Reading List - General

  1. How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

    2. by Peter D. Schiff and Andrew J. Schiff

    An earth-shattering one of a kind story that you can read in a day and will forever change the way you look at economics and the current U.S economic climate. It seems like almost every time I hear a political or economic discussion, I am reminded about something in this book, so this book has profoundly affected the way I think about the world.

    What makes this book so effective is its format. This is an illustrated story of three guys on an island who start off by spending all day trying to catch fish with their bare hands. Day after day, they improve their conditions by reinventing the tools, technologies, utilities, banks, currency, government, foreign trade, etc of a modern global economy, all while stumbling onto the most important issues of our times. In the end, the island manages to keep overconsuming and underproducing while avoiding the natural consequences for a long time by means of various financial and political techniques. The ending is open, but the Schiff bros do spell out some vivid possibilities for how the story could end depending on what the islanders decide to do. Sound familiar?

  2. Good To Great

    3. by Jim Collins

    A study of what distinguishes good companies from great ones, complete with a plethora of example companies and policies from both ends of the spectrum. There is a special emphasis on what distinguishes great success in the short term from long term success, and what effect the company's CEO has on this. The answer s may surprise you. Best of all, this book is much more general than its business oriented theme would suggest, as its findings apply not just to companies, but to any kind of group or organization.

  3. Switch - Changing Things When Change is Hard

    4. by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

    This book presents an intuitive and easy to understand framework of techniques used to inspire change in people or organizations. These techniques are backed up by a wide variety of success stories - from the high school teacher who cut down on tardiness by putting a couch in the front of the classroom for the earliest students to the missionary who eliminated widespread hunger and famine without any helf from authority figures and with almost no budget. What makes this framework and its success stories so different is that unlike traditional top-down big-budget success stories, the focus is on succeeding even without having the luxury of resources or authority at your disposal. The result is a Kaizen-like focus on building momentum through small changes and small successes and focusing on the importance of seemingly insignificant and often overlooked details.

  4. Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

    5. by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

    An analysis of what distinguishes messages that are quickly forgotten from messages that are easily absorbed and passed on, this book is very similar to Malcom Gladwell's well known 'The Tipping Point'. But I found this book more useful and interesting because it is more specific and gives plenty of hands-on insight for how to communicate effectively. The authors also do a great job of explaining not just how to craft effective messages, but also of delving into the social psychology and neuroscience background of why the methods presented in the book work. I especially liked the in-depth explanation of why analogies are such an effective tool because they are well suited to the way our brains store knowledge. I believe this kind of information can be very useful to anyone working in marketing, education, writing / journalism, or any field that involves communicating with a picky and sometimes adversarial audience.

  5. Blink

    6. by Malcomn Gladwell

    A detailed scientific account of the power of intuitive thinking. Essentially, this shows the science behind gut feelings, including various suprising studies showing how in many circumstances, quick intuitive thinking based on seemingly insignificant details can easily outperform even the most sophisticated analysis, while other areas of life are rife with misconceptions based on faulty intuitive thinking.

  6. Next: The Future Just Happened

    by Michael Lewis

    What do a 12-year-old New Jersey boy turned world class stock trader, a child providing free expert quality legal counsel, a band that rescued itself from obscurity by appealing directly to fans, and the creator of WinAmp have in common? They are all subjects of this book, and are representative case studies for the many ways in which the internet is shaking the very foundations of our institutions and authority structures. In this book, Michael Lewis shows how the internet is already radically blurring the line between industry insiders and outsiders. He shows us examples of how easily the internet can shift authority from grown-ups to unlikely adolescents and even children that would otherwise not be taken seriously, and how quickly expertise can shift from certified professionals to the masses. Written in a style that is both meaningful and fun, Lewis's piercing insights into the internet powered shift in authority never disappoint.

  7. Predictably Irrational

    8. by Dan Ariely

    Traditional economic theory is based on rational people making informed decisions. Predictably Irrational burns some holes into this theory by exposing many ways in which people do not act rationally. Essentially, this book describes a series of experiments, mainly in the areas of sales and marketing, that prove how malleable our perceptions are and how clever salespeople use this to their advantage. There is also some great material about cheating and honor codes in here.

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