Here are 100 books that Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit fans have personally recommended if you like
Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Most of us want to live good lives—lives based on connection, lives based on friendship, lives based on others recognizing who we are. But we often ignore the places and spaces in our society—facilities we call social infrastructure—that can build those ties. We cut funding to libraries, allow private developers to cut down shared green spaces, and neglect our local restaurants, cafes, and bars. To build healthy and happy societies, we need to be able to connect beyond our own nationality, religion, ethnicity, and beliefs. These spaces help us do just that.
I love this book because Jane Jacobs refused to see cities as machines for moving people efficiently from place to place.
Instead, she showed me that healthy cities are built around the small, unplanned collisions of everyday life: the conversations on a stoop, the wait at a bus bench, the chance run-in at a corner store.
Reading her, I started noticing how sidewalks, benches, and parks aren't just infrastructure; they're the physical architecture of trust. That idea has stayed with me throughout my own career studying resilience: the places where people bump into each other repeatedly are exactly the places that hold communities together when disaster strikes.
In this classic text, Jane Jacobs set out to produce an attack on current city planning and rebuilding and to introduce new principles by which these should be governed. The result is one of the most stimulating books on cities ever written.
Throughout the post-war period, planners temperamentally unsympathetic to cities have been let loose on our urban environment. Inspired by the ideals of the Garden City or Le Corbusier's Radiant City, they have dreamt up ambitious projects based on self-contained neighbourhoods, super-blocks, rigid 'scientific' plans and endless acres of grass. Yet they seldom stop to look at what actually…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I have always been curious about why societies develop, which is why I was drawn to the social sciences as a student. I first encountered attempts to explain development in economics, but found that mainstream models were too neat and abstract to account for my everyday observations. Why are there no entrepreneurs in the models, and why do most economists assume that property rights are unambiguous? I eventually discovered that non-mainstream economic theories and some of the other social sciences are more concerned with reality. Eventually I developed an eclectic framework with a focus on entrepreneurship, institutions, and spatial agglomerations as factors that shape socio-economic development.
This is the second book that I read about entrepreneurship. It’s also my second favorite book on economics.
Unlike Schumpeter, Kirzner does not assume that entrepreneurship is an unusual activity. Most people are entrepreneurial at some point. Successful entrepreneurship means being alert to profit opportunities that others have not noticed.
The underlying message is that there is such a thing as a free lunch. Kirzner views the market as a process rather than an equilibrium state. It is a superb book for understanding why mainstream neoclassical economics is unrealistic, but it does not address uncertainty.
Stressing verbal logic rather than mathematics, Israel M. Kirzner provides at once a thorough critique of contemporary price theory, an essay on the theory of entrepreneurship, and an essay on the theory of competition. Competition and Entrepreneurship offers a new appraisal of quality competition, of selling effort, and of the fundamental weaknesses of contemporary welfare economics.
Kirzner's book establishes a theory of the market and the price system which differs from orthodox price theory. He sees orthodox price theory as explaining the configuration of prices and quantities that satisfied the conditions for equilibrium. Mr. Kirzner argues that "it is more…
I have always been curious about why societies develop, which is why I was drawn to the social sciences as a student. I first encountered attempts to explain development in economics, but found that mainstream models were too neat and abstract to account for my everyday observations. Why are there no entrepreneurs in the models, and why do most economists assume that property rights are unambiguous? I eventually discovered that non-mainstream economic theories and some of the other social sciences are more concerned with reality. Eventually I developed an eclectic framework with a focus on entrepreneurship, institutions, and spatial agglomerations as factors that shape socio-economic development.
I make use of the basic concepts that Barzel introduced in this book, but deviate more from conventional neoclassical economics.
Economic property rights are about effective control over resources, and not necessarily about legal rights. A key insight is that a resource consists of an open-ended number of attributes and therefore that control over a resource can become more complex as the number of attributes increases.
There is also a tendency for control to change hands as market participants discover more valuable uses of resources.
This is a study of the way individuals organise the use of resources in order to maximise the value of their economic rights over these resources. Property rights and all forms of organisation result from people's deliberate actions. In the tradition of Coase, this study offers a unified theoretical structure to deal with exchange, rights formation and organisation which traditional economic theory assumes away. A person's economic property rights over an asset are defined here as the person's ability to gain from the asset by direct consumption or by exchange. It is prohibitively costly to measure accurately all assets' attributes;…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
I have always been curious about why societies develop, which is why I was drawn to the social sciences as a student. I first encountered attempts to explain development in economics, but found that mainstream models were too neat and abstract to account for my everyday observations. Why are there no entrepreneurs in the models, and why do most economists assume that property rights are unambiguous? I eventually discovered that non-mainstream economic theories and some of the other social sciences are more concerned with reality. Eventually I developed an eclectic framework with a focus on entrepreneurship, institutions, and spatial agglomerations as factors that shape socio-economic development.
