This fall’s business and economics titles include a number of books that examine how individuals, governments, and corporations should prepare for the future.
Top 10
Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded
Guy Standing. Yale Univ., Aug. 29
Standing details a critical issue for today’s world.
Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter
Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler. Harper, Nov. 7
The bestselling author of Predictably Irrational delves into personal finance to help people understand their bad financial decisions and learn to make decisions that benefit them.
The Four: Or, How to Build a Trillion Dollar Company
Scott Galloway. Oct. 3, Penguin/Portfolio
As the power of technology’s biggest companies comes under more scrutiny, NYU business professor Galloway reveals how Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google built massive empires.
The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek
Howard Markel. Aug. 8, Pantheon
A medical historian examines the rivalry between two brothers that changed American ideas of health and altered the course of American medicine.
The Post-Widget Society: Economic Possibilities for Our Children
Lawrence H. Summers, with Chrystia Freeland. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jan. 9
With Americans bombarded by contrary messages about the digital economy, Summers presents a new paradigm for thinking about the current economic and technological revolution.
Rescuing Retirement Income
Teresa Ghilarducci and Tony James. Columbia Univ., Jan. 23
The authors offers a practical guide to preparing for a secure retirement without new taxes, bureaucracy, or increasing the deficit.
Retail’s Seismic Shift: How to Shift Faster, Respond Better, and Win Customer Loyalty
Michael Dart, with Robin Lewis. St. Martin’s, Oct. 31
In their previous bestselling book, The New Rules of Retail , the authors predicted nearly every defining characteristic of today’s marketplace. Now, they aim to do the same for the next era.
The Value of Everything: Who Makes and Who Takes from the Real Economy
Mariana Mazzucato. PublicAffairs, Oct. 3
A renowned economist details how modern capitalist economies increasingly reward businesses for the amount of wealth they capture for themselves rather than the value they add to the economy—and why we need to build a capitalism that works for everyone.
Way of the Wolf: Master the Art of Persuasion and Build Massive Wealth
Jordan Belfort. North Star Way, Sept. 26
Belfort—immortalized by Leonardo DiCaprio in the hit movie The Wolf of Wall Street—reveals the step-by-step sales and persuasion system proven to turn anyone into a sales-closing, money-earning rock star.
WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us
Tim O’Reilly. HarperBusiness, Oct. 10
One of Silicon Valley’s leading intellectuals and founder of O’Reilly Media explores the upsides and the potential downsides of what he calls the “next economy.”
Business & Economics Listings
Artisan
The Kinfolk Entrepreneur: Ideas for Meaningful Work by Nathan Williams (Oct. 17, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-57965-758-1). The author of the widely popular Kinfolk Table and Kinfolk Home compiles the rituals, wisdom, and motivations of 35 creative entrepreneurs from around the world.
Atria
Fully Alive: Using the Lessons of the Amazon to Live Your Mission in Business and Life by Tyler Gage (Aug. 1, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-5011-5602-1) shares the author’s spiritual adventures and business savvy that helped him create Runa, a tea and energy drink company that collaborates with the indigenous people of Ecuador, offering a sustainable income for 3,000 farming families.
Avery
This Is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order by John Schwartz (Dec. 26, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-399-57681-2). A New York Times columnist shares his financial successes and mishaps, offering an everyman’s guide to straightening out your money once and for all.
BenBella
The Innovation Blind Spot: Why We Back the Wrong Ideas—and What to Do About It by Ross Baird (Sept. 12, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-944648-61-9). The founder of Village Capital identifies the “blind spots” in the current innovation economy and reveals how investors can find the groundbreaking opportunities that too often go overlooked; with a foreword by Steve Case.
Berrett-Koehler
The Influence Effect: A New Path to Power for Women Leaders by Kathryn Heath, Jill Flynn, Mary Davis Holt, a d Diana Faison (Nov. 6, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-5230-8276-6). Everything that’s been written about women succeeding in the workplace—from leaning in to throwing out the idea of being “nice girls”—misses the true key that puts women ahead: influence. Four women leadership experts explain how women can gain the influence they need.
Raise Capital on Your Own Terms: How to Fund Your Business Without Selling Your Soul by Jenny Kassan (Oct. 9, trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-5230-8471-5).New businesses need money, but entrepreneurs are sometimes anxious about raising capital from traditional sources like venture capitalists, fearing there’ll be strings attached. Kassan’s book explains how to raise “grassroots” capital from supporters.
Bloomsbury Business
Share: How Organizations Can Thrive in an Age of Networked Knowledge, Power, and Relationships by Jingfang Cai and Chris Yates (Jan. 2, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-4729-4267-8) explores how organizations must change management practices to boost agility within new business models based around the idea of “sharing.”
Brookings Institution
What We Owe: Truths, Myths, and Lies About Public Debt by Carlo Cottarelli (Sept. 5, hardcover, $21.99, ISBN 978-0-8157-3067-5). The former director of the International Monetary Fund’s Fiscal Affairs Department focuses on positive remedies that countries can adopt to deal with their public debt, analyzing benefits and downsides, as well as suggesting which remedies might be preferable in particular situations.
