Comments: Read this and your hiring and interviewing process will be forever transformed.
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Title: Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony
Author: Akio Morita
My Rating: 5
My Comments: This is a small book and easy to read. I got a lot out of this book about the history of Sony and how it became the amazining multi-billion dollar company it is. Akio Morita and Sony are an inspiration for me.
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Title: Gig : Americans Talk About Their Jobs
Author:
My Rating: 5
My Comments: If you are curious what it would be like to work in any of 100 different jobs this book is for you. Full of insights into life.
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Title: Inside Intuit: How the Makers of Quicken Beat Microsoft and Revolutionized an Entire Industry
Author: John Doerr
My Rating: 5
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Title: Why People Buy Things They Don’t Need : Understanding and Predicting Consumer Behavior
Author: Pamela Danziger
My Rating: 5
My Comments: Never have I carried a book that more people commented on when I was reading it. I think I could have sold 20 copies of this book to all the people who wanted to give a copy to their boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it gave me great insights into why we buy things.
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Title: The Design of Everyday Things
Author: Donald A. Norman
My Rating: 5
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Title: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Author: Thomas L. Friedman
My Rating: 5
My Comments: This is required reading for everyone in the 21st century.
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Title: The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide
Author: Richard Conniff
My Rating: 5
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Title: Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Author: Charles Burck
My Rating: 5
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Title: Entertainment Industry Economics : A Guide for Financial Analysis
Author: Harold L. Vogel
My Rating: 5
My Comments: Contains excellent analysis and industry information.
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Title: Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most
Author: Sheila Heen
My Rating: 5
My Comments: Excellent book by the Harvard Negotiation Project on communications.
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Title: Think and Grow Rich
Author: Napoleon Hill
My Rating: 5
My Comments: Classic
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Title: Time Tactics of Very Successful People
Author: B. Eugene Griessman
My Rating: 5
My Comments: Each chapter focuses on a different tactic from a succesful person. Many good take aways in this book.
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Title: Managing Imitation Strategies
Author: Steven P. Schnaars
My Rating: 5
My Comments: First mover advantage is grossly overrated. This book shows countless examples of how the pioneer in a field got slaughtered by later entrants. The business stories of how the early leaders lost their position and often went out of business are very valuable.
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Title: Death by Meeting : A Leadership Fable…About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business
Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
My Rating: 5
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Title: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
My Rating: 5
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Title: The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable
Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
My Rating: 5
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Title: The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable
Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
My Rating: 5
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Title: Piloting Palm: The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring and the Birth of the Billion Dollar Handheld Industry
Author: David Pogue
My Rating: 5
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Title: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Author: Michael Lewis
My Rating: 5
My Comments: Amazing book on how to use statistics to win at baseball.
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Title: The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
Author: John Battelle
My Rating: 5
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Title: Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
My Rating: 5
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Title: Trump: How to Get Rich
Author: Donald J. Trump
My Rating:
4
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Title: The Making of a Blockbuster: How Wayne Huizenga Built a Sports and Entertainment Empire from Trash, Grit, and Videotape
Author: Gail DeGeorge
My Rating: 4
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Title: The Innovator’s Dilemma (HarperBusiness Essentials)
Author: Clayton M. Christensen
My Rating: 4
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Title: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Harper Perennial P.S. Edition)
Author: Eric Schlosser
My Rating: 4
My Comments: The tone of this book is anti-business however it contains good insights into the fast food industry which you can extract.
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Title: Trump: Think Like a Billionaire : Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life
Author: Meredith Mciver
My Rating: 4
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Title: The Psychology of Persuasion: How to Persuade Others to Your Way of Thinking
Author: Kevin Hogan
My Rating: 4
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Title: Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Author: Stephen J. Dubner
My Rating: 4
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Title: Good to Great : Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t
Author: Jim Collins
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Title: Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (HarperBusiness Essentials)
Author: Jerry I. Porras
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Title: Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Author: Sharon L. Lechter
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Title: Crossing the Chasm
Author: Geoffrey A. Moore
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Title: Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets
Author: Geoffrey A. Moore
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Title: The Art of Innovation : Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
Author: Tom Peters
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Title: Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
Author: Donald A. Norman
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Title: Cashing In With Content : How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers into Buyers
Author: David Meerman Scott
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Title: Naked Ambition : Women Pornographers and How They Are Changing the Sex Industry
Author: Carly Milne
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Title: 1776
Author: David McCullough
My Comments: “In this stirring book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence — when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough’s 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history. ”
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Title: The Wisdom of Crowds
Author: James Surowiecki
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Title: The Progress Paradox : How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
Author: Gregg Easterbrook
My Comments: In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century–and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations.Detailing the emerging science of “positive psychology,� which seeks to understand what causes a person’s sense of well-being, Easterbrook offers an alternative to our culture of crisis and complaint. He makes a compelling case that optimism, gratitude, and acts of forgiveness not only make modern life more fulfilling but are actually in our self-interest. An affirming and constructive way of seeing life anew, The Progress Paradox will change the way you think about your place in the world–and about our collective ability to make it better.
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Title: TrumpNation : The Art of Being The Donald
Author: Timothy L. O’Brien
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Title: Never Eat Alone : And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
Author: Tahl Raz
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Title: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
My Comments: The bestselling introduction to “flow”–a groundbreaking psychological theory that shows readers how to improve the quality of life. “The way to happiness lies not in mindless hedonism, but in mindful change.”–New York Times Book Review
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Title: Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
Author: Renée Mauborgne
My Comments:Winning by Not Competing: A Fresh Approach to Strategy
Since the dawn of the industrial age, companies have engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation. Yet these hallmarks of competitive strategy are not the way to create profitable growth in the future.
In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne argue that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries, the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors, but from creating “blue oceans”: untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Such strategic moves-which the authors call “value innovation”- create powerful leaps in value that often render rivals obsolete for more than a decade.
Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any company can use to create and capture blue oceans. A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this book charts a bold new path to winning the future.
W. Chan Kim is the Boston Consulting Group Bruce D. Henderson Chair Professor of Strategy and International Management at INSEAD. Renée Mauborgne is the INSEAD Distinguished Fellow and Professor of Strategy and Management.
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Title: iCon Steve Jobs : The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business
Author: William L. Simon
My Comments: iCon takes a look at the most astounding figure in a business era noted for its mavericks, oddballs, and iconoclasts. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Jeffrey Young and William Simon provide new perspectives on the legendary creation of Apple, detail Jobs’s meteoric rise, and the devastating plunge that left him not only out of Apple, but out of the computer-making business entirely. This unflinching and completely unauthorized portrait reveals both sides of Jobs’s role in the remarkable rise of the Pixar animation studio, also re-creates the acrimony between Jobs and Disney’s Michael Eisner, and examines Jobs’s dramatic his rise from the ashes with his recapture of Apple. The authors examine the takeover and Jobs’s reinvention of the company with the popular iMac and his transformation of the industry with the revolutionary iPod. iCon is must reading for anyone who wants to understand how the modern digital age has been formed, shaped, and refined by the most influential figure of the age–a master of three industries: movies, music, and computers.
