The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk - $3.79
256 pages, 106 of 117 reviews are 4 or 5-star
The Thank You Economy isn’t some abstract concept or wacky business strategy… and the enhanced edition isn’t just the book – here Gary comes face to face with the reader with exciting video and audio — it’s the way we buy and sell, the way we’re interacting on all levels, at this exact moment. The way our marketplace functions has been evolving right before our eyes, changing into one that places heavy value on social interaction, which means the individuals and brands that “out-care” and “out-love” their competition will see the biggest returns. The businesses harnessing the word-of-mouth power coming from social media, those that can shift their culture to be more customer-aware and fan-friendly, will pull away from the pack and profit in today’s markets. Gary Vaynerchuk will lay out the thoughts, beliefs, and case studies that support this enormous change, covering everything from the consumer to the CEO while focusing on the connections in between.
The Great Crash of 1929 by John Galbraith – $1.99 (Kindle Daily Deal)
227 pages, 77 of 100 reviews are 4 or 5-star
SuperFreakenomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner – $3.79
292 pages, 326 of 386 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Bookwi.se Review
The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first.
Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What’s more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it’s so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary?
SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything.
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen, Karen Dillon and James Allworth – $3.99
239 pages, 69 of 78 reviews are 4 or 5-star
In 2010 world-renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen gave a powerful speech to the Harvard Business School’s graduating class. Drawing upon his business research, he offered a series of guidelines for finding meaning and happiness in life. He used examples from his own experiences to explain how high achievers can all too often fall into traps that lead to unhappiness.
The speech was memorable not only because it was deeply revealing but also because it came at a time of intense personal reflection: Christensen had just overcome the same type of cancer that had taken his father’s life. As Christensen struggled with the disease, the question “How do you measure your life?” became more urgent and poignant, and he began to share his insights more widely with family, friends, and students.
In this groundbreaking book, Christensen puts forth a series of questions: How can I be sure that I’ll find satisfaction in my career? How can I be sure that my personalrelationships become enduring sources of happiness? How can I avoid compromising my integrity—and stay out of jail? Using lessons from some of the world’s greatest businesses, he provides incredible insights into these challenging questions.
How Will You Measure Your Life? is full of inspiration and wisdom, and will help students, midcareer professionals, and parents alike forge their own paths to fulfillment.
Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win by William Taylor and Polly LaBarre – $3.99
336 pages, 33 of 36 reviews are 4 or 5-star, Lending Enabled
Business as usual is a bust . . .
In industry after industry, organizations that were once dismissed as upstarts, wildcards—mavericks—are making serious waves and growing fast. From high-profile innovators such as HBO and Google to funky sandwich shop chains, the truly imaginative and unconventional businesses are changing the way things are done—providing new approaches, strategies, and outlooks, as well as better ways to compete, lead, and succeed in the twenty-first century.
The first book to document this change, Mavericks at Work is business “edutainment” for a smart, ambitious readership, profiling some of the most exciting—and often eccentric—CEOs in the United States, while detailing their remarkable strategies for success
Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future From the Pull of the Past by Geoffery Moore – $3.99
240 pages, 12 of 15 reviews are 4 or 5-star
Based on twenty years’ experience advising the top leaders of many of the world’s most successful enterprises, Moore’s Escape Velocity offers a pragmatic plan to engage the most critical challenge that established enterprises face in the twenty-first century economy: how to escape the gravitational pull of legacy businesses and build material positions in next-generation categories.
In Escape Velocity, Moore presents a cogent strategy for generating future growth within an established enterprise. Organized around a hierarchy of powers – category power, company power, offer power, and execution power – this insightful work can show how each level of power can be orchestrated to achieve overall success. Moore explains:
• How to measure and manage the treacherous “adolescent phase” of next-generation businesses when they are not yet material to financial results yet must make sizable demands on resources needed to meet the current fiscal year’s commitments;
• How to reallocate resources across an enterprise in deliberately asymmetrical ways to create a powerful and sustainable foundation for a long-term competitive advantage
• How to leverage target-market initiatives as accelerants to growth and as stepping stones to broad overall category success;
• How to create unmatchable offerings by being swift to neutralize competitors’ innovations and laser-focused on driving in-house innovations to make a business impervious to competitors;
• How to fundamentally change the execution cadence of an organization, pushing change from innovation to broad deployment, creating an irreversible tipping point along the way.
