NYTimes blogger lists the best business books, and I’m no snob, I’ll give them a whirl! Expect to see several of these reviewed in the coming weeks.
His list and comments, in no particular order:
âLiarâs Poker,â by Michael Lewis (even though Iâve since become convinced that the anecdote that gives the book its title never happened).
âThe Devilâs Candy,â by Julie Salamon. (Greatest dissection of the movie business ever written.)
âThe Box,â, by Marc Levinson. (Hard to believe you can write a great book about the rise and importance of the shipping container, but he pulled it off.)
âIndecent Exposure,â by David McClintick. (Published in 1982, it single-handedly created the business narrative genre).
âThe Go-Go Years,â by John Brooks. (The best book by the most elegant writer to ever make business his subject.)
âThe Kingdom and the Power,â by Gay Talese. (Yes, the subject is The New York Times, but how can you leave it off any list of great business books?)
âTitan,â by Ron Chernow. (Chernowâs magisterial biography of John D. Rockefeller.)
âDo You Sincerely Want To Be Rich,â by Godfrey Hodgson, Bruce Page and Charles Raw. (Hard to believe that this committee of authors could write a sensational narrative about the rise and fall of Bernard Cornfeld, but that they did.)
âDisney Wars,â by James Stewart. (âBest corporate psychoanalysis Iâve ever read,â says John Huey.)
âThe Informant,â by Kurt Eichenwald (Forget his Enron book, âConspiracy of Fools.â This book, about the strange saga of Mark Whitacre and Archer Daniels Midland, is his masterpiece.)
âFather, Son and Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyondâ, by Thomas J. Watson and Peter Petre (The only great ghost-written C.E.O. autobiography ever written. No one else â not even Lee Iacocca or Jack Welch â even comes close.)
âWhen Genius Failed,â by Roger Lowenstein. (Another one of those âhow-did-he-do-it?â books: this account of the fall of Long Term Capital Management, which by all rights should be a tough slog, is crackling good read.)
âGreed and Glory on Wall Street,â by Ken Auletta. (This book, about the crack up of Lehman Brothers, has a great cast of characters, starting with Steve Schwartzman.)
âThe Smartest Guys in the Room,â by Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean. (O.K., O.K., they are former colleagues of mine, and I was deeply involved in editing this book â but I have to say, I think it turned out pretty well!)