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by Robert G. Hagstrom (Get the Book)
In this updated second edition, well-known investment author Hagstrom explores basic and fundamental investing concepts in a range of fields outside of economics, including physics, biology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and literature. (Summary)
by David S. Kidder (Get the Book)
Kidder, a serial entrepreneur and bestselling author of the Intellectual Devotional series, has assembled what can best be described as the perfect coffee-table book of collective entrepreneurial wisdom. He set out to collect key ideas that have inspired the world's greatest entrepreneurs and asked a number of wunderkinds to explain "key practices, behaviors, and ideas" that allowed them to succeed. Aggregated, the critical ideas expressed are know thyself; keep the focus on your big ideas; build a painkiller, not a vitamin; be 10 times better than the competition; and be a monopolist. The participants-including such luminaries as Steve Case of AOL, Robin Chase of Zipcar, Scott Harrison of Charity: Water, Jay Walker of Priceline, Sara Blakely of Spanx, and many others-provide their advice in the form of a playbook and offer pearls of wisdom such as running lean, firing people when they lose faith in your ideas, and staying ahead of the game. The sheer range of projects and ideas makes this an inspiring look at the process behind the successful startup plan. --Publishers Weekly
by Shari Harley (Get the Book)
Take charge of your career by taking charge of your business relationships. We all know how it feels when our colleagues talk about us but not to us. It is frustrating, and it creates tension. When candour is missing in the workplace, employees feel like they are working in the dark. Leaders don't know what employees really think; managers are frustrated when outcomes are not what they expect; and employees often don't know where they stand performance-wise. Many of us remain passive against broken, indirect communication habits, hoping that things will miraculously improve but they won't. Not without skills and effort. The people you work with can work with you, around you, or against you. How people work with you depends on the relationships you cultivate. Do your colleagues trust you? Can they speak openly to you when projects and tasks go awry? Take charge of your career by taking charge of your business relationships. Make your work environment less tense and more productive by practising direct communication. Set relationship expectations, work with people how they like to work, and give and receive regular feedback. Harley shares the real-life stories of people who have struggled to get what they want at work. With her clear and specific roadmap in hand, Harley enables you to create the career and business relationships you really want and keep them. (Summary)
by James Owen Weatherall (Get the Book)
Wall Street has long attracted talented business-school graduates; only in recent years has it also drawn analysts with doctorates in physics, mathematics, and statistics. That change is the focus of this fascinating history by a young University of California, Irvine, professor. Weatherall's narrative mixes familiar names (Blaise Pascal, Pierre de Fermat, Paul Samuelson, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes) with more obscure figures like Gerolamo Cardano, Louis Bachelier, and Didier Sornette. Many key concepts will be familiar from the financial press: e.g., random walk theory, delta hedging, dynamic hedging, and black box models. Happily, the author has a gift for making complex concepts clear to lay readers. Weatherall understands the temptation to blame the quants for the 2008 market crash but urges that the danger comes when we use ideas from physics, but we stop thinking like physicists. Thinking like physicists means recognizing that every model is based on simplifying assumptions and that model building requires a constant iterative process of testing and improvement. Using that process, Weatherall argues, quants can offer useful insights and tools for both economic policymakers and financial speculators. --Booklist
by Christopher Lehane (Get the Book)
This timely survey of recent PR crises (which even draws on the July 2012 Louis Freeh report on Penn State) will likely stand as the go-to manual for the foreseeable future. Lehane and Fabiani are well positioned to distill the lessons of the baseball steroid scandal, Tiger Woods's infidelities, and Anthony Weiner's obscene tweets into clearly articulated principles of crisis responses (e.g., full disclosure; don't feed the fire); they served on the "rapid-response" team for the Clinton White House. With filmmaker Guttentag, Lehane and Fabiani contrast thoughtful and effective responses with ineffective ones, noting, for example, how Eliot Spitzer quickly rehabilitated himself after resigning as New York's governor for patronizing prostitutes, and how John Kerry's presidential campaign made a fatal error in not moving promptly to rebut the Swift Boat campaign. The authors also make plain how much things have changed in the age of Twitter, where negative stories can spread electronically around the world in a microsecond, necessitating contingency plans that can get the responses out as soon as possible. --Publishers Weekly
This fascinating collection presents a selection of articles about the financial mogul, many by Loomis and twelve12 by Buffett himself, published in Fortune Magazine from the time he first burst on the scene as a young financial genius up until today. As a longtime personal friend, she brings a unique perspective into his mindset, but readers will likely treasure Buffett's own insights most of all, such as his view of inheritance, reported in 1986: "To him the perfect amount to leave children is `enough money so they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.'" More recently, in 2010, he explained, "My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest. Both my children and I won what I call the ovarian lottery." His common sense and wry humor can be appreciated by everyone, but investors will be especially intrigued by gems like this explanation of Berkshire Hathaway's management philosophy: "We want people to join us because they want to be with us until they die." Loomis has created an engaging picture of a great influencer of our time. --Publishers Weekly (Get the Book)