Columbia Univ.
The Fracking Debate: The Risks, Benefits, and Uncertainties of the Shale Revolution by Daniel Raimi (Dec. 26, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-231-18486-1) offers a balanced and accessible view of oil and gas development, clearly explaining key issues surrounding the shale revolution that was enabled by the development of fracking technology.
Rescuing Retirement Income by Teresa Ghilarducci and Tony James (Jan. 23, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-231-18564-6) provides a practical guide to a future of secure retirement for anyone wanting to understand the growing movement to protect a period of life considered a time of rest and creativity.
Crown Business
The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise by Eric Ries (Oct. 17, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-101-90320-9). The bestselling author, entrepreneur, and Lean Startup founder reveals how established corporations and major enterprises can use Lean Startup techniques, energy, and savvy to reinvigorate their company and operations, spark innovation, and drive growth.
Dutton
Insane Mode: How Elon Musk’s Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil by Hamish McKenzie (Oct. 3, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-101-98595-3). A former insider at Tesla Motors tells the story of the most revolutionary car company since Ford and shows how under Elon Musk’s “insane mode” leadership, the company is working to bring an end to the era of gasoline-powered transportation.
Fantagraphics
Economics in Wonderland: Robert Reich’s Cartoon Guide to a Political World Gone Mad and Mean by Robert B. Reich (Nov. 7, hardcover, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-68396-060-7) is the first collection of the former U.S. secretary of labor’s short essays, edited from his various presentations, that along with Reich’s illustrations explain the disastrous consequences of global austerity policies.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Post-Widget Society: Economic Possibilities for Our Children by Lawrence H. Summers, with Chrystia Freeland (Jan. 9, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-374-11565-4). With Americans bombarded by contrary messages about the digital economy, Summers presents a new paradigm for thinking about the current economic and technological revolution.
Hachette
Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing—Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne (Sept. 26, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-31404-6). Blue Ocean Shift follows up on global bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy, showing managers how to move business from Red Ocean (crowded with competition) to Blue Ocean (creating a competition-free area).
Harper
Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter by Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler (Nov. 7, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-265120-4). Blending humor and behavioral economics, the bestselling author of Predictably Irrational delves into personal finance to help people better understand why they make bad financial decisions, and give them the knowledge to make decisions that will benefit them.
HarperBusiness
Streampunks: YouTube and the Rebels Remaking Media by Robert Kyncl, with Maany Peyvan (Sept. 5, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-265773-2). Collaborating with Google speechwriter Peyvan, former media exec Kyncl explains how new rules of entertainment are being written and how and why the media landscape is radically changing, while giving aspiring Streampunks advice for launching their own new media careers.
WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us by Tim O’Reilly (Oct. 10, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-256571-6). One of Silicon Valley’s leading intellectuals and the founder of O’Reilly Media explores the upsides and the potential downsides of our future—what O’Reilly calls the “next economy.”
Harvard Business Review
Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive by Dorie Clark (Oct. 3, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-63369-227-5) provides a blueprint for professional independence, with insights and advice on how people can build their brand, monetize their expertise, and extend their reach and impact online,
Harvard Univ./Belknap
A Century of Wealth in America by Edward N. Wolff (Oct. 16, hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-0-674-49514-2). At a time of deep uncertainty about the economic future, the NYU economist provides a bedrock of facts to understanding wealth—who has it, how they acquired it, how they preserve it—that is crucial to addressing challenges facing the United States.
Hay House
Women Rocking Business: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guidebook to Create a Thriving Life Doing Work You Love by Sage Lavine (Sept. 26, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-4019-5226-6) delivers a new approach to building a business that honors innate feminine values and is full of practical “how-to’s” that will help women become entrepreneurs from a place of empowering others rather than powering over them.
Holt
A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History by Diana B. Henriques (Sept. 19, hardcover, $32, ISBN 978-1-62779-164-9). Journalist Henriques, author of The Wizard of Lies, offers a deeply reported account of the crash of 1987, a cautionary tale of how the U.S. financial system nearly collapsed.
Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein (Nov. 21, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-250-12668-9). The Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter explores this shadow economy of illicit money and how it developed, drawing on leaked documents known as the Panama Papers and journalistic and government investigations.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt by Robert I. Sutton (Sept. 12, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-328-69591-8). The author of the No Asshole Rule features a cogent and methodical game plan for dealing with assholes—avoiding them, outwitting them, disarming them, sending them packing, and developing protective psychological armor.
Humanix
The Capitalist Code: It Can Save Your Life and Make You Very Rich by Ben Stein (Sept. 5, hardcover, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-63006-084-8). The bestselling author and financial pundit refutes the current notion that the corporate system is rigged against “ordinary citizens” and explains how corporate stock ownership is the best ever system devised to give workers and savers a route to financial comfort and security.
Kogan Page
Myths of Leadership: Banish the Misconceptions and Become a Great Leader by Jo Owen (Oct. 28, trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-7494-8074-5). An entertaining and practical examination of the most pervasive myths about leadership gives readers a well-researched guide to how they can avoid misinformation and stereotype to become a better leader.
