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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner (Macmillan/Currency)
From the Sydney Opera House to the UK’s HS2 rail line, “megaprojects” often run over time and budget. Flyvbjerg and Gardner lay out the reasons why that happens (lack of forward planning, for one) but, more importantly, draw some important lessons from high-profile failures that readers can apply to mini-projects. Shortlisted for the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award.
Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive by Amy Edmondson (Cornerstone Press/Atria)
Entrepreneurs have generated a mass of platitudes about the need to “embrace” and “celebrate” failure. In this book, another finalist for FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year, the Harvard professor lays out a clearer path about how to stop avoiding failure and take smarter risks. One important step is to admit that you have made mistakes.
Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley by Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans (Torva/Henry Holt)
Tony Hsieh turned Zappos, the Amazon-owned footwear etailer, into a case study in how to create joy at work. But the publicity and his success backfired as his mental health disintegrated and associates started to work against his best interests. A tragic cautionary tale of how money genuinely cannot buy happiness.
The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone’s Work by Zeynep Ton (Harvard Business Review Press)
Ton, an MIT professor, continues her quest to prove that better, and better-paid, jobs lead to a virtuous circle of improved worker wellbeing, corporate competitiveness and productivity. An important contribution, founded on real-world examples from retailing to fast food, as to how to make capitalism work for everyone.
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway (WH Allen/Knopf)
Six key materials — sand (used for concrete), salt (for fertiliser), iron (and steel), copper (for electrical wires), oil and lithium — are the focus of Conway’s global exploration of the critical substances that underpin the modern world. The book, shortlisted for FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year, is an eye-opening celebration of human ingenuity.
Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Hollywood Media Empire by James B Stewart and Rachel Abrams (Cornerstone Press/Penguin Press)
Sex and power were the life-long obsessions of the colourful media mogul Sumner Redstone, whose life and career only became more bizarre as he aged and family and friends sought to get their hands on his empire. The saga helped inspire the HBO series Succession; this deeply reported account shows the truth was, if anything, stranger.
Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant (Little, Brown and Company)
Merchant, who authored a study of the iPhone, The One Device, produces an entertaining analysis of the Luddites, much-misunderstood machine-breakers of the Industrial Revolution. While describing the background and motivation for their protests, he draws parallels with Uber drivers and warehouse workers and their struggles in the face of technology-fuelled change.
Beijing Rules: China’s Quest for Global Influence by Bethany Allen (John Murray/Harper)
An eye-opening chronicle of the multiple ways in which China’s Communist party seeks to exert its power abroad. Allen points out how, through trade policy, indirect influence over western brands, investment in technology and old-fashioned manipulation of powerful people, “authoritarian economic statecraft” enables China to shape the world.
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara (St Martin’s Press/Macmillan)
An important investigation of the filthy end of the supply chain that links the developed world’s tablets, mobile phones and electric car batteries to the vital raw material, cobalt. Kara describes shocking scenes of poverty, desperation and abuse among exploited “artisanal” miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo in this finalist for the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year.
Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux (W&N/Crown Currency)
It’ll be a while before a definitive account of the cryptocurrency phenomenon appears, but Bloomberg reporter Faux provides an entertaining and sobering snapshot. He puts his own sometimes faltering investigation at the heart of the story, but also manages to paint a picture of the damage that crypto-speculation can cause — often to those least able to bear it — while casting a sceptical eye on the protagonists.
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster)
From its cover (echoing the design of Isaacson’s earlier biography of Steve Jobs) to its size (nearly 700 pages), this account of the world’s highest profile technology entrepreneur shouts importance. Whereas Jobs’s legacy was clear when that biography appeared after his death, Musk’s is still a work in progress. Even so, in this finalist for FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year, Isaacson does a good job of illustrating the crazy genius of his multiple projects.
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