"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, the man who never read lives only one."
- George R. Martin -
Context and perspective are critical for anything that you do. Reading widely beyond textbooks, blogs, newspapers and magazines is highly recommended for both personal and professional development. The collection of books below is just one source.
Recommended Readings
On world history...
"Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall", Timothy H. Parsons
On human society...
"The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor", William Easterly
On the events and forces influencing the modern world...
"Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump", Michael Isikoff and David Corn
"Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization", Parag Khanna
"Global Imbalances and the Lessons of Bretton Woods", Barry Eichengreen
"Fearless Genius: Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley", Doug Menuez and Kurt Andersen
On people - the power of images and storytelling...
"Seeking Light: Portraits of Humanitarian Action in War", Paul Grabhorn
"Interventions: A Life in War and Peace", Kofi Annan
On regions and countries...
"America Latina: 1960-2013 Photographs", Luis Camnitzer and Olivier Compagnon
"View from Inside: Contemporary Arab Photography, Video and Mixed Media Art", Karin Adrian von Roques and Samer Mohdad
On the ongoing globalization debate...
"Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited", Joseph Stiglitz
"The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy", Dani Rodrik
On the relationship between power and (geo)politics...
"Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World", Time Marshall
"The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be", Moises Naim
On the drivers of the global economy and markets...
"The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy" Mervyn King
"Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy", Raghuram Rajan
"The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy", Michael Pettis
On market psychology...
"The Most Important Thing Illuminated", Howard Marks
"Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder", Nassim Nicholas Taleb
On the importance of oil...
"The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World", Daniel Yergin
On China...
"China's Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans and the End of the Chinese Miracle", Dinny McMahon
"In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China's Ascent in the Next Decade", Damien Ma and William Adams
"Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise", Carl E. Walter and Fraser J. T. Howe
On philosophy and personal and professional development...
"Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't", Simon Sinek
"Creativity Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration", Ed Catmull
"Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Others to Take Action", Simon Sinek
"The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers", Ben Horowitz
What are you currently reading?
Are there any books from your part of the world that you can recommend to EM+BRACE?
Please feel free to reach out here with your thoughts!
Other books to consider:
On world history...
"Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall", Timothy H. Parsons
"1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed", Eric H. Cline
"Empires in World History", Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper
"A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century", Barbara W. Tuchman
"The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East", Eugene Rogan
"The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World", Niall Ferguson
"The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the 19th Century", Jurgen Ostenhammel
"Revolutions of 1848: A Social History", Priscilla Robertson
"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", Yuval Noah Harari
On human society...
"The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor", David S. Landes
"Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies", Jared Diamond
"The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality", Angus Deaton
"Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty", Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
"The Haves and the Have Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncractic History of Global Inequality", Branko Milanovic
"The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor", William Easterly
On the events and forces influencing the modern world...
"1913: The Year Before the Storm", Florian Illies and Shuan Whiteside
"Revolutionary Russia: 1891 - 1991 A History", Orlando Figes
"Conflict - Time - Photography", Simon Baker and Shaoir Mavlian
"The Great Crash 1929", John Kenneth Galbraith
"Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression 1919-1939", Barry Eichengreen
"Global Imbalances and the Lessons of Bretton Woods", Barry Eichengreen
"Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership With Saudi Arabia", Thomas Lippmann
"How Soccer Explains the World", Franklin Foer
"Work: The World in Photographs", National Geographic
"The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lesson's from Japan's Great Recession", Richard Koo
"1968: The Year that Rocked the World", Mark Kulansky
"Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System", Barry Eichengreen
"Fearless Genius: Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley", Doug Menuez and Kurt Andersen
"The Shock Doctrine", Naomi Klein
"Mismeasuring Our Lives", Joseph Stiglitz
"Uprising: Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy", George Magnus
"Confessions of an Economic Hitman", John Perkins
"Water", Edward Burtynsky
"The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve". G. Edward Griffin
"The Revenge of Geography", Robert Kaplan
On people - the power of images and storytelling...
"Seeking Light: Portraits of Humanitarian Action in War", Paul Grabhorn
"After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Sunni-Shia Split in Islam", Leslie Hazelton
"Faces of Africa: Thirty Years of Photography", Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
"Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China", Jung Chang
"No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam", Reza Aslan
"The Big Truck: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster", Jonathan M. Katz
"Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption", Bryan Stevenson
"Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity", Katherine Boo
"Between the World and Me", Ta-Nehisi Coates
"Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea", Barbara Demick
"Infidel", Ayaan Hirsi Ali
"The Kite Runner", Khaled Husseini
"A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier", Ishmael Beah
"Interventions: A Life in War and Peace", Kofi Annan
"The Cry of Silence: Traces of Armenian Memory", Antoine Agoudjian and Simon Abkarian
"Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide", Michael B. Oren
"Lives of Devotion: The Many Faces of Faith", Fernando Moleres
On regions and countries...
"Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice," Bill Browder
"North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors", Daniel Tudor and James Pearson
"America Latina: 1960-2013 Photographs", Luis Camnitzer and Olivier Compagnon
"Cuba Then", Ramiro D. Fernandez
"India: The Emerging Giant", Arvind Panagariya
"View from Inside: Contemporary Arab Photography, Video and Mixed Media Art", Karin Adrian von Roques and Samer Mohdad
"Petrostate: Putin, Power and the New Russia", Marshall J. Goldman
"Hanoi Calling: One Thousand Years Now", Greg Girard
"Wayuu: Cultura de Desierto Colombiano", Santiago Harker
"Brasil: A Gente Ve Por Aqui", Globo Publishing
"Bollywood: The Passion of Indian Film and Music", Ear Books
"From these Hands: A Journey Along the Coffee Trail", Steve McCurry
"Colombia Inedita", Santiago Harker
"Iran: The Land of Norooz", United Nations
On the ongoing globalization debate...
"The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy", Dani Rodrik
"Why the West Rules - For Now", Ian Morris
"The Great Convergence", Kishore Mahbubani
"The Road to Global Prosperity", Michael Mandelbaum
"The Next Covergence", Michael Spence
"Making Globalization Work", Joseph Stiglitz
"Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy", Pietra Rivoli
"Seeing the Elephant", Peter Marber
"Globalization", Bruce Greenwald and Judd Khan
On the relationship between power and (geo)politics...
"Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World", Time Marshall
"The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order", Samuel P. Huntington
"The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be", Moises Naim
"World Order", Henry Kissinger
"The J Curve", Ian Bremmer
"The Fat Tail", Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat
"Political Order and Political Decay", Francis Fukuyama
"The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia", David E. Hoffman
"Strategic Vision", Zbignew Brzezinski
"All the President's Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power", Nomi Prins
"The Origins of Political Order", Francis Fukuyama
On the drivers of the global economy and financial markets...
"Stabilizing an Unstable Economy", Hyman P. Minsky
"Fault Lines", Raghuram Rajan
"Inside the House of Money", Steven Drobny
"The Dollar Trap", Eswar S. Prasad
"The Volatility Machine", Michael Pettis
"The Age of Deleveraging", A. Gary Shilling
"Traders, Guns and Money", Satyajit Das
"The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy", Michael Pettis
"Bailouts or Bail-Ins?", Nouriel Roubini and Brad Setser
"This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Follies", Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff
"Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance", Nouriel Roubini and Stephan Mihm
"Lords of Finance", Liaquat Ahamed
On market psychology...
"A Short History of Financial Euphoria", John Kenneth Galbraith
"The Most Important Thing Illuminated", Howard Marks
"Fooled By Randomness", Nassim Nicholas Taleb
"Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises", Timothy F. Geithner
"Antifragile", Nassim Nicholas Taleb
"The (Mis)behavior of Markets", Benoit Mandelbrot
"Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk", Peter L. Bernstein
"The Signal and the Noise", Nate Silver
"When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management", Roger Lowenstein
On the importance of oil...
"The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World", Daniel Yergin
"The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power", Daniel Yergin
"Oil 101", Morgan Downey
"Oil", Edward Burtynsky
On China...
"Among the Celestials: China in Early Photographs", F. Bertholet and L. Vander Aalsvoort
"Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation", Victor Shih
"China", Edward Burtynsky
"Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journals of Premier Zhao Ziyang", Zhao Ziyang and Adi Ignatius
"The Beijing Consensus", Stefan Halper
"Avoiding the Fall: China's Economic Restructuring", Michael Pettis
"In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China's Ascent in the Next Decade", Damien Ma and William Adams
"Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise", Carl E. Walter and Fraser J. T. Howe
"Dealing With China", Henry M. Paulson
"Translations from the Chinese", Arthur Waley
"Mao", Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
"Lee Kuan Yew", Graham Allison
"The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers", Richard McGregor
"Postcards from Tomorrow Square", James Fallows
"A Day in Beijing", Ear Books
"On China", Henry Kissinger
"China: The Balance Sheet", C. Fred Bersten, Bates Gill, Nicholas J. Lardy, Derek J. Mitchell
On philosophy and personal and professional development...
"Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger", Peter Bevelin
"Ego is the Enemy", Ryan Holiday
"Creativity Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration", Ed Catmull
"The Hard Thing About Hard Things", Ben Horowitz
"Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens", Christopher Hitchens
"Zero to One", Peter Thiel
"Drucker's Lost Art of Management", Joseph A. Maciarello and Karen E. Linkletter
"The Bed of Procrustes", Nassim Nicholas Taleb
"Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!", Richard P. Feynman
"Everything is Obvious", Duncan J. Watts
"Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!)", George Lois
"Leaders Eat Last", Simon Sinek
"The Drunkard's Walk", Leonard Mlodinow
"The Achievement Habit", Bernard Roth
"Team of Teams", General Stanley McChrystal
"Thinking Fast and Slow", Daniel Kahneman
"Why Success Always Starts With Failure", Tim Harford
"The Why Axis", Uri Gneezy and John A. List
"Start With Why", Simon Sinek
"The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature", Steven Pinker
"Originals: How Non-Comformists Move the World" Adam Grant