Published: November 24, 2009 / Winter 2009 / Issue 57

Business Literature

Illustrations by Guy Billout

Best Business Books 2009

by Theodore Kinni

No matter what the future holds, the Great Recession of 2008–09 has had aseismic impact on the global business landscape and has called into question itsphilosophical and systemic foundations.Certainly, it has been keenly felt among publishers and booksellers. In May 2009, year-to-date sales of professional books in the U.S. were down 6.8 percent fromthe year before, according to the Association of American Publishers. Therecession also colors the writing — and the reading — of this year’s

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best business books essays in ways both obvious and subtle.The most direct manifestation is evident in the appraisal by

Financial Times

commentator Clive Crook of the books that seek to make sense of the recession,its implications, and its ramifications. In barely more than a year, the businesssection has become crowded with such books, but with the story still unfolding,none of them yet are comprehensive. Crook’s picks provide the multiple levels of perspective needed to appreciate the recession’s many facets. Ayesha Khanna, managing director of Hybrid Realities, and Parag Khanna, New America Foundation senior research fellow,team up to review books on the changing topology of global business. They find changes in regional trading patterns andincreasingly dynamic emerging economies that will challenge any established player — all evidence of an ongoing shift incompetitive power that is sure to accelerate if the U.S. economy remains stagnant. As one might expect, our management and leadership essays are rife with recession links. In the former, Judith F.Samuelson, the founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, searches out booksthat reveal the recession’s silver lining: its challenges to outmoded ways of thinking about management and governance. Inthe leadership essay, Charles Handy, whose memoir was one of 2008’s Top Shelf selections, mines books on topics as diverseas America’s Puritan settlers and the Buddhist Tzu Chi movement for insights into how to begin mending the torn fabric of leadership.The University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business professor James O’Toole grounds his review of this year’s best biographies in a hefty tome about a 19th-century prime mover, John Stuart Mill, whose advocacy of free markets and privateownership resonates amid the dramatic government response to this economic crisis. IMD professor Phil Rosenzweigreturns for an encore performance in the strategy category, pointing us toward books on intellectual property and dynamiccapabilities in an effort to identify enduring strategic advantage. Rosenzweig also recommends a new book on Enron thattakes us back to the last recession and explores the perils of stretching any strategy too far.Marketing maven Catharine P. Taylor is back as well, with a proposition that should raise executive eyebrows: Branding is