How did we get here? See which ideas shaped the course of history, and how philosophy played a significant role in human evolution.

History & Philosophy

GDP, Trade balance, foreign capital. Everything about global trade is here!

Economics

“Skin in the Game” is the fifth book of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark “Incerto” series. Similarly to the other four books, it deals with topics such as the unreliability of knowledge and (ir)rationality in complex systems. Above all, however, it deals with reciprocity and (a)symmetry in human affairs, arguing that having “skin in the game” is necessary for a fair and just society

Skin in the Game

Contrary to what you might believe, doing well with money is not down to mathematical genius or financial acumen. Instead, Housel believes that handling money successfully comes down to the right behavior. In “The Psychology of Money,” he attempts to teach the soft skills necessary to gain and maintain wealth.

The Psychology of Money

“If I had to be trapped in an elevator with any contemporary intellectual,” Malcolm Gladwell once said, “I’d pick Richard Thaler.” “Misbehaving,” an absorbing account of the birth, rise and impact of behavioral economics, substantiates Gladwell’s choice many times over. “A singular look into the profound human foibles,” “Misbehaving” is, story-wise, the perfect marriage of memoir and economic history and, idea-wise, of psychology and economic theory.

Misbehaving

Pioneered by John von Neumann just a few decades ago, game theory is one of the newest branches of mathematics. It is also one of the most influential, having revolutionized diverse fields such as economics, biology, and computer science. Published in 1993, “Thinking Strategically” by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff is still one of the best introductions to this fascinating field.

Thinking Strategically

You probably regularly use Skype and other freemium products. Have you ever wondered how these products manage to create a revenue, and are you maybe even thinking of launching one yourself? With “Freemium Economics,” Eric Benjamin Seufert has created a how-to guide on how to build a successful freemium product.

Freemium Economics

Keynes’ “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” revolutionized economic thinking in the 1930s and beyond. Even today, it still applies to managing economic slumps and mass unemployment. Contrary to classical economic approaches, Keynes was convinced that government intervention could create more employment and effectively end an economic depression.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

It's time to learn about the main pillars of society, world politics, and different cultures. 

Society & Politics

In “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” French economist Thomas Piketty revealed that laissez-faire capitalism inexorably increases inequality. In the 1000-page “Capital and Ideology,” he offers an economic, intellectual, and sociopolitical history of the ways inequality was justified and structured throughout history. The book covers the four dominant ideologies of the modern age (ternary, ownership, social democratic and hypercapitalist) and offers an alternative: participatory socialism.

Capital and Ideology

In “The Undercover Economist,” Tim Harford embarks on an undercover mission to explain daily buying habits as well as larger economic phenomena such as why poor countries are poor and rich countries are rich. If you’ve ever wondered about exorbitant coffee prices or about bad second-hand car deals, Harford has the explanation for you.

The Undercover Economist

“Naked Economics” by Charles Wheelan is an enjoyable and nifty primer to the “dismal science,” free of graphs, charts and equations but brimming with logic, rigor and intuitively graspable examples and analogies. “Economics should not be accessible only to the experts,” claims Wheelan. “The ideas are too important and too interesting.” “Naked Economics” presents them in a fun, simplified and intelligible manner.

Naked Economics

Iconoclastic and groundbreaking, “Antifragile” is the fourth book in Nassim Taleb’s five-volume philosophical essay on uncertainty titled “Incerto.” Offering a solution to the problems presented in “The Black Swan,” the book proposes that things and systems be built in an antifragile manner – to thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness and disorder. That way, rather than catching them off guard, crises and catastrophes will perfect them.

Antifragile

Build a solid career, learn how to run your business and inspire other people to do the same.

Career & Business

Personal Development

Understanding the science behind your decision making and behavior is a great asset in the battle to a more fulfilled life.

