My library

[Last updated 03.11.2024]

I like to read. Quite a lot. Below you will find a snapshot of my ‘library’, a relatively wide array of timeless classics and recent works I keep handy to help me cope with certain professional situations. The books are classified by broad theme and in alphabetical order within each section. Finally, and although the exercise is difficult, I have highlighted (by underlining) a totally subjective ‘top 20’ (out of 100+) that you may be interested in considering as a starting point. If interested, all books can be found in paper and/or Kindle format through major distributors, starting with Amazon.

Management, leadership & career

• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Jordan B. Peterson): I am not sure there is any need to present Dr. Peterson nor his work. His rules are not ground-breaking but a valuable reminder of good life ethos.
• A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Time (Heike Bruch, Sumantra Ghoshal): Faced with procrastination or lack of motivation, the authors offer ways to increase one’s willpower and that of others.
• The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever (Michael Bungay Stanier): As the title suggests, this book suggests ways to ask the right questions and help the coachees deliver the solution by themselves.
• The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders (Adam Bryant, Kevin Sharer): Packed with quotes from and references to the most successful CEOs, past and present (more than 600 CEO interviews were seemingly conducted to prepare this book), the authors ask 7 seemingly simple questions to the CEO in the making and, in so doing, lift the veil on the daily context of this high-responsibility and high-adrenaline role. They also provide a few guiding principles as possible ‘answers’ to each question.
• The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life (Steven Bartlett): Bartlett, a successful entrepreneur in the field of digital marketing and host of The Diary of a CEO podcast, offers here a summarized version of his advice in the form of 33 “laws”. I found the majority of them enriching, some more controversial; it seems to me that the power of the “shock” formula does not withstand in-depth examination. However, a useful read, especially for startup creators.
• The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Peter F. Drucker): Time is precious, and even more so when you are an executive. In this reference book, Peter Drucker takes note of the constraints that weigh on the agendas of these decision-makers and shares best practices to help them become more efficient.
• Ego is the enemy (Ryan Holiday): In an age of hyper-mediatization, Holiday argues, based on several historical examples, that people who are successful in their careers are those who have left their egos at the door. A book packed with words of wisdom and though-triggering quotes, either from the author or from well-known figures.
• The Financial Times Guide to Leadership: How to lead effectively and get results (Marianne Abib Pech): Without providing any revolutionary ideas, this book provides excellent references on a number of topics related to leadership, such as determining one’s leadership style, defining corporate values, etc.
• The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter (Michael D. Watkins): In this best-seller, IMD Professor Watkins provides a 360-degree view of the transition process to roles with high responsibility.
• Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type (Isabel Briggs Myers, Peter B. Myers): The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) is probably one of the most widely used personality tests, so much so that “sharing your MBTI” is an integral part of some companies’ culture. Thanks to this book, which you can read in conjunction with the excellent 16personalities.com, you will gain a better understanding of your own way of functioning and that of the people around you in your professional and private life.
• The Leader In You: How to Win Friends, Influence People & Succeed in a Changing World (Dale Carnegie): A timeless work by a world-renowned author on best practices every senior leader should adopt.
• The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (Stephen Denning, Norman Dietz): The “customer-centric” vision presented in this book by Denning and Dietz is not revolutionary, but it is delivered through an original and well-structured framework, which the authors call Radical Management.
• Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World (Bob Johansen): First written in 2009, the book looks into the future to assess how our increasingly uncertain world will impact the requirements on leaders.
• Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results (William A. Adams, Robert J. Anderson): The authors outline a framework (aka ‘Universal Model of Leadership’, in all simplicity) to increase your effectiveness as a leader. The book includes a free online self-assessment of current leadership capabilities as well as tips to bring your effectiveness to the next level.
• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (Liz Wiseman): In her book, Wiseman starts from the principle that managers’ key role is to amplify their subordinates’ talent and capabilities. Those who succeed can be called ‘Multipliers’ as opposed to ‘Diminishers’. By putting them side by side, she identifies a set of fundamental behaviours and states of mind explaining why a given manager will fall in one camp or another.
• The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli): This book is more than 600 years old but has not lost its relevance. Managers can still benefit from Machiavelli’s wisdom on the sources and use of power.
• Principles: Life and Work (Ray Dalio): The founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, shares the 200+ principles that have been shaping his personal and professional ethics.
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (David Epstein): To reach excellence, Epstein argues that intense practice (the famous ‘10000 hours’ made famous by Malcolm Gladwell, among others) proves itself relevant only in well-defined contexts. In others, ‘generalists’, who wander around before finding their way, usually perform better in the long run.
• Right from the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role (Dan Ciampa, Michael Watkins): Watkins is also the author of ‘the First 90 Days’ and those two books can be read in conjunction in the context of a transition to a CEO role, with ‘Right from the Start’ providing the structured fundamentals and ‘the First 90 Days’ putting them into practice.
• Stealing the Corner Office: The Winning Career Strategies They’ll Never Teach You in Business School (Brendan Reid): Off the beaten path and out of the political correctness, but still very relevant, the author provides managers with advice on how to improve their chances of promotion, from self-promotion to cultivating a moderate non-conformism.
• Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection (Charles Duhigg): An excellent book full of valuable insights on communication, both personal and professional. Duhigg alternates between theoretical concepts and practical examples, making the reading highly accessible.
• Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else (Geoff Colvin): The author goes beyond the classical debate between talent and effort as the main reason for performance, introducing, like Malcolm Gladwell, the notion of ‘deliberate practice’. He then converts this theory into a range of practical advice tailored to different corporate situations.
• Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect (Will Guidara): In this book, Will Guidara, one of New York’s most talented restaurateurs, shares his story and the ingredients of his success. However, gastronomy enthusiasts will be disappointed: the book is primarily about the concept of “hospitality”, both towards customers and colleagues. More than the entrepreneurial journey, readers will particularly remember the management lessons hidden behind the many anecdotes.
• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (Marshall Goldsmith): Executive coach Goldsmith lists 20 ‘managerial flaws’ whose impact on attitude prevents good performers from reaching the ‘top of the pyramid’.
• What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business (Mark H. McCormack): Written by the founder of IMG, one of the largest sports management companies today, this book shares a set of pragmatic lessons gleaned by the author throughout his career. A true ‘MBA’ in corporate politics.
• Who (Geoff Smart, Randy Street): Talent acquisition has generally been an overlooked area of business, and yet the cost of bad recruitment decisions is phenomenal. This book closes the gap and should be read as a bible of best practices at each stage of the process. One I keep handy in preparation for my next recruitment process.
• A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload (Cal Newport): The emergence of new electronic communication methods since the early 2000s is often seen as a major factor in improving work productivity. Newport takes the opposite view here, arguing that, on the contrary, the proliferation of emails harms our ability to concentrate and forces our brains to operate in a way for which they were not designed. He then offers some suggestions for regaining calm and efficiency.

