Amazon.com updates its list of the bestselling books every hour. Here is a snapshot of what is hot right now, this Monday morning, April 20, in the main section of the “Business and Investing” category.
1. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
by Eduardo Galeano. Galeano analyzes the history of Latin America as a whole from the time period of the European discovery of the New World to contemporary Latin America arguing against European and later U.S. economic exploitation and political dominance over the region.
2. The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide: Protect Your Savings, Boost Your Income, and Grow Wealthy Even in the Worst of Times
by Martin D. Weiss. Designed to help people map out a practical financial plan in this unpredictable economic environment, so that they can stop worrying about their money and just enjoy life. Also examines global investing, foreign currencies, and commodities.
3. Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell. The author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
, Gladwell poses the question: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the “self-made man,” he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don’t arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: “they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, “some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky.”
4. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
by Amity Shlaes. A re-analysis of the events of the Great Depression, generally from a free-market perspective. The book begins with an anecdote of the 1937 recession, eight years after the Depression began, when Roosevelt adopted budget-balancing policies indistinguishable from the stereotype of what Hoover supposedly did. Shlaes presents her arguments in part by telling stories of self-starters who showed what the free market could have accomplished without the New Deal.
5. House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
by William D. Cohan. This narrative chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street, using the company as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the world financial system.
6. 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea
by Suzy Welch. Recounting stories from her own life and the lives of many other dedicated 10-10-10 users, Suzy Welch reveals how exploring the impact of our decisions in multiple time frames invariably surfaces our unconscious agendas, fears, needs, and desires — and ultimately helps us identify and live according to our deepest goals and values.
7. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism
by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller. Akerlof and Shiller reassert the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking by recovering the idea of animal spirits, a term John Maynard Keynes used to describe the gloom and despondence that led to the Great Depression and the changing psychology that accompanied recovery. Like Keynes, Akerlof and Shiller know that managing these animal spirits requires the steady hand of government–simply allowing markets to work won’t do it. In rebuilding the case for a more robust, behaviorally informed Keynesianism, they detail the most pervasive effects of animal spirits in contemporary economic life–such as confidence, fear, bad faith, corruption, a concern for fairness, and the stories we tell ourselves about our economic fortunes–and show how Reaganomics, Thatcherism, and the rational expectations revolution failed to account for them.
8. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell The best-selling author of Outliers: The Story of Success and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking defines a tipping point as a sociological term: “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” The book seeks to explain and describe the “mysterious” sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.” The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the precipitous drop in the New York City crime rate after 1990.
9. Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse
by Thomas E. Woods Jr. The author of the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
, traces this most recent boom-and-bust–and all such booms and busts of the past century–back to one of the most revered government institutions of all: the Federal Reserve System, which allows busy-body bureaucrats and ambitious politicians to pull the strings of our financial sector and manipulate the value of the very money we use.
10. How to Win Friends & Influence People
by Dale Carnegie. A classic (originally published in the 30’s) and a must-have, this timeless piece of work can help just about anybody get along better with others and win them over to their way of thinking.The book is divided into short sections, each one devoted to a particular principle that is well illustrated with many practical examples.
11. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Blink is about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of Outliers: The Story of Success and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling.
12. Dear Mr. Buffett: What An Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Street
by Janet M. Tavakoli.Janet Tavakoli takes you into the world of Warren Buffett by way of the recent mortgage meltdown. In correspondence and discussion with him over 2 years, they both saw the writing on the wall, made clear by the implosion of Bear Stearns. Tavakoli, in clear and engaging prose, explains how the credit mess happened beginning with the mortgage lending Ponzi schemes funded by investment banks, the Fed bailout and its impact on the dollar. Through her narrative, we hear from Warren Buffett and learn how his enduring principles caused him to see the mess that was coming well in advance and kept him and his investors well out of the way.
13. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R. Covey. A groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. His anecdotes are as frequently from family situations as from business challenges. Before you can adopt the seven habits, you’ll need to accomplish what Covey calls a “paradigm shift”–a change in perception and interpretation of how the world works. Covey takes you through this change, which affects how you perceive and act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing your “proactive muscles” (acting with initiative rather than reacting), and much more. This isn’t a quick-tips-start-tomorrow kind of book. The concepts are sometimes intricate, and you’ll want to study this book, not skim it. When you finish, you’ll probably have Post-it notes or hand-written annotations in every chapter, and you’ll feel like you’ve taken a powerful seminar by Covey.
14. Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life
by Donald J. Trump. A collections of essays in which Trump giving his special perspective in what amounts to an “informal education” on how to succeed in business and life.
15. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard H. Thaler. Nudge is about choices—how we make them and how we can make better ones. Authors Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein offer a new perspective on preventing the countless mistakes we make— including ill-advised personal investments, consumption of unhealthy foods, neglect of our natural resources, and other bad decisions. Citing decades of cutting-edge behavioral science research, they demonstrate that sensible “choice architecture”can successfully nudge people towards the best decisions without restricting their freedom of choice. S straightforward, informative, and entertaining, this is a must-read for anyone with interest in our individual and collective well-being.