Psychology

Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman presents his compelling lifetime’s work in “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” By combining psychology and economics, he creates an engaging picture of how our minds work. While we may believe that we know best, and that our minds can be trusted, he shows that that is not so. In fact, our memories can mislead us, and the judgements we quickly form are based on a subconscious bias. By unravelling the workings of the mind, Kahneman shows us why critical thinking, especially about our intuitive reactions, can lead to more conscious decision-making.

Thinking, Fast and Slow 

“Good Economics for Hard Times” by Nobel Prize-winning economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo offers a refreshing look at today’s many economic problems, such as immigration, inequality, globalization, and climate change. They propose that working towards a society based on compassion and respect can help solve many of these problems.

Good Economics for Hard Times

What do the Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents have in common? Why did U.S. crime rates suddenly drop in the mid-1990s? And why is an expensive election campaign a sure winning feature? These and other fascinating, freakish questions are examined in “Freakonomics.” Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner aim to overturn conventional wisdom and explore the hidden truths of modern life in this New York Times Bestseller.

Freakonomics

From Steve Jobs to Jack Ma. Understand what great entrepreneurs have in common, and what pitfalls you need to be wary of!

Entrepreneurship

The best microbooks on Emotional Intelligence to make you overcome obstacles in your personal and professional life.

Emotional Intelligence

“The Four Steps to the Epiphany” was first published in the early 2000s and started the lean startup revolution. It changed the way the founding and execution of startups was approached by shifting the focus from the product to the customer. Focus on product development works for big, established companies who already have a customer base to work with – but a startup needs to focus on building a customer base to be able to make the leap to becoming a successful company first.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Give life and voice to your product. The right place to learn to sell and promote!

Marketing & Sales

Are you struggling to create sustainable growth in your company? Are you wondering if you have what it takes? “From Impossible to Inevitable” is the ultimate guide for anyone wanting to hypergrow their company. From creating leads to doubling your deal size, “From Impossible to Inevitable” will help you along every step of the way.

From Impossible To Inevitable

What does capital mean in the modern global market economy? And how has it evolved over the centuries? In “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” Piketty analyses the implications of capitalism for modern day societies. He repeals the myth of equality that surrounds free market economies and shows how capitalist systems are actually based on structures that exacerbate inequalities in society.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt is a classic economic primer for laymen, and an easy-to-read libertarian guide to the basics of economic theory. Its core idea – that the art of economics consists in looking at the long-term effects of any act or policy – is articulated in the first chapter, with the remainder of the book exploring this idea through a range of failed government policies.

Economics in One Lesson

It’s time to start making good investments and learn how to manage your money better. 

Investing & Finance

Lauded by Warren Buffet as “by far the best book on investing ever written,” “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham is, arguably, the most influential book on value investing ever written. Revised and updated several times – and annotated in its latest edition by Jason Zweig – “The Intelligent Investor” advises against trying to predict market fluctuations and advocates for researching, realism, and reason.

The Intelligent Investor

The author of “Basic Economics,” Thomas Sowell continues popularizing economics in simple plain language and easily understandable examples in his 2008 “Economic Facts and Fallacies.” Sowell’s book examines some of the most popular economic fallacies often disseminated by the media and politicians, divided into categories of urban life, gender, academia, income, race, and the problems of the third world.

Economic Facts and Fallacies

Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac present two scenarios on how the world would look like in 2050 in “The Future We Choose.” On one side, the general decline of the global ecosystem, depleted natural resources and unpredictable social order. Or reduced reliance on fossil fuels, wide application of smart technology and communal ethos in the society on the other side.

The Future We Choose

A personal statement in book form by Milton and Rose Friedman, “Free to Choose” delves into their specific beliefs on how society ought to operate. They advocate voluntary exchange in free markets over state-controlled planned economies - including a case study on Japan’s and India’s economic policies after they modernized their rigid feudal and caste-based systems.

Free to Choose

A lighthearted book with a serious purpose, “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism” by South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang questions the main assumptions of mainstream economics and neoliberal thought, busting myth after myth about the way the free market operates in reality, as he leads readers on a journey to an alternative interpretation of the past and future of human progress.

