Here are 100 books that The Theory of Moral Sentiments fans have personally recommended if you like
The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
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Like a caricature, satire lets you see reality better by exaggerating it. When satire is done right, every element, from the overall plot to the characters to paragraph-level details, is there to cast an exposing light on some part of our real world. They are books that exist on many levels, expose hubris and essential misunderstandings, and generally speak truth to power. They should leave the reader reassessing core assumptions about how the world works. I’ve written a best-selling nonfiction book about machine learning in the past, and I probably could have taken that approach again, but AI and American politics are both ripe for satire.
I couldn’t look at society the same way after reading this tale of how a group of schoolboys stranded on an island descends, step by step, into savagery. The savagery is inside all of us, and the veneer of civilization that our education puts on it is very thin and easily cracks. Haunting.
A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.
First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern…
I played rugby union for Durham University and at Rosslyn Park FC in London. Then I became a reporter and editor, for Rugby News magazine and on Fleet Street sports desks. In March 2002, six months after 9/11 and a year before the invasion of Iraq, my Park team played against the cadets of the United States Military Academy. Years later, settled in New York, I decided to find out what happened to those West Point rugby players in the 9/11 wars, and what their experiences might tell us about sports, war, brotherhood, loss, and remembrance.
Junger wrote War, about Afghanistan. But as I found the West Point rugby players’ stories wouldn’t leave me alone, so Junger stayed with those he found in Kunar province.
In Tribe, he considers the ties that bind – notably a focus on the “energy of male conflict and male closeness”. Junger “once asked a combat vet if he’d rather have an enemy or another close friend”. The vet looked at Junger like he was crazy. “‘Oh, an enemy, 100%,’ he said. ‘I’ve already got a lot of friends.’
He thought about it a little longer. ‘Anyway, all my best friends I’ve gotten into fights with – knock-down, drag-out fights. Granted we were always drunk, but think about that.’ He shook his head as if even he couldn’t believe it.”
From the author of THE PERFECT STORM and WAR comes a book about why men miss war, why Londoners missed the Blitz, and what we can all learn from American Indian captives who refused to go home.
Tribe is a look at post-traumatic stress disorder and the challenges veterans face returning to society. Using his background in anthropology, Sebastian Junger argues that the problem lies not with vets or with the trauma they've suffered, but with the society to which they are trying to return.
One of the most puzzling things about veterans who experience PTSD is that the majority…
F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed, “there are no second acts in American lives.” But I am on my third. I started out in the theatre, then became a lawyer, and then a political philosopher. What drove each move is that I was always outraged by injustice and wanted to find a better way to fight against it. For me, reading, writing, and teaching political philosophy turned out to be that way. The books on this list provide important lessons on how certain economic policies can cause injustice while others can cure it. Each has been around for a long time, but they are as relevant today as when they were first written.
How can a society as rich as ours leave so many people behind?
Published in 1958, this book opened my eyes to the importance of economic justice—I first read it in the late 1970s when I was nineteen.
But it is still mind-blowing today, for neither the wrongheadedness of prevailing economic policy nor the solutions that are available for us to do better have changed.
John Kenneth Galbraith's international bestseller The Affluent Society is a witty, graceful and devastating attack on some of our most cherished economic myths.
As relevant today as when it was first published over forty years ago, this newly updated edition of Galbraith's classic text on the 'economics of abundance', lays bare the hazards of individual and social complacency about economic inequality.
Why worship work and productivity if many of the goods we produce are superfluous - artificial 'needs' created by high-pressure advertising? Why begrudge expenditure on vital public works while ignoring waste and extravagance in the private sector of the…
I'm a programmer and technical author at Octopus Deploy and I'm deeply interested in DevOps. Since the 1950s, people have been studying software delivery in search of better ways of working. We’ve seen many revolutions since Lincoln Labs first introduced us to phased delivery, with lightweight methods transforming how we wrote software at the turn of the century. My interest in DevOps goes beyond my enthusiasm for methods in general, because we now have a great body of research that adds to our empirical observations on the ways we work.
Before Agile and Lean had rocked the software development industry, William Deming was busy forging this new world of work.
Out of the Crisis is predominantly a management book, but it’s really the spark that started the lightweight movement in software delivery. A key concept in the book is how to identify the work system's performance, separate from the performance of individuals.
