What's Your Best Business Book Of 2012? Mine Is Nearly 150 Years Old
The Financial Times has released a list of 16 business books as part of its for its "Best Business Book of the Year."
Looking for your next read? We've just released the longlist for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
Check out our special page http://on.ft.com/NpVGl2 and tell us which of the 16 books you'd pick if you were on the judging panel.
Would it be Walter Isaacson's life of the late Apple chief executive Steve Jobs? Or maybe William Silber's forthcoming biography of former Fed chairman Paul Volcker?
What's your best business book of 2012? I think mine has been a re-reading of parts of Das Kapital.
Published in 1867 it doesn't qualify for best business book of 2012, but it does qualify for best business book to read in 2012.
It describes our times so well, that capitalism has constant boom and bust cycles, it always has and always will, by the very nature of its system.
Marx also noticed (from 20 years of reading economic reports in the British Library) that capitalism is in a state of constant crisis, and explained why. And there is so much more, so much astute analysis and insight into our economic system. It's shameful that we have to keep rediscovering truths we knew in the mid-19th century.
Das Kapital is a chore to read, a great introduction is Francis Wheen's "biography" of Das Kapital (and his biography of Karl Marx). Both books are superb, and he is right when he says that with the failure of "Marxist" states and groups appropriating his name, the work of Karl Marx can be reexamined on its own merits -- and there are plenty of merits.
Pick up Francis Wheen's book you'll be glad you did.
(Francis and I were contemporaries at Royal Holloway College, London University. He wrote a favorable report on my student body presidential election campaign for our college newspaper :)
Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography - Francis Wheen - Google Books
Francis Wheen's top 10 modern delusions | Books | guardian.co.uk
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BTW, when will having Goldman Sachs as a sponsor, such as in this FT venture, or at PBS, start to backfire? It's a great example of negative SEO in the offline world. Tainted money.
