Each summer, the GCMC creates an
engaging summer reading list of novels, blogs or articles published
within the last year. Let us know how you would rate these works and send in
your review to be posted in one of our upcoming issues!
Private
Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll
In Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the largest and most
powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of
its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity
in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts
business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of
the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying
Congress and the White House than almost any other corporation. Yet despite its
outsized influence, it is a black box… read more
Boomerang:
Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis
From the bestselling author of Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis' investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious
that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish
foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington, DC,
we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor, and we understand the
reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations… read more
The Baseline
Scenario (economics blog) by James Kwak and Simon Johnson
Required reading for anyone
interested in the current sorry state of our economy. Johnson, a professor at M.I.T Sloan School of
Management was the former chief economist for the International Monetary
Fund. Kwak, once a consultant for
McKinsey, holds a Ph.D. in history form U.C. Berkeley and J.D. from Yale Law
School which he pursued after founding a successful software company. They are co-authors of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street
Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown… read more
Grow
by Jim Stengel
Pulling from a unique ten year
growth study involving 50,000 brands, Jim Stengel shows how the world's 50 best
businesses—as diverse as Method, Red Bull, Lindt, Petrobras, Samsung, Discovery
Communications, Visa, Zappos, and Innocent—have a cause and effect relationship
between financial performance and their ability to connect with fundamental
human emotions, hopes, values and greater purposes. In fact, over the 2000s an
investment in these companies—“The Stengel 50”—would have been 400 percent more
profitable than an investment in the S&P 500… read more 
In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the
thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how
they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill
vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a
whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation…
read more
The
Art of the Sale by Philip Delves Broughton
When Philip Delves Broughton went
to Harvard Business School, an experience he wrote about in his New York Times bestseller Ahead of the Curve, he was baffled to find
that sales was not on the curriculum. Why not, he wondered? Sales plays a part
in everything we do—not just in clinching a deal but in convincing people of an
argument, getting a job, attracting a mate, or getting a child to eat his
broccoli. Well, he thought; he’d just have to assemble his own master class in
the art of selling. And so he did, setting out on a remarkable pilgrimage to
find the world’s great wizards of sales… read more
Collaborate
or Perish! by William Bratton and Zachary Tumin
In Collaborate or Perish!, former Los Angeles police chief and New
York police commissioner William Bratton and Harvard Kennedy School’s Zachary
Tumin lay out a field-tested playbook for collaborating across the boundaries of
our networked world. Today, when everyone is connected, collaboration is the
game changer. Agencies and firms, citizens and groups who can collaborate,
Bratton and Tumin argue, will thrive in the networked world; those who can’t
are doomed to perish… read more
