John Kay

The Origin of Wealth

by Eric D. Beinhocker

“What’s good about it is that it is eclectic. I initially picked it up to write a review and was planning to do a hatchet job given that it had a ludicrously ambitious title and was by a McKinsey consultant. I then discovered it was actually very good.” — via Interview, October 2013

Good Strategy Bad Strategy

by Richard Rumelt

“Most books about business strategy are indeed terrible. The great take away of this book is that good strategy is really just about structured thinking about problems. Rumelt is a brilliant expositor of how you can do that in relation to a range of business issues.” — via Interview, October 2013

The Big Short

Inside the Doomsday Machine

by Michael Lewis · Business

“Lewis is a great writer and this is one of the best accounts of what happened in the run up to the crash. In fact, I just recommended it to someone I was with last night who was talking about the efficient market hypothesis – which is the basic paradigm of financial economics – and I told him that if he wanted to understand why it didn’t apply in the run up to the financial crisis, he needed to go away and read this book.” — via Interview, October 2013

Guns, Germs, and Steel

by Jared Diamond · 1997 · History

“If you are brought up with the rationalist tradition of standard economics, you just never make the sorts of connections that Diamond makes.” — via Interview, October 2013

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

by David S. Landes · 1998 · Economics

“He provides an explanation for why Western Europe was the cradle for modern economic growth and looks at the development of the institutions that made modern economic development possible. Landes provides the best account I know of these kinds of developments.” — via Interview, October 2013