
Three Best Business Books of 2019 (According to Every Other Best-of-2019 List) - smalera
https://marker.medium.com/the-3-best-business-books-of-2019-according-to-every-other-best-of-2019-list-c53a97e69be6
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Spooky23
The only way to win is not to play.

Read some nice fiction. If you find yourself in a crowd that wants to talk
about this stuff, find a blog that summarizes books like this into a few
bullets or paragraphs.

~~~
davidw
> If you find yourself in a crowd that wants to talk about this stuff, find a
> blog that summarizes books like this into a few bullets or paragraphs.

A long time ago, I created a web site that did this. It wasn't real
successful, but I did cover the cost of some books, a few of which were
actually worth reading.

There's a quote out there somewhere about how most business books could fit
their core concept into 10 pages. But since there's no market for 10 page
books, they get fluffed up.

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jedberg
I've found when I read business books, I usually know about 1/2 of what's in
it, don't care about the next 49%, and then there is that 1% that is brand new
amazing wisdom that I couldn't have found anywhere else.

I then internalize that wisdom and promptly forget where it came from, which
makes me useless at helping others with this knowledge.

If there was a way for me to make an AI that could just find these wisdom
nuggets without all the work of reading a whole book, that would be super
powerful.

Sadly, I think that's a pretty hard AI problem to solve. At least today.

~~~
paggle
Can you list some recent books you read and their 1%? That would be awesome.

~~~
sidpatil
Parent's complaint is specifically that he can't remember which books he read.

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sremani
2019 is actually the best time to pick the 3 Best Business Books of 2009 (Yes,
2009!).

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dewy
Googling for "Best Business Books of 2009", I'm struck by how few of them I
would bother reading today. I remember Shop Class as Soulcraft fondly,
although it was a bit of a slog at times, and Brightsided is still on my
Goodreads To-read list, but otherwise... Would anyone who's read it recommend
Lords of Finance - if so, I'll add it to the list after Brightsided.

But really, do any of those three count as "business" books in the traditional
sense?

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4AoZqrH2fsk5UB
Range was enjoyable, but it was essentially just a mirror image of Outliers.
The same sort of interesting anecdotes about some people you've heard of and
some you haven't, but saying you should eschew 10k hours in favor of a more
broad experience.

Felt like a very "poppy" sort of management book. Not bad, but def not highly
recommended.

~~~
airstrike
Every time I see a reference to the 10k hour rule I can't help but think back
to this article:

[https://www.inc.com/nick-skillicorn/the-10000-hour-rule-
was-...](https://www.inc.com/nick-skillicorn/the-10000-hour-rule-was-wrong-
according-to-the-people-who-wrote-the-original-stu.html)

~~~
1_over_n
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_McLaughlin_(golfer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_McLaughlin_\(golfer\))

~~~
airstrike
What a fantastic yet somewhat tragic example. Thank you for sharing

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saaaaaam
Utterly banal content marketing discussion of the books which goes on and on
but says very little.

The books are:

Range - David Epstein

Nine Lies About Work - Marcus Buckingham / Ashley Goodall

Loonshots - Safi Bahcall

His fluffily meaningless takeaways which apparently bind the three books and
are a common theme:

How can I be better at solving hard problems? Take a bigger view!

How can I work better with those around me? Trust them to share their
knowledge and use that knowledge differently.

How can I bring new things into the world? Hold the innovation and the
delivery in equal regard, give each what it needs, and think hard about what
your organization rewards.

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behnamoh
I understand the value they add, but medium.com and Pinterest should really be
banned by google and HN due to their efforts in making the flow of useful
information harder. On medium for example, one has to pay to be able to read
the article. I was considering taking my blog to medium.com but given how they
basically __own __the article I would never do that.

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misiti3780
I have been seeing a lot of hype around "Range", I read it and thought it was
good but I felt like he just took ideas from other good books and combined
them into his work.

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gumby
The trick about business books is that generally they are quite short, like a
few pages long. The problem is a three page book doesn’t work on an airport
bookshop shelf, so they are padded out. This is even true of the good ones.

Good example is crossing the chasm. An insightful book (at least when it can
out) but really is one drawing and perhaps one page of explanation.

Innovator’s dilemma: one graph and a few pages of explanation (it was a non-
obvious thesis). Good insight though is it actionable? And some of the
examples were...perhaps not really supported.

But at least 99.999% of business books contain 0 pages of insight.

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nobrains
For me, personally, "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies"
by Jim Collins, still stands as THE canon to read for a business book. His
research based style resonates with me and makes me trust the findings much
more.

