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