Best business reading from bookstores around the world
Booksellers recommend the top selections from the business section.
While it has never been easier to order a book with just a few clicks, it also can still be helpful to browse the shelves of a good bookstore. You can ask for tips from the staff or experience the serendipity of stumbling upon an unexpected treasure. To help you build your reading list, we asked well-known booksellers in business centres around the globe to tell us what they're recommending to customers these days. Here is a selection of the responses.
BERLIN
Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data
By Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge
Data is replacing money as a driver of behaviour — that is the premise of the new book by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, author of the blockbuster Big Data, and The Economist writer Thomas Ramge. The book provides a road map to a new era of data capitalism, and the staff at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus in Berlin recommended it.
HONG KONG
Principles
By Ray Dalio
At the Eslite Causeway Bay bookstore, the book that stands out was named one of the best business books of the year by Amazon, with endorsements from Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and Arianna Huffington. Principles delivers the relentless logic and critical thinking that helped Ray Dalio become one of the world's most successful inventors and entrepreneurs. Dalio's original Principles was first available online, but this expanded and revised 2017 edition is the first version available in print.
NEW YORK
Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence — and How You Can, Too
By Gary Vaynerchuk
The staff at Barnes & Noble Union Square recommended Gary Vaynerchuk's follow-up to his 2009 international bestseller Crush It! In the new book Vaynerchuk expands on personal branding as a tool for business success and shares stories from other entrepreneurs who have grown their business and financial wealth by following the original Crush It! principles.
JOHANNESBURG
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
By Phil Knight
Phil Knight has a gripping story to tell, retracing the steps from the day he borrowed $50 to sell running shoes from the boot of his car all the way to the $100 billion company that Nike is today. Exclusive Books recommended Shoe Dog for its fascinating look at the path to business success.
TOKYO
The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity
By Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott
Does the thought of working for 60 or 70 years frighten you, or do you see it as the sign of a more stimulating future? The 100-Year Life, recommended by Kinokuniya bookstores in Tokyo, outlines the challenges and choices that all of us, of any age, need to make in order to turn greater life expectancy into an asset and not a burden.
LONDON
Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World
By Timothy Ferriss
Imagine if you could find all the best advice in one place. This is the premise of Tribe of Mentors. The folks at Foyles bookstore said this is one book they'd pick from their wide selection of recently published business books. Author Timothy Ferriss has four No. 1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers under his belt, and in his latest he brings together a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from more than 130 of the world's top performers, including entrepreneurs, elite athletes, artists, and billionaire investors.
PARIS
Can Finance Save the World? Regaining Power Over Money to Serve the Common Good
By Bertrand Badré
Bertrand Badré, the former CFO of the World Bank Group and two of the world's largest banks, Crédit Agricole and Société Générale Group, looks at lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis and offers guidance on how finance can be harnessed to help us solve many of the world's biggest problems, such as climate change, poverty, and infrastructure rebuilding. With a foreword by French President Emmanuel Macron and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, this book was recommended by staff at WHSmith Paris.
Sylvia Edwards Davis is a freelance writer based in France. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Chris Baysden, a senior manager for FM magazine, at Chris.Baysden@aicpa-cima.com.