Although I am not an unconditional fan of all his work, Simon Sinek’s books are also worth a read, including:

• Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t;
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action;
• The Infinite Game.

On the other hand, I definitely believe that Patrick Lencioni, although lesser-known, is an author worth reading, multiple times. Each one of his books starts with a ‘leadership fable’, i.e. a business novel, followed by a robust framework on a particular topic, either individual or team-focused. In this list:

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable;
• The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable;
• Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable about Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business;
• Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors;
• The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues;
• The Motive: Why So Many Leaders Abdicate Their Most Important Responsibilities;
• The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team.

Organization, culture & communication

• The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business (Erin Meyer): A true best-seller that all managers operating in a multinational / multicultural environment should read. Meyer manages to formalize and somehow quantify what we usually call ‘culture clash’.
• Dealing With the Crazy-Makers in Your Life (David Hawkins): This book approaches, from another angle, the principles of ‘Process Communication’ (see below, in French), by studying how communication difficulties can emerge from misunderstanding or from behaviors generated by stressful situations.
• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Amy C. Edmondson): I have dedicated a post to this book, in which Edmondson explains the benefits of a fearless (i.e. free of fear) organization and provides a handful of ways to improve corporate culture in that respect.
• How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (Leil Lowndes): A compendium of little tips and tricks to help people who are uncomfortable in social situations.
• Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them (Tessa West): The eye of the author, a social psychologist, is useful to realize that what we define as a ‘jerk’ hides in reality a diversity of profiles. With his taxonomy in hand, we are now better equipped to deal with toxic colleagues in the workplace.
• The Ministry Of Common Sense: How to Eliminate Bureaucratic Red Tape, Bad Excuses, and Corporate BS (Martin Lindstrom): With some undeniable humour, Lindstrom leverages situations from our everyday life to highlight how nonsensical our professional environment has become, and offers first solutions to fight this creeping plague.
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer): With the help of Erin Meyer, Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, develops his managerial philosophy, based on the triptych Talent / Control / Franchise. Obviously, the thesis is seductive when you are a company as flamboyant and creative as Netflix. However, I wonder to what extent it is applicable to other more common situations.
• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Marshall Rosenberg): Marshall Rosenberg is one of the apostles of ‘nonviolent communication’, which insists on reframing our state of mind to help solve misunderstanding and potential conflict situations.
• Reinventing organizations (Frédéric Laloux): Former McKinsey Partner Laloux adopts a historical approach to show the evolution of management and corporate organization methods. 6 years before the COVID crisis, he encourages companies to aim for the ‘Teal’ stage, putting meaning and human at their core.
• The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million (Mark Roberge): Roberge is the former head of the sales team at HubSpot, a company now listed on the NASDAQ. In this book, he outlines the methods that allowed him to recruit, motivate, and develop the talents of his team throughout the company’s hyper-growth journey. A book that I have found uniquely well-structured and some lessons of which can be applied beyond the pure field of Sales.
• Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot (Matt Abrahams): In this work, Abrahams helps the reader to acquire good reflexes in verbal communication situations, most often unexpected. Nothing particularly innovative, but a practical reference guide useful to consult from time to time.
• Time, Talent, Energy: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power (Michael C. Mankins, Eric Garton): Adopting a somewhat avant-garde approach for the time, the authors insist on the importance of human capital as an essential driver of business performance and offer ways to improve business efficiency, including through the reduction of “organizational drag”.
• Toxic Organizational Cultures and Leadership: How to Build and Sustain a Healthy Workplace (Susan Hetrick): Hetrick succeeds in this book in looking at toxic cultures from several aspects. In particular, she establishes a scale of intensity, identifies a particularly relevant ‘toxic triangle’ and proposes a self-assessment questionnaire as well as the first steps towards remediation if your company finds itself “infected”.