Essential reading for managers and leaders, this is the classic work on management, problem solving, quality control, and more—based on the famous theory, 14 Points for Management
In his classic Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming describes the foundations for a completely new and transformational way to lead and manage people, processes, and resources. Translated into twelve languages and continuously in print since its original publication, it has proved highly influential. Research shows that Deming’s approach has high levels of success and sustainability. Readers today will find Deming’s insights relevant, significant, and effective in business thinking and practice. This…
My interest in business ethics was forged in the fire of personal experience. In 2004, shortly after commencing my career in the banking and finance industry, I was publicly named as one of the “whistleblowers” in a trading scandal that rocked one of Australia’s largest financial institutions. The fallout was everything you’d expect from a major governance failure: the resignation of the Chair and CEO, large financial losses, significant reputational damage, and criminal charges for the traders involved. The experience caused me to ask, “Why?” Specifically, why do ethical failures happen? And why will they continue to happen? In the years since, I have spent considerable time reflecting deeply on these questions.
My writing focuses on ethical failure, situations where people, when given the choice between the morally right and the morally wrong, choose the latter. Tackling the thornier “right versus right” ethical dilemmas is far more challenging. To do it requires an individual who is both a masterful thinker and writer. Joseph Badaracco is just that. In this brilliant book, Badaracco takes the reader into the minds of business people, at different levels of seniority, facing right versus right ethical dilemmas of increasing complexity. By doing so Badaracco not only provides insight into how challenging these dilemmas are to navigate, but also how finding a sensible path through is possible. This book is a must-read for business ethics students and practitioners.
When Business and Personal Values Collide "Defining moments" occur when managers face business decisions that trigger conflicts with their personal values. These moments test a person's commitment to those values and ultimately shape their character. But these are also the decisions that can make or break a career. Is there a thoughtful, yet pragmatic, way to make the right choice? Bestselling author Joseph Badaracco shows how to approach these dilemmas using three case examples that, when taken together, represent the escalating responsibilities and personal tests managers face as they advance in their careers. The first story presents a young manager…
My interest in business ethics was forged in the fire of personal experience. In 2004, shortly after commencing my career in the banking and finance industry, I was publicly named as one of the “whistleblowers” in a trading scandal that rocked one of Australia’s largest financial institutions. The fallout was everything you’d expect from a major governance failure: the resignation of the Chair and CEO, large financial losses, significant reputational damage, and criminal charges for the traders involved. The experience caused me to ask, “Why?” Specifically, why do ethical failures happen? And why will they continue to happen? In the years since, I have spent considerable time reflecting deeply on these questions.
The majority of (if not all) ethical failures in the business world are caused by suboptimal (and at times completely flawed) incentives. If one wants to be a serious business ethics practitioner, then a basic understanding of incentives is a must – they matter. In this book, Jason Murphy provides a whirlwind tour of how incentives operate to drive both positive and perverse outcomes across a range of settings. The book is packed full of stories to illustrate the power of incentives and I think Murphy is onto something with the title – Incentivology should be a compulsory course in any undergraduate business or public policy course. And for Australian-based students and practitioners an extra bonus – Murphy is a local author.
Rewards. Punishments. Prices. The Nobel Prize. Candy Crush. Incentives take more forms than you might expect and they can be hard to spot, but they shape our lives in ways that we rarely examine.
Some incentives are obvious, like for example, publicly committing to doing something you dislike in order to motivate you to do something difficult, like lose weight. But, many of the most powerful incentives are accidental, and invisible even to those who designed them. Some are tame - and some are most definitely not. Whether it's bounties for criminals or Instagrammable meals, training your dog or saving…
My interest in business ethics was forged in the fire of personal experience. In 2004, shortly after commencing my career in the banking and finance industry, I was publicly named as one of the “whistleblowers” in a trading scandal that rocked one of Australia’s largest financial institutions. The fallout was everything you’d expect from a major governance failure: the resignation of the Chair and CEO, large financial losses, significant reputational damage, and criminal charges for the traders involved. The experience caused me to ask, “Why?” Specifically, why do ethical failures happen? And why will they continue to happen? In the years since, I have spent considerable time reflecting deeply on these questions.
The contribution Mary Gentile has made to modern-day business ethics education is unparalleled and it is in Giving Voice to Valuesthat the story behind the curriculum she has developed resides. This book outlines the assumptions, research, and principles associated with the unique approach to business ethics education Gentile has developed. But more importantly, it provides the reader with practical guidance and advice on how they can prepare for and engage in those (at times challenging) conversations that aim to address issues with ethical import in their organisations. After reading this book, tools like pre-scripting, practice, and peer coaching will become part of your repertoire, and you will be better for it.
