100 Books Like The Doubt Factory

One of the risks that the Compliance Officers oversee is the risk of money laundering; depending on how it is managed, it is possible to minimize reputational risk. This book helped me pinpoint precisely the necessary elements that must be included in a compliance plan to achieve strong corporate responsibility and compliance culture. By having those controls in place, money laundering and even any other white-crime risk are minimized and, incidentally, reputational risk. If you apply this, the company you work for it's going to be protected, and your boss is going to be happy, a win-win for everyone!

I worked at Arthur Andersen, and I was selected to be among the few teams that started to understand, learn, and apply risk assessments or business risk management methodology. In this book, I came across these concepts again, which are vital to identifying where the risk of money laundering and any other crime may occur. In addition, this book also includes useful information to be considered in the compliance program and how fraud and corruption are related to money laundering. It's a book that provides solid knowledge.

There is a partial myth, eagerly promoted by corporate interests and their lawyers, that federal prosecutors are frighteningly all-powerful and basically cannot be defeated. The veteran financial and legal reporter Eichenwald knows otherwise. The Informant, in contrast to the almost farcical (if enjoyable!) Stephen Soderbergh movie based on the book, lays out a textbook case of how prosecutors can blow an important case due to infighting, problems with unreliable informants, and clever high-priced defense lawyering that exploits every error that less-than-superb prosecutors might make. Here we have a tale of CEO-level officials at major global corporations caught on videotape flagrantly conspiring to violate antitrust laws and, in the end, almost no one ends up in prison. Eichenwald details the countless blunders by many Justice Department lawyers spread across several offices, and the clever maneuvering throughout by crack corporate defenders. He too, by the way, paints a fascinating portrait of… show more.

Published in 2001, The Constant Gardener is my favorite le Carre Novel. A British diplomat in Nairobi, Justin Quayle, is informed his activist wife, Tess has been killed in a remote part of Kenya along with a doctor friend. As Quayle investigates her life (in a similar way to Eric Ambler unfolds Dimitrios’s life), he uncovers her work exposing large pharmaceutical companies’ unethical experiments in the poorest regions of Africa. This leads to her brutal death and cover-up at a diplomatic and political level. It is an exceptional book that makes you rethink how medicine and the industry behind it operates. After the collapse of the USSR, le Carre seemed to struggle with his work, The Constant Gardener though, kick-started another two decades of great writing from him.

I’m fascinated by the possibilities presented by post-nation futures. Infomocracy looks at a future where ‘centenals’—groups of 100,000 people without historic nationalist borders—elect an international corporate-affiliated body to govern the world.

High-stakes political intrigue fuels the biggest election in a century as multiple factions battle it out to seize power through the vehicle of futuristic democracy. To me, the highlight of this novel is its exploration of democracy—it’s peppered with paradoxical and intense arguments that are rewarding to engage with, and enhance the richness of its world. 

At this point in the reading list, hopefully, you’re feeling more grounded in your climate grief and energized to fight for what’s left of the natural world. A Spy in the Struggle is a fast-paced novel about activism at the intersection of racial and environmental justice. Yolanda Vance is a ruthless, capitalist FBI agent who infiltrates a Black activist group organizing against a biotech corporation that’s poisoning their neighborhood. 

By making the protagonist start off as an enemy of the climate movement, De León demonstrates the kinds of experiences and messaging that can win over new allies. This book also centers the Black communities that are doing some of the most critical organizing against environmental racism in the U.S. and reveals the interconnectedness between police brutality, racial capitalism, and the climate crisis. In most cities in the U.S., you’ll find communities of color organizing against environmental racism, and I hope… show more.

What does environmental racism look like? Read How Beautiful We Were by Imobolo Mbue for a vital, searing answer. An American oil company is destroying the land and water of the fictional village of Kosawa. Children are dying. The company does this because they can, spouting only empty words about restitution. The novel narrates the village’s fight back, using alternating points of view to electric, pulsing effect.

In the corporate world out there, the managers are actual people: men and women enter the stage under quite unequal conditions. I loved how this book throws light on a game that is far from fair from the outset and the odds are stacked against the women who enter it.

This is a classic that ages well–time changes, waves of equal opportunity policies are introduced, but still, I felt the basic mechanism this book reveals stays very much the same. I was fascinated by this book’s striking depiction of how men and women are dealt dissimilar cards but expected to perform just as well–and to act as if their conditions were fair and only merit mattered.

“The best and brightest” is a myth and not an inspiring one. 

This book addresses the highly topical discussion on the potential conflict between profit and purpose, fueled in particular by the 2019 Business Roundtable guidelines. In this sense, it is not a pure profit book but seeks to balance the social and financial goals of a company. Anyone who wants to have a qualified say in the current discussion about profit and purpose should read this book.

Reading this book had a profound impact on me–as did the author himself. I had the privilege of meeting Colin Mayer in his wood-paneled office and interviewing him for my own book—an experience that deepened my respect for his thinking. I found myself nodding in agreement as he laid out how far corporations have drifted from their true purpose.

I was struck by his call to move from ownership to stewardship and how closely it aligned with my own belief that purpose must sit at the heart of business. His critique helped sharpen my understanding of corporate governance and reaffirmed my beliefs in the need for a better way forward for business and its relationship with society.