Decision-making and analysis

• Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (George A. Akerlof, Robert J. Shiller): The authors take the opposite view of classical theory to explain recent economic crises and movements and argue instead that decisions are affected to a large extent by numerous cognitive biases. Thus, the remedy is not, according to them, a new economic theory, but rather a reflection on what makes man an animal like any other.
• The Art of Thinking Clearly (Rolf Dobelli): In Kahneman-style, Dobelli depicts almost 40 biases that harm our decision-making abilities, with ways to overcome them.
• Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn from Their Mistakes – But Some Do (Matthew Syed): Syed borrows the ‘Black Box’ terminology to the world of aviation, where each mistake is thoroughly analysed to improve future performance. Syed advocates that, more broadly, we should all reflect on our decisions, especially the unfortunate ones.
• The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking (Mikael Krogerus, Roman Tschäppeler): This book discusses 50 theoretical models, more or less known, to facilitate decision making.
• Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work (Chip Heath, Dan Heath): A Kahneman-like book aiming at outlining systematic processes to address our decision biases.
• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think (Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund): In this book, the authors expose the cognitive biases at work when we are exposed to current news, and how these biases have a negative influence on our opinion about the state of the world. A book at the crossroads between statistics, behavioral economics and optimistic philosophy.
• The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves Hardcover (Keith Law): Law presents an original book at the intersection of his two passions: baseball and behavioral economics. By analyzing some famous decisions in the history of this sport, he explains how even professionals can express, in a completely unconscious manner, behavioral biases detrimental to their performance and that of their team. Both intellectually deep and entertaining.
• Irrational Exuberance (Robert J. Shiller): Probably Shiller’s most-famous work and a clear contributor to his 2013 Nobel Prize in economics. Focusing on the 2008-09 housing bubble and leveraging a trove of data, Shiller proves that price moves during the period cannot be simply explained by rational drivers but were largely influence by psychological and cognitive biases. In the second part of his book, he suggests some solutions to prevent similar crises from happening again (well, next time maybe…).
• Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs (John Doerr): This book is probably the best source of information for anyone willing to better understand OKRs (Objectives / Key Results) and the way they could implemented in practice. A quite powerful tool to strengthen the objectives setting process within a layered organization.
• Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events (Robert J. Shiller): Following the train of thought described in Animal Spirits, Shiller studies why certain stories get resonance in people’s minds, influence behaviours and ultimately end up triggering major economic events, including crises. The back-and-forth between theory and practice is, as usual with Shiller, particularly well structured.
• Nudge: The Final Edition (Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein): Thaler and Sustein’s work has been so successful that the term ‘nudge’ has become part of our vocabulary. In concrete terms, the two authors believe that a well thought-out ‘choice architecture’ allows for better decisions.
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Dan Ariely): Ariely is one of the most famous behavioural economists of our time. In his book, he explains that human beings are predictable in the sense that they tend to react consistently to external events, but their reactions may differ from rational optimums, hence the terminology ‘predictably irrational’.
• Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman): This is undoubtedly a foundational and the best book on biases in decision-making processes one can find. The author argues that we have two systems, a ‘fast’ one, which can easily be influenced, and a ‘slow’ one, designed for thorough thinking. To be read not once, but multiple times, with a pen at hand.

Corporate strategy

• Barbarians to Bureaucrats: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies (Lawrence M. Miller): This book is more than 30 years old but has not lost any of its relevance. The author argues that every company goes through 7 stages in its life. Each stage has different requirements and needs. This book can therefore be read on two levels: by the company executive, who must become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his structure, and by the professional, who can thus more easily identify the stages where he feels most comfortable.
• Corporate Turnaround Artistry: Fix Any Business in 100 Days (Jeff Sands): The author provides a systematic checklist to address cash squeeze situations. The book briefly lists the possible causes for such stress before outlining 30 short-term levers that executives can use to alleviate cash pressures.
• Executing Your Business Transformation: How to Engage Sweeping Change Without Killing Yourself Or Your Business (Mark Morgan, Andrew Cole, Dave Johnson, Rob Johnson): The authors share their experience in business transformation with the reader in the form of thematic chapters.
• HR Strategy (Paul Kearns): Personally, I am always struck by how heterogeneously HR departments are positioned in organizations, even in the humanly challenging times we are currently going through. In this book, Kearns shares founding principles for transforming this department into a true strategic partner. He proposes to assess one’s own starting point through a maturity scale, ranging from level -2 (!) to 6.
• Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds (Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit): 3 McKinsey Partners share their approach to finding and making the right bold strategic moves within a 10-day schedule.
• Your Strategy Needs a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach (Martin Reeves, Knut Haanaes, Janmejaya Sinha): 3 BCG Senior Partners write on the best strategy executives can use to determine their strategy based on their company’s (or even their business unit’s) environment. This ‘metastrategical’ approach helps rank strategic priorities which sometimes appear as conflicting, such as growth, profitability and innovation.

