For my business strategy blog, Discoveries in Health Policy, click here.
For earlier book lists, see 2015 here, 2016 here, 2017 here, 2018 here, 2019 here.
See this booklist in PDF here.
Most Memorable Book of the Year
- Practicing Presence: Insights from the Streets (Phyllis Cole-Dai)
Technology and Business
- Knowledge and Competitive Advantage (Johann Peter Murmann)
- Innovation on Tap (Eric B. Schultz)
- From Symptoms to Causes (Thorsteinn Siglaugsson)
- Alphabetical Order (Judith Flanders)
History and Essays
- I reread several books by Joan Didion.
- How the Scots Invented the Modern World (Herman)
- The Ark before Noah (Finkel)
- Two by Dorothy Thompson (1930s; Listen, Hans; Democracy and Fascism)
- Essayist: Christopher Buckley, Enough About You
- Essayist: E.B. White, Collected Essays
A Few Films from 2020
- Real movies: Richard Jewell.
- Miniseries: Trial of the Chicago 7, Comey Rule, Queen's Gambit.
- Biography: Altman; Oliver Sacks; Pauline Kael; Quincy; Walter Winchell.
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A note on method. In recent years, I've had a pretty relentless and bicoastal travel schedule, catching up with books or audiobooks on midnight flights or at 11 pm in hotel rooms. In 2020, no travel, but often audiobooks came along on 6 am hikes or bike-rides before work.
Where I'm aware of an audiobook, I've signaled [AB].
More than a few of these I took in as Public Library audiobooks.
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Most Memorable Book of the Year:
- Practicing Presence: Insights from the Streets (Phyllis Cole-Dai)
- The author spent six weeks living homeless in Columbus, Ohio, about ten years ago (her first book, "Emptiness of Our Hands.") In this book, she revisits each day of the experience with updated thoughts. With so many displaced or homeless - not only in some US cities but worldwide - I found this was the book I kept thinking about as 2020 rolled on. Ebook.
Technology and Business:
- Knowledge and Competitive Advantage (Johann Peter Murmann)
- This was the most striking book I read this year about technology and science, but it's also a fairly dense academic read. The author lays out the history of the explosion in dominance of the German chemistry industry, 1850-1930. He lays out how many diverse inputs and factors went into it - from the creation of the first government-funded research universities eager to interchange with industry, to the weakness in the politics of England's patent laws. It's called "knowledge" and competitive advantage, because all the facts are either knowledge or rules (policies) - not natural features like iron ore or rivers. When we talk about whether our modern eco-system favors some innovation - whether it be molecular medicine or digital health - this book gives a case-study toolkit for realizing just how complex innovation echosystems are. (Published 2003; here). [FN1]
- Innovation on Tap (Eric B. Schultz)
- This is a wonderful book about innovation by a Boston serial entreprenur and venture capitalist with a bent for history. He brings a couple dozen innovators from history together to swap tales in a fictional celestial barroom. Favorite; King Gillette, the razor baron. He was also a nut case who had to be generally fenced off from actually running the business, and was farmed out to retirement on a California estate near Malibu. (Humorously, let's imagine as Gillette's idea #350: razors and blades, and his idea #351: shoes for hamsters). Here. [AB]
- From Symptoms to Causes (Thorsteinn Siglaugsson)
- I've worked in strategy consulting for nearly 20 years yet I still find things that are exciting and new. This is actually an abridgement or retelling of another book on root-cause-analysis, but I found it was interesting and a page-turner. (I think the source behind this volume is William Dettmer's "Logical Thinking Process, Systems Approach to Complex Problem Solving, 2007). Point is, I found this worthwhile and thoughtful even after years of experience in the topic. Here.
- A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order (Judith Flanders)
- This one had me at the first paragraph of the first review. We are used to classifying by category, and of course we still do (birds versus mammals; bacteria vs viruses). Flanders argues that the introduction of classification by alphabetical order was a surprisingly major advance, suggesting the discrete nature of encyclopedic knowledge. She argues it was initially bold, provocative, and pivotal to try to categorize ants next to bombs next to constitution. Reminded me of two favorite books from past years, "Too Much to Know," (Ann Blair; explosion of knowledge in 1400s, 1500s), and "Sorting Things Out," (Bowker & Star; about scientific classification). Here. AB. (FN2)
History and Essays
- I reread several books by Joan Didion.
