100 Books Like The System

This book has become a touchstone in conversations about democratic erosion. What I found most compelling was how it uses global and historical patterns to explain how democracies can slide into authoritarianism—slowly, and often legally. It helped me connect institutional changes in the U.S. to larger global trends in democratic backsliding.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that today’s democracies rarely collapse through sudden coups. Instead, they are gradually weakened from within by elected leaders who stretch or disregard institutional norms to expand their own power. These changes frequently occur under the appearance of legality, making democratic decay harder to detect.

Drawing on historical and global examples, the authors show how democracies slide into authoritarianism when two foundational norms begin to erode: mutual toleration (the recognition that political rivals are legitimate) and institutional forbearance (the practice of exercising restraint even when one holds legal authority). When those norms break down,… show more.

My first 3 picks put much of the blame for widespread attention capture on greedy actors engaged in a “race to the bottom of the brainstem” (Tristan Harris, former Google employee, became popular opponent of exploitative big tech). 

Although Carr does not shy from that theme, he seems to put much of the responsibility on our own shoulders: it is we who must resist many temptations of convenience in order to preserve our own cognitive strengths, such as creativity. Otherwise, we become shallow thinkers and reliant on AI even for something as characteristically human as wisdom. 

Carr’s follow-up to this book, The Glass Cage, is also very intriguing, and it offers a little more hope for a humanity that is currently bound up in a web of frightening technological dependency.

In my mind, Carr nails the real threats of AI: a total dumming-down of humanity to a level where we… show more.

Some books reach me on an emotional level, while with others, it is in their intellectual reach and research rigor. This book is of the latter kind.

I was captivated by the breadth of ideas presented and the depth of research involved. It affirmed for me the dangerous trajectory of growing financial inequality that is unfolding and why that is important. This book is a monumental work. 

American readers and news watchers are deeply segregated: those on the left reading and watching news produced by liberals, and those on the right consuming words and images from conservative authors and broadcasts. And then there is Washington Post columnist George Will, a conservative, who reads voraciously across the political spectrum and offers commentary that reasonable Americans must recognize as honest and insightful. American Happiness and Its Discontents is a collection of thoroughly researched, thought-provoking, exquisitely-written columns written by Will from 2008 to 2020. He offers insightful commentary on a wide range of political, social, and cultural topics and tackles subjects deemed taboo by the left such as the wave of nonsense that has flooded higher education. 

In his characteristically funny and sardonic style, Andersen guides us through the historical connection between corporate America and the Republican Party. Needless to say, the relationship has been strong and fruitful (Democrats are guilty as well, but it’s hardly a comparison). He reports on the key conservative figures in both the private and public spheres who have funded and enabled the transformation of our laws and society. It is a remarkable story of power and greed written in concise witty prose. Highly recommend!

High-school history classes usually tell students that empires expanded at least partly because of their proponents’ greed. But who, exactly, was trying to get paid, and how?

Empire, Incorporated tells the story of Britain’s imperial expansion by focusing on the corporations that drove it.

If you’re on the fence about reading this book, flip to the “Index of Companies, Corporations, and Societies” at the back: the sheer number of entries makes it clear that we can’t understand Britain’s empire by focusing on governments alone. Imperial rule was much more complicated than that. 

Politics, nature, society, identity, money, work, energy...Monbiot doesn't only touch a whole lot, I almost always agree with him. This selection of his best essays is like a box full of brain candy and one should treat it accordingly: do not swallow it all in one go. In one of his small-group talking rounds right after a big lecture, I witnessed his never appease-able hunger to bounce ideas off, get to the bottom of things, identify flaws in assumptions that most of us didn't even know we had. Monbiot doesn't allow social or political conventions to get in his way. His goal is clear: unpacking the reality of the world of today, no matter how dark this needs to be. 

This book is the most readable treatment I’ve encountered of a very complicated and theoretical set of ideas about how corporations have changed—not only in their legal structure but as social creatures—in the last century. Lemann makes the difficult theories of thinkers like Adolf Berle, John Kenneth Galbraith, Milton Friedman, and Michael Jensen easy to understand and fun to read about. And in the process, he explains how corporations lost their “souls”—how we reached a point where companies are finance-obsessed, detached from their communities, and fixated on short-term profits and not long-term stability.

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!

It is the best reference guide on Valuations.

Includes a chapter on forecasting performance which is closely related to my book. It’s mainly focused on Discounted Cash Flow valuation adapted for many including banks, high-growth, cyclical companies, Emerging Markets, etc).

There exists also a version that gives access to the Excel spreadsheet that one can use to model future financial performance of companies and value them.