Book recommendations

For decades, IBM shaped the way the world did business. IBM products were in every organization, and IBM corporate culture established a management style that was imitated by companies around the globe. The company almost went out of business in the early 1990s, then came back strong with new business strategies and an emphasis on artificial intelligence. In this authoritative, monumental history, James Cortada tells the story of one of the most influential American companies of the last century.

The rapid and unprecedented changes brought on by COVID-19 have accelerated a transition to remote working, requiring the wholesale migration of nearly entire companies to virtual work in just weeks, and leaving managers and employees scrambling to adjust. "Remote Work Revolution" is essential for navigating the enduring challenges teams and members face.

Mike Isaac's "Super Pumped" presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against an era of rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, "Super Pumped" is a page-turning story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior.

To perform better in any situation, it is critical to develop psychological skills, which, just like physical abilities, can be taught, learned, and practiced. Few understand the importance of psychological skills better than Michael Bar-Eli. As both a sports and organizational psychologist, Bar-Eli has not only researched the science of performance but has also worked directly with elite athletes, coaches, and teams to help them improve their success on the court or field.

"The Economics of Women, Men, and Work" is the most current and comprehensive source available for research, data, and analysis on women, gender, and economics. Blau and Winkler are widely known for their research and contributions on the study of the economics of gender.

Measured at over $5 trillion (and growing every day), the national debt has become a source of national guilt. But few Americans realize that the young United States was conceived in debt. Alexander Hamilton was far less interested in paying down the Revolutionary War debt than in using it to create a vibrant national economy.

In "How to Say Anything to Anyone", you'll learn how to: ask for what you want at work; improve all types of working relationships; reduce the gossip and drama in your office; tell people when you are frustrated in a way that resonates; take action on your ideas and feelings; and get honest feedback on your performance.

The bailouts during the recent financial crisis enraged the public. If we reward firms that make irresponsible investments, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, aren't we encouraging them to continue to act irresponsibly, setting the stage for future crises? The answer, according to Eric A. Posner, is no.

The computer services industry has worldwide annual revenues of nearly a trillion dollars and employs millions of workers, but is often overshadowed by the hardware and software products industries. Jeffrey Yost shows how computer services, from consulting and programming to data analytics and cloud computing, have played a crucial role in shaping information technology -- in making IT work.

The media industry is facing epic upheaval. Revolutionary new technologies compel those in businesses as diverse as broadcasting to book publishing to radically recreate their business models or be left in history's wake. At the same time, those with the next big idea are eager to acquire the business know-how needed to make it in today's brave new world of media. This book addresses the concerns of both audiences.

In "Opposing Viewpoints: The Wealth Gap", readers will find insights into the causes of the wealth gap in America, its extent, and possible solutions for narrowing it.

There’s a new invisible force at work in our economic and cultural lives. It affects every advertisement we see and every product we buy, from our morning coffee to a new pair of shoes. “Stakeholder capitalism” makes rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world, but in reality this ideology championed by America’s business and political leaders robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity. Now Vivek Ramaswamy takes us behind the scenes into corporate boardrooms and five-star conferences, into Ivy League classrooms and secretive nonprofits, to reveal the defining scam of our century.

What would Thomas Malthus think about immigration? Would Karl Marx have to revise his theories since the fall of the Soviet Union? What would Adam Smith have to say about the Japanese economic miracle turning into an economic morass? The great economists of the past two hundred years may no longer be with us, but their ideas are very much alive -- and they have vital relevance to today's increasingly complex economic picture.

Technology is accelerating far more quickly than anyone could have imagined. During the next decade, we will experience more upheaval and create more wealth than we have in the past hundred years. In this gripping and insightful to our near future, the authors investigate how wave after wave of exponentially accelerating technologies will impact both our daily lives and society as a whole. What happens as AI, robotics, virtual reality, digital biology, and sensors crash into 3D printing, blockchain, and global gigabit networks? How will these convergences transform today's biggest industries? What will happen to the way we raise our kids, govern our nations, and care for our planet? As indispensable as it is gripping, this book provides a prescient look at our impending future.

For years, investors, business strategists, and policymakers worldwide have turned to one book to help them translate the massive flow of economic data into knowledge for intelligent decision-making. That book is Bernie Baumohl's classic best-seller "The Secrets of Economic Indicators". Now, in a brand-new Third Edition, Baumohl has thoroughly updated his classic to reflect the latest US and foreign economic indicators, and brand-new insights into what all of today's leading indicators mean. Baumohl introduces dozens of new, forward-looking economic markers, including those that monitor small business plans, freight traffic shifts, web searches, and even gambling.

The troubles we face are not the result of a good system gone awry, but rather a system that is built to do exactly what it is doing: corporations are designed to reap profits for shareholders -- at any cost. The greater welfare of society, or of the environment, will never be as important as financial gain. Magnuson shows us the relationship between the current wars abroad; rising oil prices; the recession; ballooning incomes of top CEOs; the mortgage crisis; and the health care, insurance, and auto industries, and he teaches us that the best way to understand the US economy is to think like an economist. With stunning clarity, Magnuson shows the interconnectedness of the local with the global, and offers real alternatives to this capitalist model.

"Unthinking" is a book about the world's most fascinating subject: us. Specifically, it's about what leads us to choose what we choose and to buy what we buy. The truth is that we routinely make these decisions without consciously thinking. Harry Beckwith's years of detailed study of human behavior has pinpointed the three major sources of influence that shape these unconscious choices: our childhood, our culture, and our eyes.

Using a rich array of historical examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that affect individual and collective economic behavior -- what he calls "narrative economics" -- has the potential to vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lesson the damage of financial crises, recessions, depressions, and other major economic events.Ideas can go viral and move markets. Stories like these drive the economy by driving our decisions about how and where to invest, how much to spend and save, and more. The stories people tell -- about economic confidence or panic, housing booms, the American dream, or Bitcoin -- affect economic outcomes.