Book Reviews

America the Pitiful

That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back

By Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 380 pp; $28 Reader Reviews

In My Time: The Index

In My Time

By Dick Cheney, with Liz Cheney
Threshold Editions 565pp; $35.00 Reader Reviews

Dismal Objects of Affection

Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius

By Sylvia Nasar
Simon & Schuster; 576 pp; $35.00 Reader Reviews

Mirthless in Seattle

Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge

By Mark Yarm
Crown Archetype; 592pp; $25.00 Reader Reviews

Liver la Vida Loca

The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers

By Scott Carney
Morrow; 272 pp; $25.99 Reader Reviews

The Sociopath Network

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

By Jon Ronson
Riverhead; 288 pp; $25.95 Reader Reviews

Grumpy Old Car Guys

Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business

By Bob Lutz
Portfolio; 256 pp; $26.95 Reader Reviews

The Tao of Dr. K

On China

By Henry Kissinger
Penguin Press; 608pp; $36 Reader Reviews

It Came from Bristol

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

By James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
Little, Brown; 784pp; $27.99 Reader Reviews

Bullpen Diaries

Bullpen Diaries: Mariano Rivera, Bronx Dreams, Pinstripe Legends,
and the Future of the New York Yankees

By Charley Rosen
Harper; 384 pp; $25.99 Reader Reviews

The Biopunk Movement

Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life

By Marcus Wohlsen
Current; 256pp; $25.95 Reader Reviews

Inside Ronald Reagan's Brain

The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom

Edited by Douglas Brinkley
Harper; 320 pages; $25.99 Reader Reviews

Hank Greenberg: AIG's Nervous Nellie

Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG's Corporate Suicide

By Roddy Boyd
Wiley; 349pp; $27.95 Reader Reviews

$#*! Bernie Madoff Says

The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust

By Diana B. Henriques
Times Books; 448 pp; $30 Reader Reviews

Algorithm & Blues

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

By Steven Levy
Simon & Schuster; 432 pp; $26 Reader Reviews

An Inconvenient Truth

Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff

By James B. Stewart
Penguin Press; 496 pp; $29.95 Reader Reviews

Paul Allen's Revenge

Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-Founder of Microsoft

By Paul Allen
Portfolio; 368 pp; $27.95 Reader Reviews

The Goldman Doctrine

Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

By William D. Cohan
Princeton University Press; 278 pages; $35 Reader Reviews

The Mob in the Age of Globalization

Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories

By Federico Varese
Doubleday 658 pp; $30.50 Reader Reviews

The Hustle and Flow Empire

Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went from Street Corner to Corner Office

By Zach O'Malley Greenburg
Portfolio; 240 pp; $25.95 Reader Reviews

Hail the Conquering High-Rise

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Healthier and Happier

By Edward Glaeser
Penguin Press; 352 pp; $29.95 Reader Reviews

The Antisocial Network

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

By Sherry Turkle
Basic Books, 384 pp, $28.95 Reader Reviews

The City Upon a Terminal

Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next

By John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 480 pp, $30 Reader Reviews

The Rise and Fall of NYMEX

The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market

By Leah McGrath Goodman
Morrow, 398pp, $27.99 Reader Reviews

The Rumsfeld Diaries

Known and Unknown: A Memoir

By Donald Rumsfeld
Sentinel; 832 pp; $36 Reader Reviews

Bling and Nothingness

Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All

By Russell Simmons with Chris Morrow
Gotham Books; 197 pp; $22.50

The Soul of Leadership: Unlocking Your Potential for Greatness

By Deepak Chopra
Harmony Books; 220 pp; $19.99 Reader Reviews

Gordon Brown: The Great Clunking Stylist

Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalization

By Gordon Brown
Free Press; 336 Pages; $26 Reader Reviews

The Origin of C-Suites

Naturally Selected: The Evolutionary Science of Leadership

By Mark van Vugt and Anjana Ahuja
HarperBusiness; 272 pp; $25.99 Reader Reviews

The Reagan-Era Nip-Tucks

American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and Our Quest for Perfection

