| Business
Plus Business books are all very
well, but frankly most of them are dull. The business plus books are either not business
books at all, but books on other subjects which are of importance to business, or business
biogs, combining business with a narrative about people. They're both educational, and a
good read.

Paul Carroll
Big Blues.

Subtitled the Unmaking of IBM, this is an engaging tale of how IBM's
unstoppable rise well and truly stopped. There are good insights into the early days, and
it's particularly interesting to put it alongside Hard Drive
to see both sides of the IBM/ Microsoft battle. Gets a little soggy at the end, but
generally an excellent choice. US is audio version.
John Cassidy
Dot.con - the greatest story every sold.

John Cassidy chronicles, the rise, rise and explosive collapse of the dot
com industry from the viewpoint of the financial markets. If this book has
any fault it's his occasional tendency to reel off strings of figures that
might only appeal to regular Financial Times/Wall Street Journal readers,
but for anyone interested in business there's plenty here to fascinate and
educate about the way financing and the stock market work and just how this
bubble rose and was popped.
New 27 August 2002
Robert X. Cringeley
Accidental Empires.

The subtitle is how the boys of Silicon Valley make their millions, battle
foreign competition and still can't get a date - and that just about says it all.
This fascinating, well written account of the rise and rise of all the key players in
microcomputing was made into the TV series The Triumph of the Nerds, but the
book's even better. Don't be put off if you've only seen him in Glory of the Geeks - he's
a much better writer than broadcaster.
Jennifer Edstrom &
Marlin Eller
Barbarians Led by Bill Gates.

A no-holds-barred picture of life inside Microsoft from the point of view
of a senior developer. While there's no doubt that Eller flavours things from his own
viewpoint, it still makes fascinating reading. There's something horribly believable about
the way tinkering from the top made Windows later and later - and the picture it gives of
those God-like senior figures at Microsoft makes a fascinating contrast tot he popular
myth. New 2 October 98
David Firth &
Heather Campbell
Sacred Business,
resurrecting the spirit of work.

The blurb on the back says, "Throw out the old rule book and replace
it with something ancient!" This is a business novel, tracing the learning of an
imaginary consultant, Bill. His teacher is Heather Campbell. Born in Scotland to a Jewish
family who owned a whisky distillery, Heather moved to the USA for a degree in Cultural
Anthropology at Brown University, Rhode Island. From there, through a fascination with
Native American tradition she spent seven years studying shamanic ritual with an
organisation called The Deer Tribe.
The book traces Bill's progress from a fairly typical business consultant to someone
starting to learn who is is and what is important in life. There are lessons in here for
every business man or woman and for anyone else besides. New 26
March 98
Naomi Klein
No Logo.

This is a remarkable analysis of what's wrong
with globalization, examining the implications of the domination of branding
and the global business ethic. If that sounds a turn-off, don't turn away -
it is a fascinating book that could well change your views on business. In its incisive analysis of the way the
global love affair with the brand has affected real people, it's brilliant.
Plenty of business insights, and it makes you think too!
New 4 October 2001
Tim Jackson
Inside Intel.

A real insight into the workings of Intel. Jackson provides a very balanced view of
the company, but makes it an excellent read too. Like all the best cyberbiogs, it's as
much about people as technology, especially the remarkable Andy Grove. A must have guide
to one of the great successes of 20th Century business. New 2 October 98
Steven Levy
Insanely Great.

The story of the development of the Apple Macintosh. A good insight into where much
of our accepted PC technology has come from, and an even better insight into the people
who made it happen.
Ernst Malmsten, Erik Portanger, Charles Drazin
boo hoo

The collapse of the e-business boo.com was more dramatic than any other of
the companies that suffered the burst of the dot.com bubble. In part it was
because it was the first big European crash, but also because of talk of
extreme exorbitance and mad spending from the unlikely founders - a pair of
young Swedes, one of whom was best known as a fashion model. This book is
Ernst Malmsten, one of the founder's chance to balance the books. It's a
superb description of the highs and lows of the most incredible business
rollercoaster ride, is easy to read and has lessons for everyone.
New 12 October 2002
Frank Partnoy
FIASCO - Blood in the water on Wall
Street
There's something hypnotically fascinating about Portnoy's
story of selling derivatives at US giant Morgan Stanley. The vehicles that
caused the Leeson/Barings disaster, and a close relative of the techniques
that would bring down Enron, the whole derivatives business is as shady as
the world of finance gets (yet still manages to remain legal and largely
unregulated). Part of the fascination of this book is not only the
remarkable twistings of reality that the derivatives market provides, but
the way they got away with. Unmissable. New 2
July 2003
Ricardo Semler
Maverick!

The stunning story of how a Brazilian businessman took an ordinary engineering
company and turned it into something special is one of the most exciting and uplifting
business books every written. Semler ignores every rule in the book and totally transforms
the company into a place where everyone wants to work. A must-read. Totally unimaginable
when the book was written in 1993, it's now a model for every company. New
28 June 1999
James Wallace
with Jim Erickson
Hard Drive.

The history of Bill Gates and the birth and rise of Microsoft. A very compelling
read, with some real insights into where the Microsoft empire came from.
Overdrive.

Overdrive.

The Bill Gates and Microsoft story brought up to date and accompanied by all the
juicy confusion over the Internet and fun with litigation. Slightly self-interested (too
many references to how important Hard Drive was to history), but even so a great read.
Michael Wolff
Burn Rate.

An insider's view of the phenomenal growth of Internet companies, where a business
with no real assets and huge monthly losses can still be valued at hundreds of millions.
Wolff wanders around the world of venture capitalists and strange businesses with
wide-eyed enjoyment. Great stuff. The US edition isn't
there any more (shame!), but there are still plenty of used copies of both
paperback and hardback available from the UK site, many shipping anywhere in
the world. New 2 October 98/Updated 11 February 2004
Burn Rate. 

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