Marcos Moret

All about how to make it easier for people to make decisions beneficial to themselves, without telling them what to do. Might sound dull, but lots of applications in everyday life, so an interesting read.

About the history of encryption, with sometimes quite technical explanations offset by some memorable stories, like how the US used Navajos to communicate on the battlefield, in lieu of an unbreakable code.

Brilliant graphic novel about the evolution of logic, centred on Bertrand Russel's earlier years, and providing tantalising references to the influence this movement would eventually have on the internet and computing.

Unputdownable biography of Bill Gates and Microsoft to the early '90s.

Didn't provide any significant new perspectives, and should have been edited down to two-thirds the length. Useful as a primer to the uninitiated - but others can skip it.

Long-winded...

Great collection of tools for understanding, designing, reworking and implementing business models.

Kinda like Schott's Almanac, but with pretty graphs ‘n' pictures.

Some decent advice, but it's all a bit too new-agey for my tastes.

A fascinating look at the roller-coaster career of the Apple CEO.

Full of timeless wisdom - I've rarely been more tempted to underline passages for future reference, or to read a book twice. Fascinating stuff...and should be a must-read for anyone serious about business and management.

About the fact that people mix up the causality of success. Key take-out is to take the business books we read, and the management stars we idolise, with a hefty pinch of salt. Why? Because the methodology and rigour behind their recommendations for business success are full of holes. Fair enough. But this book is a litany of ailments, and aside from a few unconvincing pages at the end, doesn't come up with any cures or preventative measures. So I came away from it feeling distinctly ‘meh'...!

Profoundly dull, this is a very reader-unfriendly book, if this is the best book available on the subject (as the reviews on Amazon suggest), then there's a big gap on the market waiting to be filled...

Inspiring fiction about Alex Rogo, the protagonist of Goldratt's excellent ‘The Goal', and his quest to turnaround three struggling businesses in the space of a few short months. Introduces readers to ‘Decision Trees', a means of getting to the crux of a problem to come up with a solution that might have ortherwise remained obscured. The reading around the Trees gets a bit wearisome at times, and I wasn't convinced of the their utility, but that aside, it's an inspiring business story that will give you lots of ideas of how to run a business and generate innovative strategies

Great pep talk on reworking processes to transform a business.

Interesting and concise story of how Fred Smith overcame the odds and disrupted the package delivery industry to create FedEx. Don't expect much detailed insight into the systems they set up to make it ‘work', but the book does have quite a strong corporate financing slant due to the role at FedEx of the author Frock.

Lean production is the method that Toyota and other Japanese car companies used to knock American car makers (and their mass production methodology) off the maufacturing top spot. As an overall business story, it's good, but there's too much arcane detail in here for my liking, which detracts from the book's clarity of message and interest.

Comprehensively covers every aspect, from the contract negotiations to the development of the script to the special effects to music, full of interviews with the cast, crew and Lucas. Inspirational.

Very readable account of Gerstner's turnaround of the faltering IBM...some interesting insights as to how he did it, but there's little here that's truly eye-opening or game-changing.

Practical and applicable guide to the importance of Enterprise Architecture and how to implement it in your organisation. Essential reading for anyone involved in rolling out a centralised programme of IT platform improvements.

Practical guide to setting up and managing a PMO.

Easy to follow

Fascinating account of the naughtiness scientists get up to, all in the name of advancement.

This is a PROPER textbook - all 650 pages of it. Can't recommend it enough though - very well written (no bumf), well structured providing a fantastic run-through of all things operations management, full of interesting case studies and useful diagrams. If ever a textbook could be called ‘un-putdownable', this would be it!

Un-putdownable biography of war-time Churchill.