Morrow/Dey Street
Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert’s Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home) by Morra Aarons-Mele (Sept. 26, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-06-266608-6). The marketing guru and host of the popular Forbes.com podcast Hiding in the Bathroom provides advice that empowers professionals of all ages and levels to take control of their lives and build their own versions of success.
North Star Way
Way of the Wolf: Master the Art of Persuasion and Build Massive Wealth by Jordan Belfort (Sept. 26, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-5011-6428-6). Immortalized by Leonardo DiCaprio in the hit movie The Wolf of Wall Street, Belfort reveals the step-by-step sales and persuasion system proven to turn anyone into a sales-closing, money-earning rock star.
Norton
You Don’t Own Me: How Mattel v. MGA Entertainment Exposed Barbie’s Dark Side by Orly Lobel (Nov. 14, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-393-25407-5) examines the question, “Are your ideas your own or does your employer own them?” Law professor Lobel recounts the story behind the long court battle over a Mattel employee who developed the Bratz doll line in his off-hours, but sold it to a rival company.
Pantheon
The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel (Aug. 8, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-307-90727-1). The medical historian and author of An Anatomy of Addiction delves into the American saga of these two extraordinary men whose lifelong competition with, and enmity toward, each other changed America’s notion of health and wellness, and who helped to alter the course of American medicine.
Penguin/Portfolio
The Four: Or, How to Build a Trillion Dollar Company by Scott Galloway (Oct. 3, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-7352-1365-4). In his first book, an NYU business professor argues that these four companies used evolutionary psychology to appeal to our instincts: Amazon, to hunt and gather; Apple, to procreate; Facebook, for love; and Google, for a God.
Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong by Kristen Hadeed (Oct. 10, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-59184-829-5). The author built a popular cleaning business with little business background, and explains how she succeeded, not despite her mistakes but because of what she learned from them; with a foreword by Simon Sinek.
Princeton Univ.
Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake (Nov. 14, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-691-17503-4). The major developed economies are now investing more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, or software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers, and this has played a role in some of the big economic changes of the past decade.
Measuring Tomorrow: Accounting for Well-Being, Resilience, and Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century by Éloi Laurent (Dec. 19, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-691-17069-5) argues that metrics such as gross domestic product are too narrow, focusing on unrealistic growth; broader measures that look at well-being, resilience, and sustainability help policymakers shift toward social justice and quality of life for citizens.
Prometheus Books
The Great American Economy: How Inefficiency Broke It and What We Can Do to Fix It by Steve Slavin (Aug. 8, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-63388-305-5) explains the underlying reasons for the widespread outlook that the American Dream is broken, and lays out a clear plan for making the American economy work for everyone, not just the 1%.
PublicAffairs
The Value of Everything: Who Makes and Who Takes from the Real Economy by Mariana Mazzucato (Oct. 3, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-61039-674-5). A renowned economist details how modern capitalist economies increasingly reward businesses for the amount of wealth they capture for themselves rather than the value they add to the economy—and why we need to build a capitalism that works for everyone.
Rowman & Littlefield
Lessons for Non-Profit and Start-Up Leaders: Tales from a Reluctant CEO by Maxine Harris and Michael B. O’Leary (Sept. 16, hardcover, $34, ISBN 978-1-4422-7653-6). The secrets to starting and running successful businesses can help entrepreneurs succeed in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sector. This work discusses how to avoid pitfalls, overcome challenges, and addresses ways to move forward.
Sasquatch
Women in Tech: Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories by Tarah Wheeler (Aug. 22, trade paper, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-63217-140-5). The author is CEO of a startup and offers practical career advice and inspiring personal stories from successful female tech professionals; foreword by Esther Dyson.
Scribner
Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times by Nancy Koehn (Oct. 3, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-5011-7444-5) features an in-depth portrait of five extraordinary figures—Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rachel Carson—illuminating how great leaders evolved, by a historian at the Harvard Business School.
Simon & Schuster
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath (Oct. 3, hardcover, $29, ISBN 978-1-5011-4776-0). The bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us, elevate us, and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work.
St. Martin’s
Retail’s Seismic Shift: How to Shift Faster, Respond Better, and Win Customer Loyalty by Michael Dart, with Robin Lewis (Oct. 31, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-14285-6). In their previous bestselling book, The New Rules of Retail (2014), Lewis and Dart predicted nearly every defining characteristic of today’s marketplace. Now, they do the same for the next era, where retailers will have to be ready for anything if they want to survive
Wiley
The Stress Test Every Business Needs: A Capital Agenda for Confidently Facing Recessions, Digital Disruption, Difficult Investors, and Geopolitical Threats by Jeffrey Greene (Nov. 20, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-1-119-41794-1) explains that stress testing is not just for banks—it can make every business stronger in an era of heightened uncertainty and investor scrutiny.
Yale Univ.
Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded by Guy Standing (Aug. 29, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-300-23084-0)details the effects that guaranteeing income to all would have on the economy, poverty, work, and labor; dissects and disproves arguments against basic income; explains what we can learn from pilot programs across the world; and illustrates why basic income has now become such an urgent necessity.
