Here are 100 books that Your Business, Your Book fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been obsessed with political thrillers since reading All The President’s Menwhen I was far too young to understand it all. What I didknow was that at the upper echelons of society there were often shadowy conspiracies at play, and brave souls fighting to expose the truth. Something about Woodward and Bernstein’s quiet heroism and bravery in investigating a story that everyone told them to drop really stayed with me. That’s why I write political thrillers: in an attempt to tip the scales back in favour of good versus evil. And to make heroes of those who risk it all to tell truth to power.
This one was a game-changer for me, taking thinly-disguised characters and events from real life – an obvious Tony Blair-type, fleeing prosecution for war crimes in a clear nod to the Iraq War – Harris wisely ushers us into the world of high-stakes politics via the innocent and unnamed Ghost Writer, hired to write a disgraced Prime Minister’s memoirs.
It’s a brilliant and clever mechanism that makes the reader feel at home. And when murder appears, puts you squarely in the shoes of a terrified man on the run.
As a technical piece of thriller writing, it’s stunning stuff. Harris’s decision to base a fantastical conspiracy around real-life events and characters was inspiring – and it’s something I use in every book.
'An unputdownable thriller about corrupt power and sex' Sunday Telegraph
'Guaranteed to keep you awake' The Times
A body washes up on the deserted coastline of America's most exclusive holiday retreat. But it's no open-and-shut case of suicide. The death of Robert McAra is just the first piece of the jigsaw in an extraordinary plot that will shake the very foundations of international security.
For McAra was a man who knew too much. As ghostwriter to one of the most controversial men on the planet - Britain's former prime minister, holed up in a remote ocean-front house to finish his…
I have been a ghostwriter for over thirty years, publishing more than a hundred books under other people’s names, as well as those under my own name. It has allowed me to live a hundred different and varied lives and it is a profession I like to encourage all writers to consider. Several of my own novels have featured ghostwriters as central characters, including Secrets of the Italian Gardener and What Lies Around Us.
Barbara Feinman Todd is a top-level Washington ghostwriter and journalist. In this memoir, she gives a shocking, and entertaining insight into her relationships with clients such as Hillary Clinton, as well as explaining the dynamics of political journalism at the very highest level. When she accidentally confides one of Hillary’s secrets to an editor, whose discretion she thought she could trust, her professional world is blown apart.
An accomplished former ghostwriter and book researcher who worked with Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, and Hillary Clinton goes behind-the-scenes of the national’s capital to tell the story of how she survived the exciting, but self-important and self-promoting world of the Beltway.
Barbara Feinman Todd has spent a lifetime helping other people tell their stories. In the early 1980s, she worked for Bob Woodward, first as his research assistant in the paper’s investigative unit and, later, as his personal researcher for Veil, his bestselling book about the CIA. Next she helped Carl Bernstein, who was struggling to finish his…
I have been a ghostwriter for over thirty years, publishing more than a hundred books under other people’s names, as well as those under my own name. It has allowed me to live a hundred different and varied lives and it is a profession I like to encourage all writers to consider. Several of my own novels have featured ghostwriters as central characters, including Secrets of the Italian Gardener and What Lies Around Us.
This book is a direct competitor to my own title, but Teena Lyons is a hugely experienced ghostwriter and I have to admit that she has done a very thorough job of explaining how the business works. She interviewed a number of other ghostwriters in the course of writing the book, (myself included). The result is highly readable and a useful introduction to the business.
“A good book to read if you're interested in ghost writing. The chapters on what makes a good ghost, how to become a ghostwriter, getting structure right and most of all what to do when it all goes wrong are a must-read!” Dora Archie Okeyo - Reviewer
“This book leads you through the world of ghostwriting. There really is everything in this book and I have found the information invaluable.” Karen Lawton - Reviewer
“A very good resource indeed. A straightforward, no nonsense guide to the world of ghostwriting.” Ruth Giles - Reviewer
I have been a ghostwriter for over thirty years, publishing more than a hundred books under other people’s names, as well as those under my own name. It has allowed me to live a hundred different and varied lives and it is a profession I like to encourage all writers to consider. Several of my own novels have featured ghostwriters as central characters, including Secrets of the Italian Gardener and What Lies Around Us.