- I was down sick for two full weeks in March (not Covid); hardly moved but relived these wonderful books of essays, including "White Album," "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," and "Where I Was From." [All AB]. See also a 2017 documentary about Joan Didion on Netflix.
- How the Scots Invented the Modern World (Arthur Herman)
- I just caught up with this fascinating 2002 book that takes us through Anglo-American history from 1500 to 1900 via the lens of Scotland. Very enjoyable. Reminded me of the book about London 1600-1699, London Rising. Here. [AB].
- The Ark Before Noah (Irvin Finkel)
- Somewhere I stumbled across erudite British eccentric Irvin Finkel, the world expert on Babylonian cuneiform tablets, and a senior curator at the British Museum. (He's got a rich YouTube presence). He brings the 1000 BC era alive from shards of pottery and focuses on Flood stories that preceded the familiar Noah one. Here. [AB].
- Two by Dorothy Thompson (Listen, Hans; Democracy and Fascism)
- Dorothy Thompson was an amazing and very well known journalist of the 20s and 30s; but essentially forgotten today; see her remarkable Wikipedia here. Thompson left behind several impressive books warning her contemporaries about Hitler. Listen, Hans is available as an Ebook. I got a facsimile copy of "Study of American Liberalism" from Amazon. With all the crazy in modern politics I find it helpful to see someone who was trying to dissect the crazy of the 1930s in real time.
- Essayist: Christopher Buckley, But Enough About You
- Essayist: E.B. White, Essays of E.B. White.
- I listened to both of these as audiobooks [AB]. White's essays span the 1940s to 1970s, some written in Manhattan, others in Maine. Buckley spans several recent decades and a range of genres and an interesting who's who of colleagues (e.g. Christopher Hitchens, Joseph Heller).
A Few Films from 2020
In "real cinema," I'd start with Richard Jewell, about the Atlanta Olympics bombings. In mini series, Trial of the Chicago 7 and The Comey Rule and The Queen's Gambit.
I'd jump quickly to documentaries about people. There's Altman (meaning director Robert Altman; dir. Ron Mann, 2014), Oliver Sacks, His Own Life (dir. Ric Burns), Pauline Kael: What She Said (dir. Rob Garver, newly on Amazon Prime); Quincy (musician Quincy Jones; dir. Rashida Jones), Walter Winchell (PBS American Masters). All five of these were eccentric and driven individuals who overcame countless challenges to log their achievements.
Add "My Generation," a documentary about the 1960s narrated by Michael Caine.
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Podcasts
In addition to old standby's like Fresh Air and Harvard Business Review Ideacast, I sometimes skip around and cherry pick from a laundry list of celebrity-interviewer podcasts. There's Marc Maron's WTF; Rob Lowe's "Literally!," Alec Baldwin's "Here's The Thing," Gilbert Godfrey's (!) "Amazing Podcast," Alan Alda's "Clear and Vivid," Conan O'Brien's "Conan Needs a Friend."
Honorable Mention
Jeff Bezos. book of essays, just out, as "Invent and Wander." [AB].
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FN1
The book focuses on the chemistry industry in Germany from the perspective of dyes, which also led directly to pharmaceuticals. But also the German chemistry industry was enormously powerful in agriculture and war, for example, the production of ammonia. And the German chemical industry's dominance impacted WW1, WW2, and even global thinking through the 1930s prior to 1939. See Hager, 2009, The Alchemy of Air (here, [AB]). Re 1930s politics and economics, see "Germany's Master Plan," Borkin & Welsh, 1943, intro by Thurman Arnold (q.v.) (here).
Re chemistry and dyes and pharmaceuticals, there's the sadly out of print "Paul Ehrlich: Scientist for Life" (1984 here; no ebook). There's a well-known business historian's book on pharma/chemistry industries (Chandler 2004, here). There's a new academic article on the topic, $25, 2015, by Cramer.
FN2
I cited 2010's "Too Much to Know," about 1400's, 1500's; see also 2020's "Too Much Information" by Cass Sunstein (here; [AB).
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tinyurl.com/BQ2020BookList
