Living in More Than One World

Many excellent business-related books were published in 2011; more than most people can either read (or write about) during the year. So we owe a debt of gratitude to the reviewers who help us make sense of what’s been published during that time. Matthew E. May, author of The Shibumi Strategy: A Powerful Way to Create Meaningful Change, has a really useful post on Open Forum, Best Business Books of 2011.  It’s got links to his original reviews of the top books, including one that is on many best-of lists this year, Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs. Matt’s reviews are concise, yet highly descriptive and informative.
Todd Sattersten weighs in with the 11 Best Business Books of 2011. His list includes three also charted by May: the Jobs biography, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and Practically Radical by William C. Taylor. Todd wrote, with Jack Covert of 800-CEO-READ, the 100 Best Business Books of All Time, recently released in paperback. They have become perhaps the best-known commentators on business books in recent years. The 800-CEO-READ blog also has a running list of candidates for best business book of the year, in such categories as General Business, Leadership, Management and others.
Another helpful guide is the expert advice on offer in Marketplace radio’s best-of list. They polled a variety of people for their top choices, with brief explanations. Examples include author-professor Clay Shirky’s choice of Michael Nielsen’s Reinventing Discovery and Liaquat Ahamed, author of the award-winning Lords of Finance, with Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life.
James Pressley’s article Lehman Trader Goes Mad, Geithner Saves Citi: Top Business Books is Bloomberg.com’s best-of roundup. It starts with 10 books on the financial crisis, five on general business and five on economics. Number one on the latter list is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman; I wrote about Kahneman and other leading psychologists in a recent post. 2012 will no doubt present us very soon with many candidates for next year’s best-of lists. I hope everyone has a happy and prosperous new year!

I always look forward to The Economist’s great yearly publication, The World in…In recent years, a web component has been added. The World in 2012 gives us a great head start on the year ahead. The 162-page magazine has a number of thought-provoking articles in such editorial categories as the United States, Asia, Middle East and Africa, Europe, Business, Science and Culture. Unlike in The Economist itself, the articles have bylines; some from Economist writers and editors, but many from high-profile guest contributors. In the latter category, you’ll find Aung San Suu Kyi writing on “A Sense of Balance,” Nandan Nilekani on “India’s identity revolution,” and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, on “Sharing to the power of 2012.”

The site for TWI2012 also has a blog, Cassandra, and links for previous years of The World in, going back to 2004. As cool and convenient as the website is, I still find the glossy print edition to be handy and valuable, especially for the quick, concise references in the 15 page “The world in figures” section. No matter how all the predictions for the coming year pan out, reading this publication will make you feel smarter and more well-informed.

Margaret Heffernan poses a stark question in the title of her recent entry on Huffington Post, Is Daniel Kahneman Really the World’s Greatest Living Psychologist? Kahneman, the Princeton University Nobel laureate who currently has a huge best-seller in Thinking, Fast and Slow, has been getting lots of media attention as his book has climbed the charts. What’s really valuable about Heffernan’s post is bringing together short descriptions of other eminent psychologists who have developed followings beyond their own field.
Before his hit book, Kahneman’s work was often referenced in business books, especially those that are oriented towards the mind and personal/professional development. But other psychologists have gotten that treatment as well, including another in Heffernan’s post, Stanford University’s Carol Dweck. Like Kahneman, she wrote a book for a non-specialist readership, in her case the terrific Mindset:The New Psychology of  Success. Her work was featured prominently in Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and she’s also been written about by Malcolm Gladwell. Besides Dweck, two other Stanford psychologists are in the post, both of whom have done ground-breaking work: Albert Bandura (including his fascinating theory of self-efficacy) and Philip Zimbardo, whose infamous Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 was later described in his own book for a general audience, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.
As Heffernan notes, whether or not Kahneman is our greatest living psychologist is ultimately beside the point.  She writes that it is wonderful that we live in a time when so many of these people “are alive and productive, doing elegant and thoughtful work with immediate and lasting relevance to how we live our lives.” And it’s also true that as a society, the fact that the works of mind-oriented authors like Kahneman (not to mention Gladwell, Pink, Dan Ariely and so many others) reach the best-seller lists is surely a good sign.