21 books like The Reckoning

Would you rather that your local football team or even the national team was selected through family ties or political connections? How did meritocracy—the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth—become the world's ruling ideology? Why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? Adrian Wooldridge shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system. He also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of the failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.

Stefan Dercon argues that the answer lies not in specific policies but rather in a key ‘development bargain,’ whereby a country’s leaders shift from protecting their own interests to gambling on a growth-based future. Despite its imperfections, China is among the most striking recent success stories, along with Indonesia and Ethiopia.

This book is about these choices, in contrast to countries stuck in a bad equilibrium. I loved the global experience Dercon drew on, ranging from Ebola in Sierra Leone, scandals in Malawi, beer factories in the Congo, mobile phone licenses in Mozambique, and humanitarian aid in Sudan.

A thousand years ago, a traveller to Baghdad, Constantinople, or China would find vast and flourishing cities of broad streets, spacious gardens, and sophisticated urban amenities; meanwhile, Paris, Rome, and London were cramped and unhygienic collections of villages. Europe was then a backwater. How, then, did it rise to world pre-eminence over the next several centuries? Having experienced China and its epic growth since being in Student in Shanghai in the early 1980s and then later as a banker, it seems there could be something to learn from history. Daly avoids the twin dangers of Eurocentrism and anti-Westernism, strongly emphasizing the contributions of other cultures of the world, as well as the vibrant and internal competition among cities and nations of Europe.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 1990s saw the model of democratic capitalism prevail. Thirty years later, democracy is being questioned, and capitalism has been threatened by growing inequality.

Martin Wolf’s book provides a deep study of the underlying causes of this worrying development, something I very much appreciate. For all its flaws, Wolf argues that democratic capitalism remains the most promising economic model to provide individual freedom and shared prosperity, but it will require a revisiting of the concept of citizenship to foster a shared belief in the common good.

Simple Numbers (the first version) was a long slog through complicated accounting theory. But Greg Crabtree’s Simple Numbers 2.0 is the opposite. It’s a short book about a single way to transform your business using simple financial metrics.

My business is professional services-based. We’re accountants, basically—so selling hourly work is the heart of my business model. For years I pulled my hair out trying to find the right KPI (key performance indicator) or metric to help me manage the business, set prices, negotiate compensation, and more.

I don’t struggle anymore. Crabtree’s Simple Numbers 2.0 showed me how to measure our efficiency, effectiveness, and growth trajectory in a single, easy-to-calculate metric. It has totally changed the way I look at my own financial results. And it applies to all businesses, not just professional service companies.

If you worry about product pricing or team performance, you’ve got to learn about the magic… show more.

This compendium of authors writing around their specific expertise is a compelling read. However, I chose it specifically for one chapter, the chapter on "Communication Apprehension and Accounting Education."

Two of the authors of this chapter were my professors when I was at university and their novel approach to education and assessment, which was years before its time, laid the foundations for skills and behaviors I have used in both my commercial and academic life. Increasingly I see students and professionals who are not as successful in their career due to a lack of communication skills.

For me, this book provides a practical and thought-provoking approach for those looking to understand a fundamental component of the financial world in the 21st century.

This brings together 9 specialists in accounting, economics, or statistics – from academe or practice – to tackle questions such as: does accounting manipulation affect the terms on which acquirers buy targets; are the post-merger accounts projected by bidders to be trusted; did the way targets were incorporated in the combine’s accounts affect share price?

It’s not a relaxing read – some heavy statistical work and disturbing conclusions: clever accountants have often been able to hoodwink investors before, during and after M&A transactions.

These three authors were brought in in 1990 to lead accounting standard-setting in the UK.

At the time, company accounts – especially those of merging companies - were a ‘laughing stock’, with profits often wildly overstated and debt materially understated. Against the expectation of many, they managed to outlaw companies’ preferred (profit-enhancing) accounting for M&A – ‘a triumph of diplomacy as well as intellectual ingenuity’ in the words of the Financial Times. The US and international standard-setters have since come close to adopting the same solution – but in the end have never quite dared.

The book combines rigorous discussion of technical accounting with light and lively discussion of the challenges and fights in which they engaged.

I was skeptical that a book about accounting could be entertaining. 

Jane Gleason-White not only brings the history of double book entry accounting alive but also tells the story of how accountants are quietly leading the transformation to a sustainable economy. This transformation demands that we upgrade traditional accounting that only accounts for financial and industrial capital to account for benefits and detriments to the natural world and society. 

To support a sustainable economy, accounting systems must include four additional categories of capital: intellectual, human, social, and relationship. A sustainable economy not only requires new economic principles and new corporate forms, but new accounting systems that account for all six capitals. 

Real estate investing is where I got started, and is still one of my favorite ways to build wealth.

Hands down my favorite real estate investing strategy is house hacking! This book was written by a friend of mine, and teaches you how to house hack, so I like it 😊. 

The largest expense for most Americans is where they live. House hacking is where you buy a duplex, triplex, fourplex, or large single-family home and you live in one unit and rent the other units out—or in the large SFH live in one room and rent to roommates—so that your tenants can cover a large portion, if not all, of your living expenses. Sometimes you may even get paid to live in the home!)

When you eventually move out of that property it will cash flow, and you can rinse and repeat several times. All while saving the money… show more.