This memoir is an intimate portrait of a relationship between one ghostwriter and her complicated, larger than life client, a famous publisher, entrepreneur, and socialite, the late Naim Attallah. It is a beautifully written book, providing many profound insights about life and about writing, and showing how deeply involved a ghostwriter and client can become in one another’s lives.
When Jennie Erdal was hired to edit a flamboyant London publisher’s Russian books in translation, she was happy to be able to commute from her home in Scotland. Soon, however, she was also secretly writing her boss’s love letters, hundreds of newspaper columns that appeared in his name, and, though she had never before written fiction, his two well-reviewed novels. For more than fifteen years she would be the indispensable ghostwriter for the exasperating, obsessive, but nontheless charming “Tiger.”Erdal reveals this oddly intimate relationship with a novelist’s flair for character and observation--and wry insight into her own collusion. Suspenseful, controversial,…
I have taught marketing strategy to MBAs and Executives at Business Schools and companies around the world, and have consulted for major companies in financial services, consumer packaged goods, software, and others for over three decades. Some of my Harvard Business Review articles are among the review’s bestsellers, and my book on marketing strategy, TILT: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers, received the best business book award in 2014. I run a marketing strategy consultancy at Brand Strategy Group with clients on three continents.
This book described the economics of the internet age as the web was taking off. It remains a classic in that it not only predicted many of the transformations that were to play out on the web, including social media, and it continues to be useful as a template for predicting the coming transformations that will be wrought by Web3 and Blockchain.
Richness or reach? The trade-off used to be simple but absolute: your business strategy either could focus on 'rich' information - customized products and services tailored to a niche audience - or could reach out to a larger market, but with watered-down information that sacrificed richness in favor of a broad, general appeal. Much of business strategy as we know it today rests on this fundamental trade-off. Now, say Evans and Wurster, the new economics of information is eliminating the trade-off between richness and reach, blowing apart the foundations of traditional business strategy. "Blown to Bits" reveals how the spread…
I have spent most of my adult life using entrepreneurial business practices and principles to redesign and transform nonprofits. From my very first nonprofit organizational acceleration, I was hooked. The wealth one receives from helping other people is so much richer and more satisfying than money–altruism is truly life's greatest pleasure. You know the movie The Sixth Sense where the little kid sees dead people everywhere? I am the same way, except everywhere I look, I see uncaptured opportunities for social impact. I live and breathe social impact strategy, governance, financing, evaluation, and change management. Because by fixing problems in those areas, organizations are able to do more to make the world a better place.
Planning is easy, but execution is hard. Nonprofit leaders can gain a clear, practical understanding of how to measure and execute an organization's progress toward social impact goals with the clear, simple, and compelling four disciplines of execution.
It is simply terrific for putting strategy into practice. You will learn the key concepts from 4DX. We found reading it like getting a new set of glasses that brings the world of management into focus and allows us to see a pathway to success.
Fully revised and updated, the definitive guide for leaders on how to create lasting organisational change.
Do you remember the last major initiative you watched die in your organisation? Did it go down with a loud crash? Or was it slowly and quietly suffocated by other competing priorities? By the time it finally disappeared, it's quite likely noone even noticed.
Almost every company struggles with making change happen. The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Revised and Updated is meant to help you reach the goals you've always dreamed of with a simple, repeatable, and proven formula. In this updated edition of…
I’m an innovator. I’ve been one since I was a kid. Since then, I’ve started a couple of non-profits and four companies, and I’ve advised hundreds of clients on innovation opportunities. I’ve also led the team that created one of the world’s first smartphones. Over the past dozen years, I’ve written four books on the strategy and capabilities of innovation. Innovation is one of the essential characteristics that make us human. It can get the world into trouble, but it does more good than harm on balance. My mission is to make us better at innovation and make the world a better place.
As a strategy consultant for over two decades, let me tell you: the world is full of bad strategy. This book lays out so clearly what makes bad strategy bad, as well as what good strategy consists of. Rumelt uses examples from business, of course, but he goes far beyond that realm, too.
The book opens with a description of how Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated Napoleon’s forces in the Battle of Trafalgar. Rumelt, a Professor at UCLA, gives recommendations that are specific, tied to examples, and actionable. I walked away with a clear set of takeaways and wonderful stories to back them up.
When Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy/Bad Strategy was published in 2011, it immediately struck a chord, calling out as bad strategy the mish-mash of pop culture, motivational slogans and business buzz speak so often and misleadingly masquerading as the real thing.
Since then, his original and pragmatic ideas have won fans around the world and continue to help readers to recognise and avoid the elements of bad strategy and adopt good, action-oriented strategies that honestly acknowledge the challenges being faced and offer straightforward approaches to overcoming them. Strategy should not be equated with ambition, leadership, vision or planning; rather, it is…
I taught writing and copywriting at Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio for thirty-seven years (retiring as an ancient-but-somehow-still-living fossil in 2014). I taught all our majors, but most of my copywriting students were advertising and design majors. During those decades I wrote nonfiction for newspapers and magazines and copy as a freelancer for ad agencies and design studios. My copywriting book emerged from my experiences in and out of the classroom. I hope I’ve given good advice on advertising: how to think about it and how to write it. But you’ll be the judge.
I first read this book over twenty years ago, and it still resonates. Steel shows how they thought things through at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, and, as director of account planning, he would know. Steel starts from the consumer’s point of view, which is where ads themselves should start but too often don’t. He helps us see the psychology that underlies great advertising. Smart, witty, well written—full of memorable insights and delicious examples. It’s over twenty years old, yes, but until human nature changes, this book will be relevant.
"Account planning exists for the sole purpose of creating advertising that truly connects with consumers. While many in the industry are still dissecting consumer behavior, extrapolating demographic trends, developing complex behavioral models, and measuring Pavlovian salivary responses, Steel advocates an approach to consumer research that is based on simplicity, common sense, and creativity--an approach that gains access to consumers' hearts and minds, develops ongoing relationships with them, and, most important, embraces them as partners in the process of developing and advertising. A witty, erudite raconteur and teacher, Steel describes how successful account planners work in partnership with clients, consumer, and…
When my mother died at age 83, I became executor of her estate. When our son was diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 22 and went through four brain surgeries in nine months, I acted as his caregiver while also caring for my father, who was dying from cancer. As a Christian, I wanted to learn what the Bible taught me about the hope of Heaven, leaving a legacy (my mother made it easier to be her executor by organizing her essential information), caregiving, and aging wisely. As an author, life, and legacy coach, and speaker, I love sharing the hope, peace, and comfort I gained through these resources.
My most reached-for resource on “medicalized dying.” As a life and legacy coach, I field many questions from people about “medicalized dying”—should we continue chemo when the doctors say he has four months, how do we decide whether to allow a ventilator at the end of life, etc?
Davis, a philosophy professor who sits on an ethics board at a hospital, showed me how to think through these questions biblically. I love recommending this book to others who have difficult decisions to make or who want to consider these questions in advance of a crisis.
With the dramatic advance of medical technology, it is increasingly likely that Christians will be asked to decide whether to discontinue life-sustaining medical treatment for aged or very young family members―and possibly other loved ones involved in accidents. Christians also ought to consider what instructions to leave regarding their own treatment. Often these decisions create deep anxiety: Does God command us to take all possible steps to preserve life? Is declining treatment tantamount to murder (or suicide)? As an elder and hospital ethics consultant, Bill Davis has talked, walked, and prayed with people through more than thirty end-of-life situations. Laying…
I’m an urban planner and educator who is fascinated not just by cities and the experience of place, but also by the ideas and actions that go on “behind the scenes” in the planning of cities. Almost all US cities are guided by some sort of local plan and, while no plan is perfect, my hope is always that inclusive planning can help communities solve their problems to make any place a better place. I was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and have lived mostly in the eastern US – from Michigan to Alabama – where I'm constantly intrigued by the everyday “nooks and crannies” of the places and communities where I live, work, and play.
Cities have become more pedestrian-friendly over the last decade and Jeff Speck’s book is one of the reasons for this movement. Walkability saves lives, promotes a sense of community, and makes places more sustainable. Speck’s guide to “Ten Steps of Walkability” is an instant classic in the practice of urban planning with approachable ideas such as “mixing uses” and “getting parking right” that can help bridge the gap between activists, politicians, and developers to work together improve any community.
Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive, and he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick. In this essential book, Speck reveals the invisible workings of the…
