Here are 100 books that Managing With Power fans have personally recommended if you like
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Children have vivid imaginations, and while mine was initially drawn to science fiction, I discovered my true passion for fantasy upon reading The Hobbit as a teenager. Since that day, escaping into fantasy worlds—whether it be through books, movies, TV, roleplaying, and video games—became my passion and hobby, leading me down many roads, including writing game reviews, a short story, a novel, and an extensive collection of fantasy-related replicas and statues. Ultimately, that endless feeling of wonder and exploration, adventure and danger is what convinced me to become an author; these five books sitting at the top of a long list that inspired me to reach that goal.
What truly is there left to say about this masterpiece of classic fantasy that hasn’t been said a million times already?
After devouring the light appetizer that is The Hobbit, my teenage imagination was utterly blown away by what I only later understood to be the quintessential blueprint for nearly everything that’s followed throughout the years in this genre.
The sheer level of minute detail and painstakingly developed mythos is nothing short of a masterclass in world-building—a must-have skill for writing this kind of epic tale—but it was the story itself, with its core principles of friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice, that resonated so deeply with me.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a professor of entrepreneurship, entrepreneur, and manager who has spent much time thinking and doing research on why collaboration among firms and people is so valued, yet so hard to make successful. I was born in Bergen, Norway, and have spent my time studying and working worldwide – a PhD from Stanford, then working in Japan and Norway until settling in Singapore, working for INSEAD. Keeping my body and mind fit is important to me, so I train boxing and read anything from short articles to lengthy books, on any topic from business to wine.
Before even thinking about collaborations and alliances with other firms, executives should consider whether their firm is collaborative enough. Surprisingly, the answer is often “no” because the structure and processes have not been established with an eye towards building a network that spreads information and facilitates collaboration. This book provides very helpful advice on how to improve firms through internal network building.
Driving Results Through Social Networks shows executives and managers how to obtain substantial performance and innovation impact by better leveraging these traditionally invisible assets. For the past decade, Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas have worked closely with executives from over a hundred top-level companies and government agencies. In this groundbreaking book, they describe in-depth how these leaders are using network thinking to increase revenues, lower costs, and accelerate innovation.
I am a professor of entrepreneurship, entrepreneur, and manager who has spent much time thinking and doing research on why collaboration among firms and people is so valued, yet so hard to make successful. I was born in Bergen, Norway, and have spent my time studying and working worldwide – a PhD from Stanford, then working in Japan and Norway until settling in Singapore, working for INSEAD. Keeping my body and mind fit is important to me, so I train boxing and read anything from short articles to lengthy books, on any topic from business to wine.
Our book is about alliances in any kind of industry, and our most-used examples were Sony and Samsung, which are conglomerates. What if you want to learn about assembly industries with long and complex supply chains? Look no further than to Collaborative Advantage, which draws from research on the automobile industry to produce insights that will help any assembler that depends on and seeks to draw competitive strength from organizing and improving the supply chain and its firms.
Why has Chrysler been twice as profitable as GM and Ford during the 1990s even though it is a much smaller company with plants that are less efficient than Ford's? Why does Toyota continue to have substantial productivity and quality advantages long after knowledge of the Toyota Production System has diffused to competitors? The answer, according to Jeff Dyer, is that Toyota and Chrysler have been the first in their industry to recognize that the fundamental unit of competition has changed-from the individual firm to the extended enterprise. In this book Dyer demonstrates the power of collaborative advantage, arguing that,…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am a professor of entrepreneurship, entrepreneur, and manager who has spent much time thinking and doing research on why collaboration among firms and people is so valued, yet so hard to make successful. I was born in Bergen, Norway, and have spent my time studying and working worldwide – a PhD from Stanford, then working in Japan and Norway until settling in Singapore, working for INSEAD. Keeping my body and mind fit is important to me, so I train boxing and read anything from short articles to lengthy books, on any topic from business to wine.
Do you want a serious look at the science behind how people and firms work together, and how they can draw advantages from it. Read this book first. It describes the main principles that determine what networks are best and who draws the benefits from them – remember, networks create value and distribute value! It presents the underlying research but is written in a way that is easy to follow. Our book on alliances draws from the same ideas, made even more practical, so the two are great to read together.
