Business books are all very well, but frankly most of them are dull. The business plus books are either not business books at all, but books on other subjects which are of importance to business, or business biogs, combining business with a narrative about people. They're both educational, and a good read.
 

Chris Anderson

  The Long Tail.
Traditional economics says that there's a distribution of volume sold that is like a reversed hockey stick graph. It starts with a big peak for the best sellers, then tails off into a long horizontal tail. It wasn't worth selling things in the tail which might only move a unit or two a year - not worth the shelf space. But in a virtual world, with near-infinite capacity, there's room for most of the Long Tail, and that means a whole new approach to retail. A great book demonstrating how the Internet has provided a new model for business. New 20 July 2006

Paul Carroll

Big Blues.
Subtitled the Unmaking of IBM, this is an engaging tale of how IBM's unstoppable rise well and truly stopped. There are good insights into the early days, and it's particularly interesting to put it alongside Hard Drive to see both sides of the IBM/ Microsoft battle. Gets a little soggy at the end, but generally an excellent choice. US is audio version.

John Cassidy

  Dot.con - the greatest story every sold.
John Cassidy chronicles, the rise, rise and explosive collapse of the dot com industry from the viewpoint of the financial markets. If this book has any fault it's his occasional tendency to reel off strings of figures that might only appeal to regular Financial Times/Wall Street Journal readers, but for anyone interested in business there's plenty here to fascinate and educate about the way financing and the stock market work and just how this bubble rose and was popped.  New 27 August 2002

Rory Cellan-Jones

  Dot.bomb.  
There have been plenty of books covering the bursting of the dot.com bubble, but this one of the few to cover the impact in the UK, which in some ways was more dramatic that the US. The number of companies was much smaller, but the whole thing was compacted into little more than a year, so the rise and fall was even more dramatic. Some of the names you will see have still survived - others are long gone. Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC TV's industry correspondent does a workman-like job - it could have been a little more exciting, but still is perfectly readable. If you want to get the in-depth feel of the most dramatic crash of them all, see boo hoo, but otherwise, this is the one to buy. Not available in the US, but only costs a few dollars to have sent across from the UK. New 26 November 2002.

Robert X. Cringeley

Accidental Empires.
The subtitle is how the boys of Silicon Valley make their millions, battle foreign competition and still can't get a date - and that just about says it all. This fascinating, well written account of the rise and rise of all the key players in microcomputing was made into the TV series The Triumph of the Nerds, but the book's even better. Don't be put off if you've only seen him in Glory of the Geeks - he's a much better writer than broadcaster.

Jennifer Edstrom & Marlin Eller

Barbarians Led by Bill Gates.
A no-holds-barred picture of life inside Microsoft from the point of view of a senior developer. While there's no doubt that Eller flavours things from his own viewpoint, it still makes fascinating reading. There's something horribly believable about the way tinkering from the top made Windows later and later - and the picture it gives of those God-like senior figures at Microsoft makes a fascinating contrast tot he popular myth.  New 2 October 98

David Firth & Heather Campbell

Sacred Business, resurrecting the spirit of work.
The blurb on the back says, "Throw out the old rule book and replace it with something ancient!" This is a business novel, tracing the learning of an imaginary consultant, Bill. His teacher is Heather Campbell. Born in Scotland to a Jewish family who owned a whisky distillery, Heather moved to the USA for a degree in Cultural Anthropology at Brown University, Rhode Island. From there, through a fascination with Native American tradition she spent seven years studying shamanic ritual with an organisation called The Deer Tribe.
The book traces Bill's progress from a fairly typical business consultant to someone starting to learn who is is and what is important in life. There are lessons in here for every business man or woman and for anyone else besides. New 26 March 98

Constance L. Hays

 Pop: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company.
There are few companies that have more to teach about how to get things wrong and right than Coca-Cola. In an entertaining, if irritatingly structured popular biography of the company, Constance L. Hays takes us to the inside world of Coke. New 25 August 2005

Naomi Klein

No Logo.
This is a remarkable analysis of what's wrong with globalization, examining the implications of the domination of branding and the global business ethic. If that sounds a turn-off, don't turn away - it is a fascinating book that could well change your views on business. In its incisive analysis of the way the global love affair with the brand has affected real people, it's brilliant. Plenty of business insights, and it makes you think too! New 4 October 2001