By Laurie Essig
Beacon, 219 pp, $26.95 Reader Reviews

BP and the Spill: A Clear and Thorough Account

Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit

By Loren C. Steffy
McGraw-Hill, 286 pp, $27 Reader Reviews

The Business of Hip-Hop, and How It Grew

The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop

By Dan Charnas
New American Library, 672pp, $24.95 Reader Reviews

How Merrill Went Into the Toilet

Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America

By Greg Farrell
Crown Business, 480pp, $27 Reader Reviews

Rhapsody in Brew

Dethroning the King: The Hostile Takeover of Anheuser-Busch, an American Icon

By Julie MacIntosh
Wiley, 408pp, $27.95 Reader Reviews

A Crisis of Confluence

All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

By Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
Portfolio, 400pp, $32.95 Reader Reviews

Interview with a Vampire Squid

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

By Matt Taibbi
Spiegel & Grau, 272pp, $26 Reader Reviews

A Management Primer from the Decider-in-Chief

Decision Points

By George W. Bush
Crown, 512pp, $35 Reader Reviews

Leno, Conan, Zucker, and The War for Late Night

The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy

By Bill Carter
Viking, 416pp, $26.95 Reader Reviews

Glenn Beck's 'Mad as Hell' Marketing Strategy

Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America

By Dana Milbank
Doubleday, 272 pp, $24.95 Reader Reviews

Basketball's Million Dollar Babies

Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth Basketball Machine

By George Dohrmann
Ballantine, 432 pp, $26.00 Reader Reviews

A Billionaire's New Best Friends

King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone

By David Carey and John E. Morris
Crown Business, 400 pp, $27.50 Reader Reviews

The Invisible Man

The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer

By Jane Smiley
Doubleday, 256 pp, $25.95 Reader Reviews

Coke's Got an America Problem

The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink

By Michael Blanding
Avery, 384 pp, $26 Reader Reviews

Michael Eisner on Teamwork (Irony Intended)

Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed

By Michael D. Eisner with Aaron Cohen
HarperBusiness, 304 pp, $25.99 Reader Reviews

How Greed Moves Markets

History of Greed: Financial Fraud from Tulip Mania to Bernie Madoff

By David E.Y. Sarna
Wiley, 416 pages, $29.95 Reader Reviews

Platitudes from Football's Sean Payton and Pete Carroll

Win Forever: Live, Work, and Play Like a Champion

By Pete Carroll with Yogi Roth
Portfolio, 240 pp, $25.95

Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life

By Sean Payton and Ellis Henican
New American Library; 304 pp, $24.95

Reader Reviews

Don't Care Much About History

Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids—and What We Can Do About It.

By Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus
Times Books, 288 pp, $26 Reader Reviews

Selling the Fountain of Youth

How the Anti-Aging Industry Made a Disease Out of Getting Old—and Made Billions

By Arlene Weintraub
Basic Books, 256 pp., $25.95 Reader Reviews

The Importance of Being Famous

A Short History of Celebrity

By Fred Inglis
Princeton University Press, $29.95, 312 pp Reader Reviews

The Digital Future: You Know It When You See It

I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted

By Nick Bilton
Crown Business, 304 pp, $25 Reader Reviews

The Original Captain of Industry

A Full Cup: Sir Thomas Lipton's Extraordinary Life and His Quest for the America's Cup

By Michael D'Antonio
Riverhead Books; 368 pp, $26.95 Reader Reviews

The Stack: Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

By Clay Shirky
The Penguin Press, 242 pp, $25.95 Reader Reviews

Randall Lane's The Zeroes: Wall Street's Greediest

The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane

By Randall Lane
Portfolio, 359 pp, $27.95 Reader Reviews

Bronfman's Redemption Song

Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis

By Fred Goodman
Simon & Schuster; 323 pp, $28 Reader Reviews

Could Anything Have Saved the Beatles?