This is the first book I read about the role of entrepreneurs in the economy. I have mixed feelings about it.
It’s filled with insights but it is also deeply flawed. Entrepreneurs drive economic development and engage in “creative destruction.” The market is about change rather than equilibrium. These are both great insights.
But history has refuted Schumpeter’s Nietzschean view that entrepreneurship is confined to “captains of industry” with unusual personality traits, and his attempts to explain business cycles is unpersuasive.
Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) is one of the most fascinating and influential economists of the twentieth century, renowned for his brilliant and unorthodox insights into the nature of capitalism. His students include leading economists such as Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow and the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan.
The Theory of Economic Development is one of Schumpeter's most important books and the one that made him famous. He poses a fundamental question: why does economic development proceed cyclically rather than evenly? Turning prevailing economic theory, which approached economics as equilibrium, on its head, Schumpeter argues it is because economics…
When I look back at my childhood, I can easily find examples of my mother grooming me for leadership – she taught me how to budget my money while I was in kindergarten, helped me understand contracts when I was in seventh grade, and so on. Little did I know how important those skills would be while navigating (first) the music world and later the world of all the arts. I’ve been fortunate enough to perform worldwide and serve in several noted arts leadership positions thanks to the guidance and support of several mentors, and I would love for all artists to have those same opportunities.
Much like my previous recommendation, The New Arts Entrepreneurwill help artists understand the items they need to consider and the steps they can take in order to move their career to the next level, whether their focus is an arts-related business endeavor or their own personal artistry.
The New Arts Entrepreneur is the first uniquely designed pedagogy for arts entrepreneurship educators and students. Melding an arts-first approach with understandable entrepreneurial concepts and newly formulated tools, the text helps arts students to envision themselves as an entrepreneurial CEO, not simply another random entrepreneur flailing through a maze of well-worn entrepreneurial suggestions that don't fit.
At the core of the text are the entrepreneurial ecologies of the arts. The ecologies provide a framework to envision an entrepreneurial horizon for almost any arts-based business, included those ventures seeking to impact the production of art. In addition to this revolutionary framework,…
I never thought I would be an entrepreneur. In fact, I was happy in corporate life. But when my job in corporate America blew up, I realized that I need to rethink my entire approach to building my career and my life. The result of these efforts is The 10% Entrepreneur. Over the past decade, I have integrated entrepreneurship into my life on a part-time basis, reaping meaningful financial and psychic rewards in the process. In the process, I have taught hundreds of thousands of others that entrepreneurship does not have to be an all-or-nothing proposition.
So many entrepreneurs work endless hours without finding a way to monetize their work. They achieve success on paper, but don’t actually reap the financial benefits. This book provides a roadmap to monetize your talents in a number of ways – from building your brand to figuring out how to get people to pay for your services.
It's no secret that the world of work has changed, and we're shifting toward an ever more entrepreneurial, self-reliant, work-from-wherever-you-are economy. That can be a liberating force, and many professionals dream of becoming independent, whether by starting their own businesses, becoming consultants or freelancers, or developing a sideline.
But there's a major obstacle professionals face when they contemplate taking the leap: how to actually make money doing what they love. You may have incredible talent and novel ideas, but figuring out how to get started, building your reputation in a…
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
Rupert Scofield is the President & CEO of a global financial services empire spanning 20 countries of Latin America, Africa, Eurasia and the Middle East, serving millions of the world’s poorest families, especially women. Scofield has spent the better part of his life dodging revolutions, earthquakes and assassins in the Third World, and once ran for his life from a mob in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Alex Lazarow is one of those rare people who can observe things taking place around the world and package them for us in a way we can comprehend that an important change in the way things used to be done is taking place, and if we want to keep up we need to pay attention. The change Alex sees is in the way start-ups are happening and companies are being structured. Whereas investors and entrepreneurs alike used to try to create “unicorns” – i.e., companies that “disrupted” an existing sector with little capital investment and could scale from thousands to millions in sales in less than a year, and IPO the next year to achieve a market cap of billions – Alex thinks the future is with “Camels”, which do not try to scale recklessly to achieve a gigantic short term payday but rather try to build something that is…
The new playbook for innovation and startup success is emerging from beyond Silicon Valley--at the "frontier."