At a time when the world is looking to established enterprises not just for investment stability but as job generation engines as well, Moore’s analysis is penetrating and his prescriptions are right on the mark. Escape Velocity gives executives and their teams a practical way forward to take advantage of the opportunities amid industry and economic disruptions.
320 pages, 13 of 13 reviews are 5-star
Practically Radical is a manifesto for change and a manual for making it happen—in an era when change is the name of the game.
Businesspeople everywhere are engaging in a dramatic “rethink” of how they lead, work, and get results. In an age of fierce competition and stubborn recession, the status quo just doesn’t cut it. But how do you break new ground when there is so much pressure to do things the same way as everyone else? Using his years of experience and thought leadership in the business world, the cofounder and founding editor of one of the world’s most admired business magazines, Fast Company, offers radical ideas and practical advice to help you fix what’s wrong with your organization, launch new initiatives with the best chance to succeed, and rethink the logic of leadership itself.
Practically Radical goes deep inside twenty-five for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations to find out how they’ve made remarkable strides in tough circumstances. They include IBM, Zappos, Swatch, the Girl Scouts, Interpol, big-city hospitals, fast-growing banks, and high-flying airlines.
Diary of a Very Bad Year: Interview with An Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager by Keith Gessen
274 pages, 20 of 22 reviews are 4 or 5-star
The First Book from n+1—an Essential Chronicle of Our Financial Crisis
HFM: Where are you going to buy protection on the U.S. government’s credit? I mean, if the U.S. defaults, what bank is going to be able to make good on that contract? Who are you going to buy that contract from, the Martians?
n+1: When does this begin to feel like less of a cyclical thing, like the weather, and more of a permanent, end-of-the-world kind of thing?
HFM: When you see me selling apples out on the street, that’s when you should go stock up on guns and ammunition.
386 pages, 29 of 31 reviews are 5-star
The result of a remarkable three-year-long investigation that took award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin across four continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia), The World According to Monsanto tells the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusiness giant—the world’s leading producer of GMOs (genetically modified organisms)—and how its new “green” face is no less malign than its PCB- and Agent Orange–soaked past.
Robin reports that, following its long history of manufacturing hazardous chemicals and lethal herbicides, Monsanto is now marketing itself as a “life sciences” company, seemingly convinced about the virtues of sustainable development. However, Monsanto now controls the majority of the yield of the world’s genetically modified corn and soy—ingredients found in more than 95 percent of American households—and its alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly are the subject of worldwide concern.
Released to great acclaim and controversy in France, throughout Europe, and in Latin America alongside the documentary film of the same name, The World According to Monsanto is sure to change the way we think about food safety and the corporate control of our food supply.
206 pages, 8 of 15 reviews are 4 or 5-star
This new edition of How People Tick is a practical guide to over 50 types of difficult people such as Angry People, Blamers, Impatient People, Workaholics and Gossips. Each difficult situation is described, how it happens is analysed, and then strategies to help you deal with the problem are suggested. Disruptive behaviour patterns can be addressed once and for all, instead of having to handle one-off ‘difficult’ events, time and time again. Absolutely invaluable to everybody, How People Tick is full of tried and tested tips for handling ‘difficult’ people in ‘difficult’ situations, based on a real understanding of their behaviour. It is an essential read if you find people bewildering or just plain difficult, and yet still want to understand them, work with them and live with them.
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I have not read any of these books, so they may not be any good. Some of the Kindle Books books from previous Free Book posts or previous Kindle Deal posts are still available. If you want to see all free books as they come out you should follow Books on the Knob on their RSS or Twitter Feed. Or Ireaderreview or the many free book threads on Amazon’s Message Boards.
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