Digital Transformation

• The Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age (David L. Rogers): Rogers states that the ongoing transition from the ‘analog’ to the ‘digital’ age will reshape all competitive landscapes and will thus force all companies to rethink their offering and their positioning. The book helps decision-makers assess the feasibility and lead the implementation of the related moves.
• Driving Digital Strategy: A Guide to Reimagining Your Business (Sunil Gupta): Gupta methodically analyzes how each component of a company must be rethought from a digital transformation perspective. Extremely well thought out, with many concrete examples. Probably my best read on the topic of digital transformation.
• Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation (George Westerman, Didier Bonnet, Andrew McAfee): The authors outline how companies can use digital to gain a competitive advantage – the reader should consider this book as a first introduction to identify the right strategies to put in place. Concrete references to many blue-chip companies add to the relevance, with a particular mention for the P&G case study.
• Why Digital Transformations Fail: The Surprising Disciplines of How to Take Off and Stay Ahead (Tony Saldanha): Saldanha argues that digital transformation is a sequential process, from building the foundations to embedding digital as part of the company’s ‘living DNA’. In each of the 5 steps, he dives in a structured manner into 2 fundamental reorganization themes.

Future of work

• Redesigning Work: How to Transform Your Organization and Make Hybrid Work for Everyone (Lynda Gratton): Published in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, this book aims at broadening our horizons as to what the future of work could entail. I am personally quite cautious on the magnitude of change as I believe the good old-fashioned office is far from dead. However, this book stimulates creativity and can offer some good food for thought in the area of employee experience.
• Work Disrupted: Opportunity, Resilience, and Growth in the Accelerated Future of Work (Jeff Schwartz): Before the irruption of ChatGPT and artificial intelligence (the book was published in 2021), the author proposes a prospective vision of the future of work and its practical and cultural implications.
• A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond (Daniel Susskind): Considering the technological progress over the last centuries, Susskind concurs with many observers and thinks that ‘technological unemployment’ can become a reality in the near future. However, looking one step ahead, Susskind believes this could trigger an unprecedented wave of prosperity and help fight poverty.

Negotiation

• Negotiating for Success: Essential Strategies and Skills (George Siedel): The author takes the reader by the hand by providing practical negotiation tools useful in business but also in daily life.
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It (Chris Voss): As a former FBI negotiator, Voss is used to negotiate as if lives depended on it. He distils practical insights on how to build good bargaining positions in a series of everyday-life contexts.

Macro-environment

• The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disaster (Peter Zeihan): The very geo-political approach, in the literal sense of the term, adopted by Zeihan offers an interesting perspective on the development of civilizations throughout history and understanding the natural circumstances that led the United States to be the superpower of the modern world. Zeihan uses this framework of reasoning to predict the advent of a new, much more unstable order, with which one (including myself!) may disagree, as today’s world is infinitely more complex.
• Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans (Peter Schweizer): Thanks to this well-documented book, Schweizer sheds new light on Sino-American relations and new forms of warfare. The soldier wars of the 20th century are partly replaced by a protean war, aimed in particular at shaking the societal pillars and the confidence of populations in their leaders. In any case, that is Schweizer’s viewpoint, and, considering his arguments, one is tempted to believe him.
• The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization (Peter Zeihan): In a somewhat anxiety-inducing style, but with arguments that I find very accurate, Zeihan leads us in an exercise of geopolitical forecasting and argues that the golden age that began in the 1980s has come to an end. We must now confront a new era of deglobalization and demographic decline which, according to the author, will resurrect national and individual behaviors forgotten for centuries.
• EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts (Ashoka Mody): In his 1200-page work, extremely well-documented, Mody traces the history of the single European currency, highlighting the wars of egos behind the hunt for the greater good and systematically explaining at each step why it has become a burden for the continent. One cannot deny the author the merit of having worked his subject extremely well, and I share some of his conclusions. However, his relentless desire to see only the bad in the single currency sometimes makes the reading a bit heavy.
• The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives (Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler): According to the authors, we are currently experiencing in various aspects of our lives a wave of converging exponential transformations which, brought together, further increase the speed of progress. This idea allows the authors to bring out some economic macrotrends.
• Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development (Henry Mintzberg): In his seminal book, Mintzberg argues that, to be successful, well-balanced managers need a blend of craft (experience), art (insight), and science (analysis). And yet, MBAs fall short at providing them with at least one, possibly two of these three dimensions. Mintzberg thus calls for a review of our approach towards higher education.
• MegaThreats (Nouriel Roubini): In his typical hyper-pessimistic tone (which earned him his fame during the 2008 housing crash), Roubini highlights 10 interconnected negative trends, from excessive debt to climate change, demographics (a post on which I wrote a few months ago) or geopolitical tensions which, if left unaddressed, can lead to a life-changing catastrophe for the whole of humanity.
• Post-Capitalist Society (Peter F. Drucker): As early as 1993, when this book was published, Drucker argued that our society was already transitioning from the ‘Age of Capitalism’ to the ‘Knowledge Society’. This book outlines the core components of this new society as well as implications for individuals, starting with the rise of the knowledge worker and the growing need for lifelong learning.
• Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail (Ray Dalio): Dalio delivers here the results of a historical study, extended over several centuries, on the determinants of the rise and fall of civilizations. An interesting book to analyze the geopolitical changes currently at work in a more structured way.
• The Storm Before the Calm: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond (George Friedman): In his book (written and published before the COVID crisis, which is even more remarkable), Friedman puts forth a theory that the United States was built on social and economic cycles, both independent but regular, which are expected to collide for the first time during the 2020s. Based on this, Friedman speculates that the coming years will be turbulent (with a particular emphasis on the 2028 US presidential election) but will give way to healthier new foundations.