Social Capital, the advantage created by location in social structure, is a critical element in business strategy. Who has it, how it works, and how to develop it have become key questions as markets, organizations, and careers become more and more dependent on informal, discretionary relationships. The formal organization deals with accountability; Everything else flows through the informal: advice, coordination, cooperation friendship, gossip, knowledge, trust.
Informal relations have always been with us, they have always mattered. What is new is the range of activities in which they now matter, and the emerging clarity we have about how they create advantage…
I’m a professor of political science at Valdosta State University in Georgia, USA. I have long had an interest in new technology and its implications for international relations and society. I have taught classes on international relations, global public policy, and international institutions. I have also published in these areas. Since the internet has been a disruptive force in both the national and international environments, I believe, as a political scientist, that it is vital to understand its effects on existing power relationships. I hope you find the books on my list enlightening.
Although published more than a decade ago, the main message of this book remains as fresh as ever. We must all fight for our rights and build a “netizen-centric internet.”
I loved this book because McKinnon’s arguments are crystal clear, persuasive, and relevant. “Democracy will not be delivered, renewed, or upgraded automatically…The future of freedom in the Internet age depends on whether people can be bothered to take responsibility for the future and act.”
She highlights the repressive methods used by authoritarian regimes to control information but also warns of the dangers posed by government overreach in democracies, as well as unaccountable corporate power.
As corporations and countries square off for control of the Internet, the likely losers are us - unless we act to protect our freedoms. Facebook, Flickr, Research in Motion, Yahoo, Ericsson and Google: what do they have in common? They are technology companies that, while drawing the rhetoric of cyberutopianism, are nonetheless willing - even keen - to undermine the freedom of their users whenever it suits them. Many nations are no better: China, Russia, Iran and even the US spy on their citizens, crush free expression, and otherwise import all of government's worst habits into the digital frontier. In…
Seth Rosenfeld is an independent investigative journalist and author of the New York Times best-seller Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. As a staff reporter for The San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle, he specialized in using public records and won national honors including the George Polk Award. Subversives, based on thousands of pages of FBI records released to him as a result of several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, won the PEN Center USA’s Literary Award for Research Nonfiction Prize, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sunshine Award, and other honors.
Starting with his experience as publisher of an anti-war newspaper in the 1970s, and relying on official records released under the Freedom of Information Act, Mackenzie reveals how the CIA used undercover operatives to sabotage the dissident press and developed a system of secrecy agreements and pre-publication review boards that spread throughout the federal government in efforts to silence former intelligence agents and other would-be whistle-blowers. This brilliant book is the last work by the late Mackenzie, who dedicated his life to defending the First Amendment. He was a long-time associate of the Bay Area’s Center for Investigative Reporting, which with his wife, Jane Hundertmark, completed it after his untimely death.
This eye-opening expose, the result of fifteen years of investigative work, uncovers the CIA's systematic efforts to suppress and censor information over several decades. An award-winning journalist, Angus Mackenzie waged and won a lawsuit against the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act and became a leading expert on questions concerning government censorship and domestic spying. In "Secrets", he reveals how federal agencies - including the Department of Defense, the executive branch, and the CIA - have monitored and controlled public access to information. Mackenzie lays bare the behind-the-scenes evolution of a policy of suppression, repression, spying, and harassment. Secrecy…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am a writer and reporter who has spent two decades covering complicated topics for a wide audience. This started when I covered Wall Street for Bloomberg News, where I spent 17 years as a reporter, and continues to this day with my own crypto media company, DeCential Media. My love of distilling new technologies to their essence is what informs the best of my writing and comes with the added bonus of being able to interview and learn from some of the smartest people in tech and finance.
Lessig lays out his vision for how the Internet should and should not be regulated in easy-to-understand prose that belies a powerful ideology. This book really helped me frame in my own book how new technologies, like the Internet, are approached by regulators and governments. The idea that code cannot be owned, lest it be manipulated, as Lessig states, unlocked a way for me to think and write about how blockchain should be approached as well.
