Business books that survive the decade

TI

The Innovator’s Dilemma

Clayton Christensen

The explanation of why well-managed companies fail at exactly the thing they are best at. Over-applied since, and the core argument is still the core argument.

TP

The Psychology of Money

Morgan Housel

Twenty short essays on why people behave irrationally with money and why that is not a bug. The plainest writing on the subject that is not condescending.

PC

Poor Charlie’s Almanack

Charles Munger

Munger’s speeches collected, which is better than a book by him, because the repetition is the point. The mental-models section is the part people return to.

AR

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

Burton Malkiel

The case for index funds, made over fifty years of editions with the evidence updated each time. The most practical book on this list.

TI

Thinking in Bets

Annie Duke

A poker player’s account of separating decision quality from outcome quality, which is the error almost everyone makes when reviewing their own work.

A

Antifragile

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The idea — some things gain from disorder — is genuinely useful. The book is twice as long as it needs to be, and the idea still survives that.

ZT

Zero to One

Peter Thiel

Short, contrarian and specific about the difference between copying and creating. The monopoly chapter is the one people argue with, which is why it is worth reading.

TL

The Lean Startup

Eric Ries

Brought the build-measure-learn loop into common usage, and the vocabulary is now everywhere. Read it for the origin of the terms rather than as a current manual.

TB

The Big Short

Michael Lewis

The 2008 crash explained through a handful of people who read the documents. The clearest account of how a financial system lies to itself.

LS

Liar’s Poker

Michael Lewis

The bond desk at Salomon Brothers in the eighties, told by a trainee who was there. The culture it describes did not go away.

DO

Den of Thieves

James B. Stewart

The insider-trading scandal of the eighties reported like a crime novel, with the SEC and the prosecutors as characters. Dated in detail and not in kind.

TE

The Everything Store

Brad Stone

Amazon before it was inevitable, reported from interviews with the people who were there and were often unhappy. Good on how the internal culture was built.

SD

Shoe Dog

Phil Knight

A founder’s memoir that is unusually willing to describe the near-death years rather than the triumph. Better than most books about how companies start.

TB

The Box

Marc Levinson

How the shipping container reorganised global manufacturing, and it is a story about labour and ports rather than about logistics. The best kind of business history.

S

Scale

Geoffrey West

Cities, companies and organisms all obey power laws, and the argument that companies die while cities do not is the part worth remembering.

BJ

Bullshit Jobs

David Graeber

A serious argument that a large share of employment is pointless, backed by testimony from people doing those jobs. The thesis is contested; the testimony is not.

DT

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

David Graeber

The argument that credit came before coinage, which inverts the standard economics story. Anthropologically contested in places and still the most useful reframing.