Sports & econometrics

I am truly passionate by sports and by numbers. Fortunately, it seems I am not the only one. In this list you will find books that analyse sports under an econometrical and/or economic lens.

• Astroball: The New Way to Win It All (Ben Reiter): The episode after Moneyball (see below). A bit tainted by the fact that the Houston Astros were convicted of cheating on their way to the 2018 US baseball championship title.
• Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak (Travis Sawchik) : In the vein of Moneyball and Astroball, Sawchik focuses on the remarkable progress of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team in the mid-2010s. The approach here is original, as it highlights historically overlooked aspects of the sport, namely defensive strategy and the role of the catcher. Unfortunately, the Pirates quickly fell back into the lower ranks shortly after the book’s publication.
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Michael Lewis): How the underrated Oakland A’s and their manager Billy Beane used statistics to win the US baseball championship title.
• The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players (Ben Lindbergh, Travis Sawchik): The book explains how the Moneyball theory has been taken a level forward by some teams, who know rely on an analytical area known as sabermetrics to analyse the moves of their players (i.e. the input) and not solely their performance (i.e. the output).
• Soccernomics (2022 World Cup Edition): Why European Men and American Women Win and Billionaire Owners Are Destined to Lose (Simon Kuper, Stefan Szymanski)
• Soccermatics: Mathematical Adventures in the Beautiful Game (David Sumpter)

Economic and business novels

Books in this section should be read as stories, tend to be more entertaining and to require less focus.

• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou): Through a meticulous investigation, Carreyrou uncovered the scam underpinning the success of biotech start-up Theranos, ultimately leading to the indictment of its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. The book is a story about the overconfidence that can sometimes poison Silicon Valley’s life… and patients.
• Barbarians At The Gate (Bryan Burrough, John Helyar): This book provides a detailed account of the battle for the acquisition of RJR Nabisco in 1988, considered the first major leveraged buyout in history. In addition to the accuracy of the reported facts, the reading allows one to appreciate the mix of fascination and fear that private equity funds instilled in the economic world of the time.
• Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley (Antonio Garcia Martinez)
• Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (Chris Miller): Miller describes the history of the semiconductor industry and explains how this industry has transformed the balance of power. This historical perspective also helps to understand how the geopolitical and strategic balance has evolved over the decades and thus to better grasp the current issues of technological and territorial sovereignty. A very well-documented and accessible book, even for readers without any specific knowledge in the field.
• Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction (David Enrich): Enrich walks us through Deutsche Bank’s controversial history and reckless risk-taking culture.  This book thus allows us to better understand the bank’s comeback into the spotlight as the banking sector starts showing some signs of fragility.
• Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins (Garry Kasparov): Chess Grandmaster Kasparov is probably one of the first humans to have experienced first-hand the rise of the machine against human capabilities, losing to IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997. In his book, Kasparov not only shares his side of the story and its aftermath but also broadens the debate around the human – machine relationship. A fascinating read from a truly intelligent man.
• Disrupted (Dan Lyons): In humorous and autobiographical form, Lyons recounts his encounter, as a 50-year-old, with the vibrant and sometimes absurd world of start-ups.
• Dying of Money: Lessons of the Great German and American Inflations (Jens O. Parsson): Parsson revisits the inflation spikes that Germany and the United States both experienced in the 1930s and 1960s, respectively, and warns us of the costs of unchecked inflation. A timely read.
• Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (Michael Lewis): The meeting of two remarkable characters, in the literal sense of the term. One for his research, synthesis, and writing abilities on major moments of recent financial history (I am thinking in particular of The Big Short, Liar’s Poker, or Flashboys, among others). The other (Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of crypto trading platform FTX) for the fascination and rejection he has stirred around the world in the space of a few months. A fascinating read on the flip side of the crypto world.
• The Great Crash 1929 (John Kenneth Galbraith): In times where some ‘experts’ predict an economic catastrophe akin to the one experienced during the Great Depression, it may be useful to go back to the raw historical events, understand how this crisis unfolded and assess to which extent parallels can be drawn (or not) with today’s situation. Galbraith’s historical account is probably the most detailed to date.
• The Great Devaluation: How to Embrace, Prepare, and Profit from the Coming Global Monetary Reset (Adam Baratta): Baratta states that the current financial imbalances we are witnessing are unsustainable and will ultimately force governments to carry out a major devaluation, with dramatic consequences for the value of some assets.
• The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism (Hubert Joly): Joly shares his deeply human leadership principles and how he applied them throughout his turnaround of Best Buy, the US retail chain, between 2012 and 2020. Refreshing and inspiring.
• The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet (Jeff Goodell): This work is not strictly speaking an ‘economics’ book. However, Goodell explains very well the impacts that climate change, which is already in progress, will have on our lives in particular and on our societies in general. Very well documented, well written in a ‘thriller’ style, it is perhaps sometimes a bit paralyzed by anecdotes to the detriment of more generic considerations.
• How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention (Stephen Witt): In a very fluid and enjoyable style, Witt tells us the story of music piracy, from a time when digital music was a pipe dream to the birth of the mp3 standard, the result of a surprising combination of factors.
• The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy (Christopher Leonard): As already expressed in this blog, the US Federal Reserve (or ‘Fed’) is a shy, but indispensable cog within our financial system. Leonard further lifts the veil and argues that the financial imbalances and inflation we are currently experiencing can be directly traced back to the unfortunate money injections the Fed undertook to ‘solve’ the 2008-09 crisis.
• Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment (Jason Schreier): In this particularly well-documented book, Schreier tells the story of the meteoric rise of the video game studio Blizzard, creator of the Diablo and World of Warcraft franchises in the 2000s, and its equally spectacular decline in the 2010s. Through this narrative, we gain insight into how much creative companies can depend on a few key individuals and how challenging it can be in this context to transition from a startup to a structured multinational.
• The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company (Robert Iger): Iger tells the story of his 15-year stint at the helm of Disney and shares the leadership principles which help him transform a struggling company into a dominant diversified media & entertainment company. The book was released in 2019, just before Iger’s first retirement (he got called back in 2022) and while he was at the top of his game. Since then, the company has lost momentum and somewhat damaged his bright record.
• A Short History of Financial Euphoria (John Kenneth Galbraith): Thanks to a thorough work, Galbraith walks us through the largest speculative episodes of the last 3 centuries and allows us to see how much, as Mark Twain said, “history does not repeat itself but it rhymes”.
• This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (Nicole Perlroth): The author claims that the biggest threat to our civilization is not nuclear weapons but targeted cyber-attacks. Written as a thriller, the book introduces us to insiders, whose expertise and chilling real-life threat examples can only make us aware of the danger above our heads.
• An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination (Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang): Coincidentally (or maybe not), the book was released at the same time as whistle-blower Frances Haugen revealed a stack of confidential documents uncovering Facebook’s aim to master our minds through increasingly influential algorithms. A real well-documented eye-opener.
• What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence (Stephen A. Schwarzman): The reader may or may not have a favourable opinion of private equity, an industry in which Schwarzman’s Blackstone has become a major player. In any case, Schwarzman’s entrepreneurial journey and relentless focus on excellence are worth acknowledging and learning from.
• When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm (Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe): As a former strategy consultant working for a competitor, I can only confirm that McKinsey is very often considered with a mix of admiration and distrust. This well-documented book clearly goes for the latter, highlighting projects and contexts where its power may have been put at the service of particular interests, to the detriment of the general public.
• The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources (Javier Blas, Jack Farchy): The book lifts the veil on a confidential industry, namely commodity trading, and helps the reader better understand the concentration of ‘real world’ power in the hands of a handful of traders.