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

An introduction to “the lives, times and ideas” of several great economic thinkers – from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes, from David Ricardo to Karl Marx – “The Worldly Philosophers” by Robert Heilbroner examines, with authority and dispassion, the history of economic thought in a comprehensive and comprehensible manner. A living classic, the book has sold over four million copies ever since its first publication in 1953.

The Worldly Philosophers

A fitting follow-up to Dan Ariely’s debut book, “Predictably Irrational,” “The Upside of Irrationality” reveals many preprogrammed adaptive biases that casually instigate humans to make unwise choices and demonstrates, through several social experiments, the unexpected benefits – and, sometimes, downsides – of these instinctually irrational decisions.

The Upside of Irrationality

Economic freedom classic “Capitalism and Freedom” by Milton Friedman advocates limited and dispersed power of government aimed to protect civil liberties because political freedom is only possible through (the historically tested) economic independence of minorities and marginalized groups. The central government should exist only to keep citizens away from civil and interstate conflicts and let them operate within the free-market ethos.

Capitalism and Freedom

The prominent professors, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, argue the fundamental question of our age – “Why are some nations rich and prosperous, and others poor and suffering?” “Why Nations Fail” is their heavily discussed book, providing exquisite examples of how political and economic institutions determine the wealth and poverty, health and sickness, and food and famine of nations.

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson try to give a definite answer to this question in their popular and heavily discussed book.

“Why Nations Fail,” writes Jared Diamond, “should be required reading for politicians and anyone concerned with economic development."

It should also be required reading for those who want to understand why some nations are prosperous and others are poverty-stricken.

Not many people want to put an end to inequality and corruption, but those that do, should really do more than just scratch the surface.

Let’s get down to it!

Why Nations Fail 

There is so little written about Brazilian billionaires, the "Made in Brazil" fortunes. In Brazilionaires, Alex Cuadros explores the history of Brazilian billionaires. The book was considered one of the best books of the year 2016 by the Financial Times. In it, Alex tells us a little about our country's past, about how these billionaires have accumulated wealth - and in some cases even about how they lost it. In this narrative, Cuadros helps us understand how social inequality has grown in the country and how the relationship between politicians and businesspeople shapes the Brazilian business world. It is interesting reading for those who seek to understand the creation of Brazilian fortunes and the patterns that permeate them. Let's explore this micro-book together and head into the Brazilian universe?

Brazillionaires

Biology, physics and a lot of experimentation!  

Science

Described as “the most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow,’” “Superforecasting” by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner details the findings by The Good Judgment Project – a forecasting services company firm that investigates probability judgments of high-stakes, real-world events, and aims to improve their accuracy.

Superforecasting

What great leaders are made of? Learn from the people who have more to offer in the realm of leadership than just words. 

Management & Leadership

Have you enjoyed a product and then subscribed to the social media account of that company? What does that mean for the economy and the market? In “The Thank You Economy,” Gary Vaynerchuk explains why, in the age of social media, businesses have to be as they were before urbanization: courteous, considerate, and cultured.

The Thank You Economy

Israel has scarce resources, yet, it has more startups per capita than the United States. In “Start-Up Nation,” Dan Senor and Saul Singer explain how this relatively new country managed to accomplish that. It is a brilliant guide for promoting entrepreneurship in countries that want to follow Israel’s highly successful model. 

Start-Up Nation

Globalization brought us free trade and faster communication. It also brought us lost jobs in the developed world, however. In “Aftershock,” Robert B. Reich proposes a new deal with the middle class: a government to make sure rich people employ workers with pretty good salaries so that people can become consumers and save the economy from collapse.

Aftershock

Ian Ayres’s engrossing bestseller “Super Crunchers” tells the story of how analyzing data is changing how decisions are made. Briefly put, it examines the “power” of numbers. In this lively and groundbreaking book, Ayres explains how sorting through mass quantities of easily stored information can offer greater insight into human behavior for businesses, governments, and consumers.

Economics

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