You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup

By Peter Doggett
Harper; 390 pp, $24.99 Reader Reviews

A Year of Tragical Thinking—for Others

Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager

By Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager and Keith Gessen
Harper Perennial; 272 pp, $14.99 Reader Reviews

Alan C. 'Ace' Greenberg's The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns

The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns

By Alan C. Greenberg with Mark Singer
Simon & Schuster; 224 pp, $26.00 Reader Reviews

Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball by Bill Madden

Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball

By Bill Madden
Harper; 480 pp, $26.99 Reader Reviews

The Shallows: Is the Net Fostering Stupidity?

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

By Nicholas Carr
Norton; 276 pp; $26.95 Reader Reviews

The History of DreamWorks

The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks

By Nicole LaPorte
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 512 pp; $28 Reader Reviews

Building an Empire, One Goldman Brick at a Time

When Money Was in Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street

By June Breton Fisher
Palgrave MacMillan, 288 pp., $27.00 Reader Reviews

How Do You Stave Off a Slump? Have Uncle Sam Play the Market

How the Economy Works: Confidence, Crashes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

By Roger E.A. Farmer
Oxford University Press; 208 pp.; $22.95 Reader Reviews

A Story of O, Starved for Scandal

Oprah: A Biography

By Kitty Kelley
Crown Publishers; 524 pp.; $30 Reader Reviews

When the Country Went Cold Turkey?

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

By Daniel Okrent
Scribner, 480 pp., $35.00 Reader Reviews

Too Big to Prevail?

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown

By Simon Johnson and James Kwak
Pantheon; $26.95; 304 pp Reader Reviews

The Long Knives at Lehman

The Devil's Casino: Friendship, Betrayal and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers

By Vicky Ward
Wiley; $27.95; 270 pp Reader Reviews

The Power and the Glory

The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolution

By Henry Schlesinger
Smithsonian Books; $25.99; 287 pp Reader Reviews

Engineering the Earth

How to Cool the Planet

By Jeff Goodell
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 262 pp; $26.00 Reader Reviews

Defusing the Banks' Financial Time Bomb

Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System

By Robert Pozen
John Wiley & Sons; $29.95 Reader Reviews

The Subprime of Their Lives

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

By Michael Lewis
W.W. Norton; $27.95; 288 pp Reader Reviews

Slapped by the Invisible Hand

The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy

By Richard A. Posner
Harvard; $25.95; 408 pp Reader Reviews

Why the Hackers Are Winning

Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet

By Joseph Menn
PublicAffairs; $25.95; 281 pp Reader Reviews

How Quants Made a Killing—and Made a Mess

The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It

By Scott Patterson
Crown Business; $27; 337 pp Reader Reviews

Make a List. Check It Twice

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

By Dr. Atul Gawande
Metropolitan Books; 209 pp; $24.50 Reader Reviews

The Meltdown According to Hank Paulson

On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System

By Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
Hachette; $28.99 Reader Reviews

Why the Price Is Rarely Right

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It)

By William Poundstone
Hill and Wang; 352 pp; $26.99 Reader Reviews

Where Does Wall Street Go Now?

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy

By Joseph E. Stiglitz
W.W. Norton & Co., 361 pp; $27.95 Reader Reviews

Where Does Wall Street Go Now?

