EA - The (Allegedly) Best Business Books by Joseph Lemien

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The (Allegedly) Best Business Books, published by Joseph Lemien on September 12, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Epistemic Status: Mostly my own subjective opinions. You should read this as though each statement has a hidden "in my opinion" or "I think" attached to it. TLDR: I've read a lot of business books, and here I share my impressions of some of the most popular ones. Some are definitely worth reading, depending on what you are looking for and what you already know. There are also several which I recommend avoiding because reading them would be a waste of time. Intro I read a lot, and I often find myself interested in business books. While these books are sometimes directly related to business and can help you be a better manager/leader/employee, some also can help you with self-control, decision making, or other areas of life. This is especially true if you are interested in increasing your competency in some area of life that can be applied to work. Thus, regardless of whether you want to be effective in altruism, in egoism, or in something else, these books might be helpful for you. (I put this together fairly quickly without having anyone review it, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are some typos or other simple errors in it. Please do let me know if you notice something like.) "Business book" is an odd genre. There are several different types: Sometimes it is a sort of curated memoir or biography, either of a company or of a person (like Shoe Dog, or The Ride of a Lifetime) Sometimes it is an attempt to distill and portray the underlying ideas behind a person's success or failure (such as Winning, or Billion Dollar Loser) Sometimes it is moderately good information but it could have been a 5- to 15-page essay instead of a 200-300 page book (The Checklist Manifesto and Measure What Matters both spring to mind) Sometimes it is a slightly more objective/valid/rigorous attempt to share best practices, either as a result of research or experience (First, Break All the Rules is a decent example, as in Work Rules!) Sometimes it is more of a general self-help or self-improvement book that happens to be applicable in some professional contexts (such as What Got You Here Won't Get You There, and Never Eat Alone). Sometimes it is a summary of research, taking years or decades of scientific investigation and making it palatable/digestible to a popular audience (like Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business) Many of the business books I've read didn't provide me with much value. So what should I do? Well, I'm going to offer my perspectives on some of the most popular and well-known business books so that the people reading this can avoid the bad ones and steer toward the good ones. I'll only write a few sentences about each book, but if you have specific questions about any of the books, feel free to let me know and I'll try to elaborate a bit more. I'm not being particularly scientific about this. I've found a few lists of "best business books" on Goodreads, looked at which ones I've read, and shared my opinions on them. I'll exclude a few that aren't very related to business, but I'll generally try to cast a fairly wide net. I also should note that I am not really doing research for these beyond skimming some reviews to refresh my memory, so most of what I write is from memory, from my notes, or from cursory Google searches. I hate that I feel the need to include a caveat, but this is the internet, so here it goes: just because I dislike a book and you like it, does not mean that you need to get angry and write impolitely. If you loved a book that I hated, that is okay. If you hated a book that I enjoyed, that is okay, too. If you have useful or interesting perspectives to share, please share ...