NCF’s Top Ten Reading Selections for 2009
NCF’s mission is to drive the policy debate on the important emerging issues by formulating arguments, developing options, and influencing thinking in an effort to move the American business agenda forward. As part of that mission, we consulted with industry specialists and Chamber staff to select an annual list of books that both advance our agenda and challenge our thinking.
The following are this year’s top ten recommended books by leading think tanks, business leaders, and policy experts.
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
by Clayton M. Christensen
According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn’t always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need “disruptive innovation.” Clayton M. Christensen and co-authors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen’s theories of “disruptive” change using a wide range of real-life examples.
The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care
by Clayton M. Christensen
In The Innovator’s Prescription, a comprehensive analysis of the strategies that will improve health care and make it affordable, Clayton M. Christensen applies the principles of disruptive innovation to the broken health care system with two pioneers in the field—Dr. Jerome Grossman and Dr. Jason Hwang. Together, they examine a range of symptoms and offer proven solutions.
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
by William D. Cohan
In House of Cards, Wiliam Cohan does more than recount the incredible panic of the first stages of the financial meltdown. Cohan beautifully demonstrates why the seemingly invincible Wall Street money machine came crashing down. He chronicles the swashbuckling corporate culture of Bear Stearns, the strangely crucial role competitive bridge played in the company’s fortunes, the brutal internecine battles for power, and the deadly combination of greed and inattention that helps to explain why the company’s leaders ignored the danger lurking in Bear’s huge positions in mortgage-backed securities.
The Numerati
by Stephen Baker
Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior — what we buy, how we vote — without our even realizing it. In this tour de force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we’re all entering — and to the people controlling that world.
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
by Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. In The Ascent of Money, Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history
The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-First Century
by Parag Khanna
In The Second World, scholar Parag Khanna, chosen as one of Esquire’s 75 Most Influential People of the Twenty-First Century, reveals how America’s future depends on its ability to compete with the European Union and China to forge relationships with the Second World, the pivotal regions of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South America, the Middle East, and East Asia that are growing in influence and economic strength.
Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know
by Patrick J. Michaels
Climatologists Patrick J. Michaels and Robert Balling Jr. explain that climate science is hardly unbiased, even though the global climate community itself believes that any new finding has an equal probability of making our climatic future appear more or less dire. Michaels and Balling examine all aspects of the apocalyptic vision of climate change making headlines almost every day: Hurricanes pumped up by global warming, rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctica resulting in 20 feet of sea-level rise in the next 90 years, that global warming is occurring at an increasing pace, and there is a massive increase in heat-wave related deaths. Each one of these pop-culture icons of climate change turns out to be short on facts and long on exaggeration.
The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity
by Matt Miller
In The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, Matt Miller offers a unique blend of insights from history, psychology, and economics to illuminate where today’s destructive conventional wisdom came from and how it holds our country back. He also introduces us to a new way of thinking—what he calls “tomorrow’s destined ideas”—that can reinvigorate our economy, our politics, and our day-to-day lives. These destined ideas may seem counterintuitive now, but they will coalesce in the coming years in ways that will transform America.
Immigration Reform: We Can Do It If We Apply Our Founders’ True Ideals
by Godfrey Muwonge
In Immigration Reform, Godfrey Y. Muwonge, a Ugandan-born, naturalized U.S. citizen and previous appellate lawyer and deportation defense advocate, demystifies the polarizing subject of immigration reform in the United States by posing difficult questions about both ethical and political considerations. The book sorts out from among the facts and myths, a balanced list of issues America needs to address.
The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy
by David Smick
The World Is Curved picks up where Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat left off, giving readers the consummate insider’s guide to the back offices of central bankers, finance ministers, even prime ministers. David Smick describes how today’s risky environment came to be—and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble.
For questions regarding this program, please contact us at (202) 463-5500 or ncfevents@uschamber.com.