Startups have changed the world. In the United States, many startups, such as Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, have become household names. The economic value of startups has doubled since 1992 and is projected to double again in the next fifteen years.
For decades, the hot center of this phenomenon has been Silicon Valley. This is changing fast. Thanks to technology, startups are now taking root everywhere, from Delhi to Detroit to Nairobi to Sao Paulo. Yet despite this globalization of startup activity, our knowledge…
I grew up on the ocean, surrounded by stories of pirates and mystery. Back then, I became enthralled with old detective series like Nancy Drew. Today, I am hooked on Agatha Christie. Though I primarily read and write nonfiction, they retain that mysterious element that has always intrigued me. In my teaching, writing, and research, I work with genealogy and true crime. I’m also obsessed with true crime books and podcasts. I hope you enjoy the list I have picked for you!
As I finished each chapter of this book, I couldn’t wait to read the next one. Finkel’s book is a suspenseful and psychological dive into the world of a gentleman art thief.
The disappearance in this book? Billions of dollars in stolen art. The thief? Stéphane Breitwieser is a self-proclaimed art collector living in his mother's attic with his girlfriend and their treasure trove of stolen art. What compels him to steal? How does he get away with it? How does he eventually get caught? These are the questions that kept me reading!
'His crime spree makes for a thrilling read' - The New Yorker
'A breath-taking read, as compelling as a Highsmith novel. I loved it' - Maggie O'Farrell
------------
The true story of the world's most prolific art thief, who accumulated a collection worth over $1.4 billion. A spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Wood.
For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been…
I am a professional economist and econometrician with over 50 years of teaching and research experience. I've published articles in more than 200 international publications and been on the senior teaching staff of top U.S. and Asian universities. In recent years, I have also been interested in serious scholarly studies on developing economies in Asia and as an economic consultant to several Asian government ministries.
For readers interested in a sectoral analysis of Vietnam’s reforms and economic growth, the book provides a useful account of one major area of reform in Vietnam, namely education.
Coupled with domestic training and foreign capital inflows, this education sector and its reforms can be said to be a principal contributor to the country’s development and growth. The book also discusses the reform’s rationale and issues and, for policy analysis, describes the consequences for the sector and the economy in recent years.
This book, drawing on a political economic perspective of education development, is a comprehensive account of the question "why some education systems flourish while others falter." It provides a state-of-the-art review of the Vietnamese way of education development, figuring out the pitfalls, challenges and opportunities of neoliberal reform. It also sheds new light on the rise of neoliberal capitalism in contemporary Vietnam as the country intensifies its market-oriented economic transition.
Starting from educational development concerns, this book differentiates the growth and development concepts in education. While "growth with limited development" is well reflected in many developing education systems, the Vietnamese…
Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration
by
Mark Doherty,
I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted repartee…
It has long been claimed that we face a choice between freedom and equality: that advocates of capitalism favour freedom, while critics prioritise equality. Philosopher Raoul Martinez was never persuaded by this claim, yet it took years of research across a number of disciplines to understand not only how problematic it is, but how foundational to our society and its crises it has become. His journey of discovery culminated in the writing of Creating Freedom, which dismantles this misleading narrative while deepening our understanding of human liberty: the many ways it is subverted and the path to its creation.
Hahnel’s work should be more well known. A professor of economics who understands the neoclassical approach inside out, he has spent his career not only critiquing mainstream economics but developing rich alternatives, including a sophisticated economic vision that aims to avoid the pitfalls of both free markets and state planning. I’ve chosen TheABCs of Political Economy as it’s a wonderful introduction to the area, offering a broad scope and a sharp critique of orthodox approaches to the economy.
This revised edition of ABCs is a lively and accessible introduction to modern political economy. Informed by the work of Marx, Veblen, Kalecki, Robinson, Minsky and other great political economists, Robin Hahnel provides the essential tools needed to understand economic issues today.
Dispelling myths about financial liberalisation, fiscal austerity, globalisation and free markets, ABCs offers a critical perspective on our present system and outlines clear alternatives for the future.
This second edition applies the analytical tools developed to help readers understand the origins of the financial crisis of 2007, the ensuing 'Great Recession', and why government policies in…