Paper Fortunes: Modern Wall Street: Where It's Been and Where It's Going

By Roy C. Smith
St. Martin's Press; $35 Reader Reviews

Wake Up and Smell the Zeitgeist

Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation

By Grant McCracken
Basic Books; 262 pp.; $26.95 Reader Reviews

Busting the Myth of the Heroic CEO

From Predators to Icons: Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero

By Michel Villette and Catherine Vuillermot
Cornell University Press; $24.95 Reader Reviews

The Limits of Going with Your Gut

Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition

By Michael J. Mauboussin
Harvard Business Press; 208 pp.; $29.95 Reader Reviews

Man of the Meltdown

The Greatest Trade Ever

By Gregory Zuckerman
Broadway; 293 pp.; $26 Reader Reviews

The King of the Cloud

Behind the Cloud

By Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler
Josey-Bass; 278 pp.; $27.95 Reader Reviews

John Cassidy's How Markets Fail

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities

By John Cassidy
Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 390 pp.; $28 Reader Reviews

The Geekdom of Google

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It

By Ken Auletta
Penguin Press; 384pp.; $27.95 Reader Reviews

An Ambitious Look at Wall Street's Convulsions

Too Big Too Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves

By Andrew Ross Sorkin
Viking; 600 pp.; $32.95 Reader Reviews

More Oddball Tales for Freakonomics Fans

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Morrow; 270pp; $29.99 Reader Reviews

Blinded by Optimism—from 9/11 to Subprime

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

By Barbara Ehrenreich
Metropolitan Books; 235 pp; $23 Reader Reviews

Jamie Dimon: Lucky or Good?

Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

By Duff McDonald
Simon & Schuster; 340 pp.; $28 Reader Reviews

Fixing an Out-of-Whack Global Economy

The Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization

By Stephen Roach
Wiley; 414 pp.; $39.95 Reader Reviews

Extraordinary Women, Familiar Advice

How Remarkable Women Lead: A Breakthrough Model for Work and Life

By Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston
Crown Business; 355 pp.; $27.50 Reader Reviews

The Redemption of Keynes

Keynes: The Return of the Master

By Robert Skidelsky
PublicAffairs; 221 pp; $25.95

Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist

By Peter Clarke
Bloomsbury Press; 211 pp; $20 Reader Reviews

Can Entrepreneurs Tame the Mideast?

Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World

By Vali Nasr
Free Press; 308 pp.; $26 Reader Reviews

A Peek Under the Hood of a Business Book

Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World's Largest, Fastest-Growing Market

By Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre with John Butman
HarperCollins; $27.99 Reader Reviews

The Real Mother of Invention

Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others

By David Kord Murray
Gotham; 293 pp.; $26 Reader Reviews

Health Care: Lessons for America

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

By T.R. Reid
Penguin Press; 277 pp.; $25.95 Reader Reviews

Bernanke, Flying by the Seat of His Pants

In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic

By David Wessel
Crown Business; 323 pp.; $27.99 Reader Reviews

Kinder, Gentler, Richer Companies

SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good

By Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Crown; 320 pp.; $27.50 Reader Reviews

Lehman Brothers: Wall Street's Titanic

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers

By Lawrence G. McDonald and Patrick Robinson
Crown; 351 pp.; $27 Reader Reviews

A Brief History of Blogs

Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters

By Scott Rosenberg
Crown; 405 pp.; $26 Reader Reviews

Chris Anderson: Not Just Info Wants to Be Free

Free: The Future of a Radical Price

By Chris Anderson
Hyperion; 274 pp.; $26.99 Reader Reviews

The Corporate Shape Shifters

Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy

By Dennis A. Henigan
Potomac Books; 256 pp.; $29.95 Reader Reviews

The Corporate Shape Shifters

The Future Arrived Yesterday: The Rise of the Protean Corporation and What It Means for You

By Michael S. Malone
Crown Business; 295 pp; $27.50 Reader Reviews

The Stop-Managing Guide to Management

Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science

By Charles S. Jacobs
Portfolio; 216 pp.; $25.95 Reader Reviews

The Things We Do for Money

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

By Alain de Botton
Pantheon; 327 pp.; $26 Reader Reviews

Smirnoff: The Amazing History of a Brand

The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire

By Linda Himelstein
HarperCollins; 384 pp.; $29.99 Reader Reviews

The Story of Bear Stearns' Final, Tragic Days

Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street

By Kate Kelly
Portfolio; 247 pp.; $25.95 Reader Reviews

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