100 books like How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Friedman, a longtime New York Times foreign affairs columnist, was one of the first to show me what I should love and hate about globalization, circa 1999, at the peak of Western support for neoliberal globalization.

Although his gee-whiz, gung-ho enthusiasm for the world of the Lexus (high-tech globalization with global supply chains and integrated financial markets) sometimes wears thin, he also covers the problems caused by globalization. He even appeals to the need for the “olive trees” of community, family, and religion to make globalization ethical.

Even when the breezy tone annoys me, this book is still my go-to guide for mapping the effects of globalization on business, economics, politics, culture, and the environment.

The late Huntington, a longtime Harvard professor, states early in this book that “people use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity.”

As people from different cultures and civilizations began interacting with each other in our increasingly globalizing world, Huntington predicted that they would clash over deep collective identities. Way back in the early 1990s, long before 9/11, Huntington predicted that clashes between the Muslim world and the secular West were the most likely.

Cultural-religious identity matters, no question about it. My only gripe is that he devoted just a few sentences to how civilizations could promote peace. Classic political science: All dismal diagnosis, with little constructive hope!

Professor Peters was my first and foremost guide when it came to framing the ethics of globalization from within my own religious perspective.

She helped all of us later writers by mapping the academic terrain, describing two dominant theories of globalization and two resistance theories. The two dominant theories are neoliberalism (as exemplified by Thomas Friedman) and reformist social development (as exemplified by John Maynard Keynes), while the two resistance theories stem from ecological and postcolonial perspectives.

She evaluates all four theories according to how they contribute (or don’t) to human flourishing. While I don’t always agree with her conclusions, she is asking the right questions and applying them to the most important perspectives on globalization.

Full disclosure: I spent two weeks studying with Professor Volf in a summer seminar on Faith and Globalization in 2010, which occurred after the publication of my book.

Along with Tony Blair, he taught a similar undergraduate seminar between 2008 and 2011 at Yale University, which became the basis for Flourishing. I admire Volf’s boldness in summarizing the vast debates between major world religions concisely here. But, characteristically, he defines his terms precisely and defends his thesis clearly.

Although he identifies with the Christian tradition, he is eager to foster an inclusive dialogue between that tradition and others. His consistently evenhanded tone models the very kind of dialogue our world needs if we are to begin making peace.

This book is a celebration of many things: embracing your visible markers of age, seeking a new kind of relationship with an adult child, and the fabulous music of the 80’s and 90’s.

Any person from Generation X will absolutely see pieces of themselves and their friends in the characters in this book. Originally college friends, our couple finds themselves both back in New York and via a series of missteps and then some forced proximity (not only do they have to work together, they have to work for his daughter), they fall gloriously in love.

Upmarket Women’s Fiction at its finest! Women’s Fiction isn’t, incidentally, fiction written by or necessarily for women.

It comprises rich stories in which the plot is driven by the protagonist’s emotional journey. You’ll always witness external events creating an interesting and lasting impact from beginning to end, changing our main character inside forever. 

In Five Years excels at that, and packs a devastating, shocking, powerful punch in the process. I cried, but experiencing this story was worth it.

Even though this book has an element of girl-meets-guy-in-Paris, I included it under the title of ‘books set in France that go beyond the rom com’ because it was so refreshing to read about a woman of a ‘certain age’ who comes into her own during a stay in Paris. The protagonist struggles with real-life issues, not the usual Emily-in-Paris dilemmas. Cram knows Paris like the back of her hand and deftly titillates all the senses with her food-inspired passages.

While not a true-crime book per se, this memoir from the hosts of the smash-hit podcast My Favorite Murder is written with humor and authenticity. The book is filled with anecdotes about all the dumb mistakes they made as teenagers that could’ve ended very badly, lists such as "Ten Starter Ideas For Self-Care Beginners," and stories about the origins of their true-crime obsession. My Favorite Murder stands out amongst all the other true crime podcasts because of the way Hardstark and Kilgariff use humor to cope with the darkness in our world, and their special blend of dark humor is on every page of their book.

We are all going to lose someone we love. We are all going to go through the pain of people we care about dying. We are all going to contemplate our mortality at some point and wonder if what we’re doing has much of a point, if we could do better, and if we could make life a little less painful somehow.

Keisha Blair lost her husband when they were both in their thirties, when their son was 8 weeks old. She shares what she learned about building from that wreckage in Holistic Wealth. The book puts the pain of loss front and center, and then offers insights from stories and interviews on how to take care of our money, our relationships, and our spirituality, and thus ourselves.

Kestrel’s father is the fierce general who won the Herran War and enslaved its people. When she buys a Herrani house slave named Arin at the market, Kestrel gets more than she bargained for – a challenge to her privileged, sheltered life, an epic love, and a part in the revolution. This is the first in the trilogy, and it is a genuine pleasure to watch Kestrel, from the beginning a character with an independent streak, navigate impossible choices as she grows into the person she wants to be. A lush and detailed world full of intrigue, politics, and gripping romance.