The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth With Innovation. By A. G. Lafley & Ram Charan. Crown Business, 2008. 352 pages. $27.50.
As the subtitle (How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth) of The Game-Changer indicates, this recent volume by A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan is meant more as a business [...]

As anyone fond of “truthiness,” humor, or television knows, long time Daily Show member Stephen Colbert has, since October 2005, had his own show: The Colbert Report.
Where Daily Show anchor John Stewart plays it in some ways more conservatively, holding to a tradition of fake news and riffing on the real news that’s [...]

An interview with George Soros appeared in the June 2008 edition of Money magazine. Though brief, the interview was both fascinating and useful, as Soros explained why the current financial crisis is so bad and what it means for, well, everyone.

What’s striking, though, is a phrase Soros introduces midway through the interview. He [...]

I don’t know about you, but I grew up reading children’s books. I loved them. From Curious George’s adventures with the man in the yellow hat to cheering for Max in Where the Wild Things Are (let the wild rumpus begin!), I lived and died with these characters. When I got older, I graduated to [...]

The Red Queen among Organizations: How Competitiveness Evolves. By William P. Barnett. Princeton University Press, 2008. 296 pages. $29.95.
There are several pillars to free market economics. Among these are private ownership of property, price regulation though market action and competition among firms for profit. Given the centrality of competition, one would expect many works out [...]

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. By Barack Obama. Crown Publishers, 2006 (Hardcover) and Random House Audio, 2006 (CD). 384 pages. $25.00 (Hardcover) and $29.95 (CD).
In 2006, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama published The Audacity of Hope. I first encountered The Audacity of Hope as an audiobook read by Obama himself. [...]

If you imagine the economy as an animal, the characters in Jim Thompson’s The Grifters are either the parasites that leech on that beast or its masters. You may have to read the book to decide.
Yes, you can catch a glimpse of Thompson’s world by watching the movie version starring John Cusack, [...]

Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge. By Cass R. Sunstein. Oxford University Press, USA, 2008. 304 pages. $15.95.
If you’re interested in how organizations and societies process knowledge or how what one individual knows diffuses through a larger social matrix, read Cass Sunstein’s Infotopia. It’s not perfect, but it does a fine job of analyzing a [...]

Revolutionary Wealth: How It Will Be Created and How It Will Change Our Lives. By Alvin and Heidi Toffler. Knopf, 2006. 512 pages. $15.95.
In 1970, Alvin Toffler published Future Shock, an analysis of the accelerating waves of change moving through society. Toffler built on a number of movements already underway both social (the changes he [...]

Art and commerce have long had an uneasy relationship. In fact, I can’t help thinking about economics and writing without being reminded of the saying attributed to Moliere, the French playwright: “Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”

In [...]