There's a common belief that cyberspace cannot be regulated-that it is, in its very essence, immune from the government's (or anyone else's) control. Code , first published in 2000, argues that this belief is wrong. It is not in the nature of cyberspace to be unregulable cyberspace has no nature." It only has code-the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is. That code can create a place of freedom-as the original architecture of the Net did-or a place of oppressive control. Under the influence of commerce, cyberspace is becoming a highly regulable space, where behaviour is much more…
I’ve founded companies, shut them down (then rebuilt my life), and coached hundreds of executives and founders through their own turning points. Those experiences taught me that resilience isn’t about bouncing back after hard things happen to you. It’s about being open to what can happen through you, including growth, clarity, curiosity, and conviction. That’s why I wrote Rethinking Resilience and why I return to these books often. Each one has helped me see strength, adaptability, and curiosity as intentional and sustainable traits—not something we summon only after crisis. I’m passionate about helping leaders move from reaction to intention and turn pressure into power, and I think this list captures that shift perfectly.
I recommend this book because it completely flips the idea of resilience.
Taleb argues that we shouldn’t aim to be unbreakable. Instead, we should aim to grow stronger from stress and volatility. I don’t agree with every example (and it’s dense at times), but it’s one of those books that forces me to think differently about systems, teams, and even my own mindset.
It’s a powerful reminder that disruption isn’t the enemy, stagnation is.
'Really made me think about how I think' - Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West
Tough times don't last. Tough people do.
In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncer tainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resil ient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.
Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil.…
I am a former book publishing professional turned full-time children’s book author. I’ve never swallowed a frog, battled imaginary bears, or had a slime war with ghosts like my character, Roosevelt Banks, but I have written more than fifty books for children. These range from beginning readers (You Should Meet Misty Copeland) and chapter books (Roosevelt Banks, Good-Kid-in-Training) to middle grade historical novels (Daniel at the Siege of Boston, 1775).
Sam the Man wants a job. His next-door neighbor will pay him a whole dollar each time he can convince her dad, Mr. Stockfish, to join him for a daily walk. But getting Mr. Stockfish to leave the living room isn’t easy. So when another neighbor asks if Sam would like to watch her chickens, he jumps at the chance. Chicken-sitting is way more fun than he expects, and soon Sam the Man is watching a chicken of his very own. The story is satisfying and funny and readers will want to learn all about Sam’s adventures in the rest of the series. Sam’s creative problem-solving skills had me laughing out loud.
Sam the Man wants to earn some money and he’s got a cluck-worthy plan in this endearing chapter book that’s the first in a new series from Frances O’Roark Dowell.
Sam the Man needs a job. His sister gets twenty bucks a pop for mowing people’s lawns. But seven-year-olds aren’t allowed to mow lawns, so Sam decides to ask his next door neighbor if she needs help doing other chores. It turns out she’ll pay him a whole dollar each time he can convince her dad, Mr. Stockfish, to join him for a daily walk. But it turns out that…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am an Australian who lives in France, and has worked and lived on three continents, and drawn inspiration for every location. Through this, I have developed a fascination about the way we all think in creatively different ways about the same things. All this cross-referencing has shown me that all responses to the need for change go better with a base of a few things: trust in your own people and those whose businesses support yours, discovery of assets hidden in plain sight, and fun. All these books share these themes. I hope they inspire you to think more creatively and to constantly value the value of values.
I love the fact that I had confirmation that what your data is telling you is probably not what it seems.
This book brilliantly explains the buzzword vocabulary of financial “experts” and what the data that goes with those buzzwords actually show. It’s a wonderfully simple explanation of each term with examples of how skewed the bar graph may be and why, and where real value lies and how to find it.
I found new insights on how to better analyse customer behaviour—without the fancy graphs—and suggestions of what to do about it.
Everywhere you look people are talking about data.
Buzzwords abound - 'data science', 'machine learning','artificial intelligence'. But what does any of it really mean, and most importantly what does it mean for your business?
Long-established businesses in many industries find themselves competing with new entrants built entirely on data and analytics. This ground-breaking new book levels the playing field in dramatic fashion.
The Average is Always Wrong is a completely pragmatic and hands-on guide to harnessing data to transform your business for the better.
Experienced CEO and CMO Ian Shepherd takes you behind the jargon and puts together a powerful…
