Jobs and Economy
Unlike some of the sublime writing by historians in the Global Balance of Power reading list, the standard of writing from economists and business writers is more prosaic. What they lack in style, however, is more than made up for by some of their ideas, which have had a lasting impact.
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, David Ricardo’s The Principles of Political Economy and Karl Marx’s Capital: An Abridged Edition (Oxford World's Classics) are classic economic texts for a very good reason. Smith was writing first and describes the very early stages of the industrial revolution. Ricardo came next and really provided an update to Smith with the added twist of looking at comparative advantage. Marx was the last of the three and was writing when the industrial revolution was in full swing. They are all great contemporary observations of how economies worked in their era. In many respects they were following the traditions of Malthus and Darwin who were observing the natural world - they were literally writing down what they saw. And since nobody else had done that they have become classics and also dangerous. The world economy of the 2020s has very little in common of the British economy of the 1770s that Smith was describing or the 1820s that Ricardo was describing. Yet Adam Smith is revered by large sections of the political classes as some kind of prophet. Ricardo’s comparative advantage story has been thoroughly disproved by countries like the US and China who were large enough to do everything, from agriculture to high tech manufacturing. Marx was ignored for most of his life and his ideas and his collaborative work with the industrialist Engles The Communist Manifesto (Oxford World's Classics) (mercifully short) were re-discovered decades later. But Capital: An Abridged Edition (Oxford World's Classics) is actually a pretty good read.
An Essay on the Principle of Population (Classics S.) by Thomas Malthus deserves a read and is also wonderfully short. Malthus wrote his book on population booms and busts just before the agricultural revolution which made many of his findings seem completely erroneous. But they are highly applicable to the animal world and are still used by scientists today. Humans need to keep innovating to keep ahead of Malthus. If they do not then his predictions will come true and a massive famine and population crash would be a future scenario for us all.
Jumping along I would also recommend Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change). Christensen, who died recently, has a cult like following from many businessmen who take his analysis of why some companies succeed and others fail as gospel. Christensen created a mini industry around his ideas and his various books are worth reading.
The full list is as follows:
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) Clayton Christensen
An Essay on the Principle of Population (Classics S.)
T.R. Malthus, Anthony Flew (Editor)
Adam Smith, et al
Capital: An Abridged Edition (Oxford World's Classics)
Karl Marx, David McLellan (Editor)
The Principles of Political EconomyDavid Ricardo
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) Clayton Christensen
Patrick N. Allitt, The Great Courses
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business (J-B Lencioni Series)
Lencioni, Patrick M.
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Coyle, Daniel
Morgan, John
The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer
Liker, Jeffrey
The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses
Ries, Eric
Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works (Lean (O'Reilly))
Ash Maurya
The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy
King, Mervyn
The Second Machine Age - Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
Brynjolfsson, Erik
Theobald, Oliver
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
O'Neil, Cathy
The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World
Domingos, Pedro
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Bostrom, Nick
Gordon, Robert J.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Ben Horowitz
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages
Carlota Perez
David Graeber
Levinson, Marc
Fischer, Tristan
An Economic History of the World since 1400
Donald J. Harreld, The Great Courses
Why Did the Chicken Cross the World
Andrew Lawler
Vaclav Smil
Rose George
Becoming Steve Jobs: The evolution of a reckless upstart into a visionary leader
Brent Schlender, Rick Tetzeli
Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization
Vaclav Smil
Pandaemonium 1660-1886: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers
Cottrell Boyce, Frank
Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers who Broke the World
Liaquat Ahamed
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer
The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History
Fischer, David Hackett
Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
Tyler Cowen
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty
Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
The End of Growth: Adapting to our new economic reality
Richard Heinberg
The End of Growth Update: Europe & America Stumble, China Hits the Wall
Richard Heinberg
Joseph Stiglitz
The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses
Eric Ries
Capturing New Markets: How Smart Companies Create Opportunities Others Don't
Stephen Wunker
iSteve: The Book of Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
Walter Isaacson
Tyler Cowen
eWork: Change the Way You Work Forever
Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Michael Lewis
Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
David J.C. MacKay
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers
Geoffrey A. Moore
Race between Education and Technology
Goldin, et al
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Niall Ferguson
Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy
ESTRIN (Author)
Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action
Robert S. Kaplan (Author), et al
Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes
Robert Kaplan (Author), David P. Norton (Author)
The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor
Seeing What's Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change
Clayton M. Christensen, et al
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Urban Studies & Biography)
Robert A. Caro
The Living Company: Growth Learning and Longevity in Business
Arie De Geus
Peter Krass
The Affluent Society (Penguin Business)
John Kenneth Galbraith (Introduction)
Milton Friedman, University of Chicago
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
John Maynard Keynes
An Essay on the Principle of Population (Classics S.)
T.R. Malthus, Anthony Flew (Editor)
The Communist Manifesto (Oxford World's Classics)
Karl Marx, et al
Adam Smith, et al
Capital: An Abridged Edition (Oxford World's Classics)
Karl Marx, David McLellan (Editor)
Blown to Bits : How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy
Philip Evans, Thomas S. Wurster
Paul Hawken, et al
Anthony B. Perkins, Michael C. Perkins