BusinessWeek magazine ranks the 10 best selling hardcover and paperback business books for September 2009 and gives a short summary.
1. Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell. As you’d expect with Gladwell, there are lots of surprises in his explanation of why some people succeed fantastically. Pluck and smarts get less play here than such matters as one’s birth month and access to the right resources at just the right time. There are many points worth pondering in this enjoyable volume.
2. How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In
by Jim Collins. The author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
has taken a look at the other side of the coin: What happens inside great companies that go bad. Collins found that the seeds of decline and decay are often sown—unnoticed—in companies at the top of their game. In this book, he explains how to spot the signs and stop decline before it goes too far.
3. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
by Ben Mezrich. An unflattering portrait of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
4. A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
by Lawrence G. McDonald and Patrick Robinson. Lehman’s collapse, up close.
5. Free: The Future of a Radical Price
by Chris Anderson. Why giving stuff away in business makes more and more sense in business—like it or not.
6. House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
by William D. Cohan. Cohan’s hot-selling behind-the-scenes account of the financial recklessness at the heart of investment bank Bear Stearns’ collapse is a vividly told page-turner. It’s the definitive work, to date, on the events that signaled, and help set off, the financial crisis.
7. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Entertaining and anecdote-packed, Made to Stick spells out six traits that can confer long life on an idea. In short, a good idea that is badly packaged might as well be a bad idea—so give your good ideas half a chance.
8. Strengths-Based Leadership
by Tom Rath. This is the latest of the “strengths movement” titles, all of which aim at helping readers recognize and polish their true talents. Here, the authors say they identify keys to leadership and help executives build effective teams.
9. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
by Seth Godin. The Internet can help locate and expand a “tribe,” or group of people connected to each other and to an idea. But every tribe needs leadership—and you can become that leader…so long as you have the helpful advice of marketing writer Godin, author of such previous marketing books as Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
and Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
.
10. 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
by Gillian Tett. The finance writer and editor for The Financial Times focuses on the creation, evolution, and spread of the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that spelled serious trouble for a number of banks and insurance companies. Tett’s book can be technical, but it goes to the heart of the financial crisis.
