Non-fiction books: business, finance and tech

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Lots of people have expressed support for the idea of genre threads but (pace Amor's comment about having started a specialist thread or two some years ago) it doesn't seem to be actually happening. So this is my attempt to start one such thread. I think the entire universe of books probably requires several genre threads and, relevantly to this attempt, I think lumping the entire world of non-fiction into one thread would be too generic. So how about the category in my thread title?

Anyway, all I have to say substantively is that I finished Bad Blood in a couple of days on holiday last week and I wholeheartedly agree with other posters who have already commented (either on the Current Reading thread or in the Standalone Theranos thread in World) on how superb it was. A real page turner. Over the past 20-25 years I've read perhaps 8 or 9 books about business people behaving badly, from the rogue trader Barings collapse to the Enron scandal, the sub-prime mortgage based financial bubble and crisis etc etc. but I have never encountered in the pages of any other such book any individuals who came even close to being as utterly hideously loathsome as Elizabeth Holmes and "Sunny" Balwani.

[Patrick Thistle]

I'd recommend both the Freakanomics books, and The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford.

In terms of Business Books, I find most leave me cold, but 'What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School' by Mark H McCormack is one I quote occasionally. One of his maxims - that sometimes you have to fire your customers - is the best bit of business advice I have ever followed. I've also read McCormack's book on selling and years ago I read Peter Denny's 'Selling to Win', both of which were helpful for me when I had my own business.

The most helpful book I ever read when I ran my own business and then worked in comms was 'Power Direct Marketing' by Ray Jutkins. It's basically a how to guide in putting together a mailshot and writing a marketing letter. A lot of what Ray writes about is also in Copywriting for Dummies, another incredibly valuable book.