In French

• Les 100 citations de la philosophie (Laurence Devillairs): In this concise book, Devillairs explains the context and significance of 100 striking philosophical quotes, from ancient times to the present day. The book is a quick read and allows, in some cases, to debunk certain shortcuts or legends forged by time.
• 150 attitudes pour piloter votre PME (Patrick Dussausoy): Without claiming to discover revolutionary principles, the author, a former SME CEO, shares his life lessons in the form of structured principles. Useful in particular for newly appointed leaders.
• 52 leçons de leadership inspirées d’histoires vraies (Yvan Gatignon): The author illustrates great management principles using episodes from the lives of famous people.
• 65 outils pour accompagner le changement individuel et collectif (Arnaud Tonnelé): A very useful toolbox for any change manager. With synthetic sheets, the author addresses concepts, classic or more esoteric, useful to implement an organizational change plan. The layout is a useful blend of theoretical concepts and practical applications.
• Comment leur dire… La Process Communication (Gérard Collignon): A must-read for those interested in a thorough introduction to ‘Process Communication’, a framework whose aim is to facilitate communication, including under stressful conditions.
• Communiquer en situation de crise: Gérer l’urgence et l’émotion avec la Process Com (Muriel Jouas, Olivier Doussot): This book uses the principles of process communication to identify the pitfalls that managers can fall into when faced with crisis situations and gives them tools to deal with them, depending on their profile.
• Ils se croyaient les meilleurs. Histoire des grandes erreurs de management (Christine Kerdellant): We always learn from mistakes, including those made by others. Kerdellant goes through the life of some of the most successful entrepreneurs and executives and highlights that a long string of failures may be the prerequisite to success.  
• La parole est un sport de combat (Bertrand Périer): The author shares many practical tips to improve your eloquence and become more convincing orally, in public or in private.
• Le Pouvoir de la destruction créatrice (Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, Simon Bunel): For those interested in the theme of ‘creative destruction’, and not afraid by thorough academic analyses, this book is a must-read.
• Psychologie des foules (Gustave Le Bon): Le Bon wrote this book in 1895 to explain how crowds behave and react to external events. 130 years later, Le Bon’s ideas remain vividly relevant (more on that in a post in the near future, hopefully).
• Réapprendre à décider: Et si choisir les stratégies gagnantes était un vrai sport d’équipe… (Olivier Sibony): A Kahneman disciple, former McKinsey Partner Sibony studies some unfortunate decisions from the perspective of behavioural economics and highlights the decision biases at stake.
• Sortez vos données du frigo: Une entreprise performante avec la Data et l’IA (Mick Lévy): The author outlines 77 business use cases in which big data and artificial intelligence can be used. A good checklist for any decision-maker wishing to take the step into this field.
• Vous êtes chef ? Ce n’est pas si grave ! (Michel Soriano): In the same vein as Dussausoy, Soriano shares his experience as SME CEO, including some very practical material – special mention to his ’71 rules for the company’.