Another year, another reading list. Honestly, this year might have been my worst year reading in the sense that I read a lot of bad books. 27-23 were startlingly bad. I’d go so far as to say that Guy Raz’s book is the worst book I’ve read since I started making these lists.
But without further ado…
27. How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs – Guy Raz
Superficial business advice for people more interested in talking about the glory of entrepreneurship than building actual companies. 90% of the “success” stories involve a version of the following line: “he encountered cash flow issues and had to ask his mother-in-law for a $50,000 loan.”
26. Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim
Blue Ocean Strategy is typically viewed as a keystone business book. It’s often brought up with the same reverence of Christenson, Porter, or Drucker. I don’t understand how this book is revered by anyone. The core thesis of the book is that instead of competing in markets with many other options (red oceans), businesses should strive to play in areas without much competition (blue oceans). Really groundbreaking stuff.
Blue Ocean Strategy is poorly researched and dependent on a variety of “gut” assumptions. One of the book’s keystone case studies is Cirque du Soleil. Now clearly, Cirque du Soleil was/is an innovative company that deserves admiration and study, but the author’s analysis of the situation is amateurish.
They write:
Whereas other circuses focused on offering animal shows, hiring star performers, presenting multiple show arenas in the form of three rings, and pushing aisle concession sales, Cirque du Soleil did away with all those factors…Similarly, while the circus industry focused on featuring stars, in the mind of the public, the so-called stars of the circus were trivial next to movie stars or famous singers. Again, they were a high-cost component carrying little sway with spectators.
The authors provide no evidence that labor costs weighed down the companies. No 10-K, no newspaper article citing a record-breaking talent deal. Instead, the idea that Cirque du Soleil transformed the industry by turning to commoditized labor is thrown out there as fact. I have a hard time believing that when circus attendance was declining, an Executive at Ringling Brothers got management into a room and was like, “Here’s the solution to our problem. We’re spending ten million dollars to sign SQUIGGLES the clown.”
25. The Deadline Effect: How to Work Likes It’s the Last Minute—Before the Last Minute – Christopher Cox
You know a book is going to be out-of-touch with limited insights when an author’s main credential is they went to Harvard.
24. How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius – Nick Greene
I love basketball, and I struggled to get through this book. Imagine the general framework of Malcolm Gladwell, but without the writing talent.
23. Power: Why Some People Have it and Others Don’t – Jeffrey Pfelfer
A professor at a prestigious university summarizes academic research on career advancement. Most of the research was done with prestigious university graduates–meaning most of the advice is generic and useless unless you went to Stanford.
22. Sam Walton, Made in America – Sam Walton
300 pages of faux-folksy anecdotes without any real insight into the creation of Walmart. It’s genuinely weird to me how this book is on a variety of “best business books ever” lists. It’s also weirdly political. A good 25% of the book is reserved for Walton’s libertarian beliefs, while another 10% is taking shots at cities.
21. VC: An American History – Tom Nicholas
It’s a dense book on the history of venture capital in America. Not particularly readable, but meticulously researched and thought out.
20. The New Tycoons: Inside the Trillion Dollar Private Equity Industry That Owns Everything – Jason Kelly
The more I learn about private equity, the more I realize that it’s just a whole bunch of fancy words to describe a relatively simple financial model. This book paints a clear picture of the major private equity figures but sometimes trends more towards a press release than critical reporting.
Seven books that I liked but didn’t provide any crazy insight or anything.
19. Afterlife – Marcus Sakey
18. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
17. The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason – Chapo Trap House
16. Someone Could Get Hurt – Drew Magary
15. Just Like You – Nick Hornby
14. Herbie – Rich Cohen
13. The Empire of Gold – S.S. Chakraborty
12. Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New has Disrupted the Work that Matters Most – Lee Vinsel
The general premise of this book is that instead of innovation, we should really concentrate on maintaining and upgrading our existing public and corporate structures. Given that I write an operations-focused blog, you can assume I agree with this theory.
11. First in Thirst: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat Into a Cultural Phenomenon – Darren Rovell
Rovell is one of the most-dunkable people on the internet, but his first book is an interesting read on the rise of Gatorade. It’s a fairly interesting story on how to commercialize a scientific product.
10. Den of Thieves – James B. Stewart
A look at the insider trading scandals of the 1980s that laid the foundation for modern finance.
9. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
I don’t have much to add for what is rightly considered one of the greatest books ever written in any language. There is much to admire, but superficially I couldn’t help but draw an intellectual line from Dostoevsky to Jordan Peterson. I don’t mean that as a compliment. I did a bit of googling, and it turns out that Peterson is a big fan. Why did I draw this connection? Every female character in Brothers is a hysterical insane person, which pairs perfectly with Peterson’s ridiculous disorder/order theory. It’s darkly hilarious and fitting that one of the biggest self-help influencers of the last 10 years read classic literature and his major takeaway wasn’t about the human condition but rather that women are crazy.
8. Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric – Thomas Gryta
It’s not as insightful and deeply reported as a few other recent corporate biographies, but Gryta does a nice job tracing the downfall of one of capitalism’s most important companies. The verdict: General Electric could overcome fraudulent accounting and bad acquisitions, but it couldn’t overcome both.
7. Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP – Mirin Fader
At this point, it’s surprising that Giannis is a real person. His story is one of a Greek Myth.
6. The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket – Benjamin Lorr
Every few years, a book comes out that breaks down the grocery industry. Each one promises a big new insight into a thousand-year industry. There isn’t one here, but it’s still a well-written and interesting look at the modern grocery industry.
5. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger – Marc Levinson
A deeply reported and nuanced look at how the shipping container transformed commerce. Levinson meticulously looks at the revolution from all angles: commerce, labor, city planning, legal, socio-economic. One of the biggest takeaways was how dependent the industry’s evolution was on regulation. It’s almost as if politics plays a huge role in commerce.
4. Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire – Brad Stone
Both of Stone’s Amazon books are must-reads for anyone who lives in America. I’d argue that they’re required reading for anyone who works in the retail industry. The first book looks at how Amazon amassed the power it has. The sequel looks at what Bezos did with all that power. One very interesting dynamic here is the rise of advertising within Amazon. It’s a more powerful and efficient AWS.
3. The Devil’s Playbook: Big Tobacco, Juul, and the Addiction of a New Generation – Lauren Etter
It’s hard to imagine that there could be a story written about big tobacco where big tobacco isn’t the villain, but the one saying, “hold on, this might be dangerous.” But that’s exactly what happened in the case of Juul. For those that don’t know, according to its founders, Juul was created to help smokers switch from harmful cigarettes to less harmful vapes. (Note: I find this origin story preposterous) Juul then applied some Silicon Valley moxy to the industry. Juul’s version of moving fast and breaking things was explicitly advertising nicotine to children. In the end, a smoking substitute ended up ensnaring a new generation.
2. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
A beautiful and touching book about class, cloaked in a science fiction novel.
1. McDonald’s Behind the Arches – John Love
Every so often, business books come along that not only tell a company’s story but reveal how it happened. It’s one thing to say that a company looks to delight customers. It’s another to define “delight” and then describe how a company defined a qualitative idea at scale. Behind the Arches is one of those books. It not only tells the story of McDonald’s evolution, from a small California drive-in to an international corporation, but it describes in painstaking detail how it did so.
At times the book turns into deification, but honestly, it’s kind of understandable. Prior to McDonald’s, there were very few successful chain restaurants. The biggest was probably Howard Johnson, which was a sister company to a hotel chain. The reason was, how do you operationalize and scale food service? It’s one thing to produce an item at scale; it’s another to produce a service.
Love details how it happened.