An innovative approach to standing up for your values in the workplace-inspired by a popular program from the Aspen Institute
"In business and in life, we often know what is the right thing to do, but we have trouble implementing it. This book, developed in conjunction with the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program, shows how we can all give voice to values and make the right things happen. It is a wonderful guide to help us enter an era of responsibility and of leadership based on values."-Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute
Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1970s and 1980s, I learned about the impact of globalization and supply chain from an early age. I saw my community lose its economic base, many who could leave did, and what was left turned into an epicenter of despair. Eventually, I worked in the field of manufacturing and supply chain and understood the root causes of the problems in a lack of balance between supply and demand within local communities. The past blue-collar workers from urban and rural communities have been experiencing these challenges now for decades, and now it’s time to reinvent our supply chains to help our nation.
Rajan’s book is an underappreciated perspective on what’s happening in markets today. Rajan is best known as the economist in 2005 who warned the financial community of the impending 2007 financial crash and was criticized for being misguided. In his 2019 book, he notes the problems of the first two pillars (Big Business and Government) in these financial crises and the importance of the third pillar (the Community) is solving the problem. Rajan and I agree on this notion, as the “Community-Based Supply Chain” is the foundation for my solutions needed in today’s communities and US economy.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019
From one of the most important economic thinkers of our time, a brilliant and far-seeing analysis of the current populist backlash against globalization and how revitalising community can save liberal market democracy.
Raghuram Rajan, author of the 2010 FT & Goldman-Sachs Book of the Year Fault Lines, has an unparalleled vantage point onto the social and economic consequences of globalization and their ultimate effect on politics and society.
In The Third Pillar he offers up a magnificent big-picture framework for understanding how three key forces -…
The nonprofit sector is important to society and I often marvel at how many of us – which is to say all of us – have been touched by the generosity of others. With few exceptions, anyone who has graduated from college, who has been admitted to a hospital, who has attended a faith-based service, who has examined art at a gallery, who – literally, and there are no exceptions here – breathes air has benefited from the work of nonprofit organizations and the philanthropists who support them. It is therefore important to me to understand how the system works and how important charities are to society and a functioning democracy.
In Uncharitable Dan Pallotta challenges the way most people think about charity.
Many people have been told that the less charities spend on overhead, fundraising, and salaries, the better the charities are. But this is not a healthy way to understand a charity’s impact, and Uncharitable refutes this myth.
Pallotta describes what he calls an “economic apartheid,” a mindset that denies charities the critical tools that the for-profit sector is allowed to use without restraint: incentives to take risks, counterproductive limits on compensation, and moral objections to the use of donated dollars for anything other than program expenditures.
I like this book not because Pallotta has a fully fleshed-out roadmap to energize the nonprofit sector, but because he is one of the few to articulate important problems facing the sector.
Uncharitable investigates how for-profit strategies could and should be used by nonprofits.
Uncharitable goes where no other book on the nonprofit sector has dared to tread. Where other texts suggest ways to optimize performance inside the existing charity paradigm, Uncharitable suggests that the paradigm itself is the problem and calls into question our fundamental canons about charity. Dan Pallotta argues that society's nonprofit ethic creates an inequality that denies the nonprofit sector critical tools and permissions that the for-profit sector is allowed to use without restraint. These double standards place the nonprofit sector at an extreme disadvantage. While the for-profit…
The nonprofit sector is important to society and I often marvel at how many of us – which is to say all of us – have been touched by the generosity of others. With few exceptions, anyone who has graduated from college, who has been admitted to a hospital, who has attended a faith-based service, who has examined art at a gallery, who – literally, and there are no exceptions here – breathes air has benefited from the work of nonprofit organizations and the philanthropists who support them. It is therefore important to me to understand how the system works and how important charities are to society and a functioning democracy.
After reading Winners Take All, we might be forgiven for being worried about the role philanthropy plays in society. Anand Giridharadas’s central argument is that donors – defined not as the average annual supporter of a charity, but as those with millions, and more, to give – do not so much change society for the better, but use their wealth to maintain the status quo.
He says that instead of helping the poor, donations support policies, in the nonprofit arena, that uphold and even increase donors’ own wealth and status. In that regard, he reflects upon Oscar Wilde’s observation that those who do the most harm are those who try to do the most good.
'Superb, hugely enjoyable ... a spirited examination of the hubris and hypocrisy of the super-rich who claim they are helping the world' Aditya Chakrabortty, Guardian
What explains the spreading backlash against the global elite? In this revelatory investigation, Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, showing how the elite follow a 'win-win' logic, fighting for equality and justice any way they can - except ways that threaten their position at the top.
But why should our gravest problems be solved by consultancies, technology companies and corporate-sponsored charities instead of public institutions…