Philippe Legrain

Open World: The Truth about Globalization
If you've read No Logo, you need to read this - the factual counter to most of No Logo's arguments and a very clear picture of what's good about globalization. It's not a sop to the brand, it's carefully thought out and argues for more free trade alongside tighter monetary controls.New 21 May 2005

Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

 Freakonomics
Delightful collection of amazing revelations made by properly applying statistics to the issues of the day, rather than the half-hearted amateurish attempt we normally get. Not only some great insights into everything from crime rates and what influences education to how real estate agents cheat, but immensely readable too. Superb.  New 13 January 2006

Tim Jackson

Inside Intel.
A real insight into the workings of Intel. Jackson provides a very balanced view of the company, but makes it an excellent read too. Like all the best cyberbiogs, it's as much about people as technology, especially the remarkable Andy Grove. A must have guide to one of the great successes of 20th Century business.  New 2 October 98

Michael Leapman

The Last Days of the Beeb.
The BBC is a ready target for attack, and this book pulls no punches in portraying the flabby monster it had become in the mid-eighties. Since the book was written, the BBC has gone through several series of major changes, and some of the forward looking parts of the book seem more wishful thinking than likely, but even so it's a great portrayal of how a dinosaur organisation operated.

Steven Levy

Insanely Great.
The story of the development of the Apple Macintosh. A good insight into where much of our accepted PC technology has come from, and an even better insight into the people who made it happen.

Ernst Malmsten, Erik Portanger, Charles Drazin

  boo hoo  
The collapse of the e-business boo.com was more dramatic than any other of the companies that suffered the burst of the dot.com bubble. In part it was because it was the first big European crash, but also because of talk of extreme exorbitance and mad spending from the unlikely founders - a pair of young Swedes, one of whom was best known as a fashion model. This book is Ernst Malmsten, one of the founder's chance to balance the books. It's a superb description of the highs and lows of the most incredible business rollercoaster ride, is easy to read and has lessons for everyone. New 12 October 2002

Frank Partnoy

FIASCO - Blood in the water on Wall Street  
There's something hypnotically fascinating about Portnoy's story of selling derivatives at US giant Morgan Stanley. The vehicles that caused the Leeson/Barings disaster, and a close relative of the techniques that would bring down Enron, the whole derivatives business is as shady as the world of finance gets (yet still manages to remain legal and largely unregulated). Part of the fascination of this book is not only the remarkable twistings of reality that the derivatives market provides, but the way they got away with. Unmissable.  New 2 July 2003

Ricardo Semler

Maverick!
The stunning story of how a Brazilian businessman took an ordinary engineering company and turned it into something special is one of the most exciting and uplifting business books every written. Semler ignores every rule in the book and totally transforms the company into a place where everyone wants to work. A must-read. Totally unimaginable when the book was written in 1993, it's now a model for every company.  New 28 June 1999

John Vidal

McLibel.
The story of the longest ever court case in Britain is fascinating both for its David versus Goliath portrayal and the amazing endurance of those involved. From the business viewpoint there are some excellent lessons in how not to handle criticism. And there are interesting (if not always sympathetic) people too. What more could you ask?

James Wallace
(* with Jim Erickson)

Hard Drive.*
The history of Bill Gates and the birth and rise of Microsoft. A very compelling read, with some real insights into where the Microsoft empire came from.

Overdrive.

Overdrive.
The Bill Gates and Microsoft story brought up to date and accompanied by all the juicy confusion over the Internet and fun with litigation. Slightly self-interested (too many references to how important Hard Drive was to history), but even so a great read.

Michael Wolff

Burn Rate.  
An insider's view of the phenomenal growth of Internet companies, where a business with no real assets and huge monthly losses can still be valued at hundreds of millions. Wolff wanders around the world of venture capitalists and strange businesses with wide-eyed enjoyment. Great stuff. The US edition isn't there any more (shame!), but there are still plenty of used copies of both paperback and hardback available from the UK site, many shipping anywhere in the world. New 2 October 98/Updated 11 February 2004

Burn Rate.