Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt is a 2014 economic nonfiction book by financial journalist Michael Lewis. Flash Boys investigates Wall Street’s desire to maximize profits and the ramifications of this profit-seeking behavior on the broader economy. Flash Boys follows investor Brad Katsuyama’s quest to establish the Investor’s Exchange (IEX) to mitigate the effects of High-Frequency Trading (HFT), a Wall Street profit-maximizing trading practice at the heart of Lewis’s investigation. Through Katsuyama’s story, Lewis explores... Read Flash Boys Summary

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is a work of popular psychology published in 1990 by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The book challenges a fundamental cultural assumption: that material abundance and technological progress automatically produce happiness. Drawing on decades of empirical research involving over 100,000 participants worldwide, Csikszentmihalyi identifies the psychological conditions that enable genuine fulfillment—a state of complete immersion he calls “flow.” The book bridges academic psychology and everyday life, offering readers practical strategies for... Read Flow Summary

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb first published in 2001. The book explores the various ways predictive modeling fails to capture the effect of randomness. Taleb examines how and why human misunderstanding of randomness affects our evaluation of risk and uncertainty, success and failure, and skill and luck.The book is the first in a five-part series entitled Incerto. Other books in... Read Fooled By Randomness Summary

Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete is a work of journalistic nonfiction by former New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden. The paperback edition used here, published in 2006 by Three Rivers Press, follows the hardback version, by Crown Publishers, of the same year. In 2007, Forty Million Dollar Slaves was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Nonfiction.In this book, Rhoden, an African American sports journalist—and himself... Read Forty Million Dollar Slaves Summary

British journalist and author Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021) is his third book. The self-help book, which was an instant Sunday Times bestseller, follows in the spirit of Burkeman’s career-long inquiry into what constitutes a good life. From 2006-2020, he was the author of The Guardian’s “This column will change your life” section, which gave practical and philosophical advice on how to enhance wellbeing, and he wrote two books on... Read Four Thousand Weeks Summary

Rarely does a book about economics attract a large audience, but Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything sold 4 million copies after its 2005 debut. The book, by University of Chicago professor Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner, explains how incentives—the reasons why people do things—can cause unusual and unexpected effects in many areas of life.Praised and reviled for its outside-the-box approach—the work was condemned for suggesting that liberalized abortion laws... Read Freakonomics Summary

Free to Choose is a nonfiction book first published in 1980 and written by Milton and Rose Friedman. The text advocates for free market principles and was made into a ten-part television series. Free to Choose attempts to answer questions including: Why do government programs so often fail to reach their goals? Why do children do worse at school while taxpayers pay more and more to support their education? Why must we fill out a... Read Free To Choose Summary

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath chronicles author Bill Browder’s quest for justice in the aftermath of his friend Sergei Magnitsky’s murder for exposing a financial crime committed by a thoroughly corrupt Russian state. Browder and his team, at great peril to themselves, traced this and other crimes to the top of the Russian state, or Putin, and sought to pass laws in Magnitsky’s name to prevent... Read Freezing Order Summary

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation is written by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Published in 2016 by Haymarket Books, the book explores the emergence of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and raises questions about and suggestions for future direction of the movement. Taylor contextualizes BLM within a broader history of institutional racism and Black resistance, noting continuities between BLM and earlier movements, as well as significant divergences that suggest the potential for radical transformation of the political economy of... Read From #Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation Summary

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life is a nonfiction book by Arthur Brooks (2022). It was a New York Times #1 bestseller for several months. ­­In 2019, Brooks became a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. For a decade before that, he was the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC, that research issues in economics... Read From Strength to Strength Summary

Gang Leader for a Day is Sudhir Venkatesh’s account of the six years he spent doing research in Chicago’s housing projects as a Sociology graduate student. Early in his time at the University of Chicago, Venkatesh stumbles across the Black Kings, a powerful gang heavily involved in Chicago’s crack trade. While he is interested in studying urban poverty, Venkatesh cannot pass up the opportunity to learn more about how gangs operate and what role they... Read Gang Leader For a Day Summary

Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash is a 2012 non-fiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes. Garbology is an analysis of American consumption, trash production, and what happens to everything in our disposable economy after we discard it. Through statistical analysis, interviews, and personal stories, Humes tells the story of our largest export—our trash—and how trash came to be synonymous with American life.Humes divides Garbology into three sections: first, an analysis of our... Read Garbology Summary

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity is a self-help guide by productivity coach and consultant David Allen. As the title suggests, the book focuses on increasing productivity while reducing stress levels, combining techniques from business and psychology. The author claims that the solution to feeling overwhelmed by commitments (both professional and personal) is to use his failsafe organizational system. He suggests that implementing this system will free readers from worrying about what they... Read Getting Things Done Summary

Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (1981) is a business and self-help book by Roger Fisher and William Ury. It teaches a principled method of settling disputes so that both sides win. Revised in 1991 and 2011, the book has sold 15 million copies in 35 languages, spent several years on the BusinessWeek bestseller list, and is one of the most commonly cited works on lists of the best negotiation books.Authors Fisher and... Read Getting to Yes Summary

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, by Adam Grant, explores the concept of reciprocity in the workplace and how it can lead to personal and professional success. First published in 2013, the book bridges the genres of business psychology and self-help, providing readers with actionable strategies to enhance their careers and professional relationships. Grant, an organizational psychologist and professor, draws on his extensive research and real-world examples to demonstrate the power of... Read Give and Take Summary

In Giving Voice to Values – How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right, Mary C. Gentile introduces a practical approach to ethical decision-making and leadership in the workplace. The book focuses on how individuals can effectively voice and act on their values in challenging situations. Rather than debating what is right or wrong, Gentile emphasizes preparation, rehearsal, and leveraging personal strengths to confidently navigate ethical dilemmas. She offers strategies, real-world examples, and... Read Giving Voice To Values Summary

Globalization and Its Discontents (2002) is American economist John E. Stiglitz’s second major work, published shortly after he became a Nobel laureate. It explores and critiques the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) policies between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Since Stiglitz was a senior vice president of the World Bank between 1993 and 1997, he uses insider knowledge to explain certain structural and functional aspects of the IMF that remain opaque to the public. His... Read Globalization and Its Discontents Summary

The nonfiction book Going Infinite (2023) by Michael Lewis explores the world of cryptocurrency through the figure of Sam Bankman-Fried, a young billionaire and founder of FTX, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms. Lewis is a prominent American author known for engaging and accessible nonfiction books about finance, economics, and sports, which make complex subjects entertaining and informative for non-specialist readers. In Going Infinite, a narrative that weaves biography with finance, Lewis delves into Sam’s journey... Read Going Infinite Summary

Good to Great, published in 2001, serves as both a follow-up and thematic prequel to author Jim Collins’s 1994 best seller, Built to Last. Comprehensive in the scope of its research, Good to Great is an examination of the defining qualities of greatness in companies that have made a pivotal transition from “good” (performing relatively consistently) to “great” (performing exceptionally). In making his arguments, Collins brings his expertise as a faculty member at the Stanford... Read Good to Great Summary

Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990) is a work of nonfiction on the governance of commons by Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom examines The Flaws of Collective Action Theories when applied to small-scale common pool resource (CPR) problems. After using case studies to demonstrate the failure of such theories, she presents The Conditions for Successfully Managing Common Pool Resources and emphasizes The Importance of Understanding Institutional Change. Ostrom has a PhD in... Read Governing the Commons Summary