Business Books & Co.

John Romero is widely regarded as one of the greatest game developers of all time. In his 2023 autobiography, Doom Guy: Life in First Person, he recounts his journey from a sometimes difficult upbringing to the heights of fame and fortune. An award-winning game designer and programmer, Romero is the co-creator of some of the most influential games of all-time, including the genre-defining Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. While well...

Daniel Kahneman is an award winning psychologist who made Nobel Prize winning contributions to the field of behavioral economics. In Thinking, Fast and Slow he recounts his research journey and makes digestible to the reader some of the key insights that may help them improve their decision making. Kahneman’s book introduced many now common terms into popular culture and helped illuminate the cognitive biases that we all face both ...

Silicon legend Pat Gelsinger joins us to discuss his book The Juggling Act: Bringing Balance to Your Faith, Family, and Work. How do you live a balanced life, including prioritizing your faith and family, while achieving ambitious goals in the workplace? Pat, the former CEO of Intel, provides key strategies and insights that can help any working professional master the juggling act. We also discuss with Pat the appropriate place fo...

Season 4 of Business Books & Co. was comprised of nine highly regarded books, three author interviews, and one special guest. Join us as we look back at the highs and lows of the past season of the show. And we won't hold back—we'll tell you the books we loved, but also the ones we didn't. Plus we'll tell you what we're planning for season 5!

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First released in 2018, Atomic Habits by James Clear has quickly become one of the best-selling self-help books of all-time. Clear meticulously studied the psychology and practical side of forming good habits and eliminating bad habits. He then created an easy-to-read how-to manual that can be applied to just about any habit. We discuss the book's key takeaways and how they apply to our careers and personal lives.

Show Notes

There are timeless principles that underlie stock trading. In this episode we discuss Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, considered by many to be a classic work in the space. First published in 1923, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre is a fictionalized biography based on the career of legendary stock trader Jesse Livermore. Through the first-person recounting of protagonist Lawrence Livingston’s career, Lefevre imp...

Trader Joe's is an iconic American grocery chain. And yes, there was an actual Trader Joe. In this episode we interview Patty Civalleri, the co-author with Joe Coulombe of Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys. Founded as a small chain in California in the 1960s, Trader Joe’s has gone on to become one the most unique and influential grocery retailers in the United States. Through that journey of...

We discuss the 2017 memoir Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. Zell was the billionaire founder of Equity Residential, Equity International, and EQ Office. In addition he had controlling interests in several other large enterprises, perhaps most controversially Tribune Media. Am I Being Too Subtle? describes Zell’s upbringing, career, business philosophy, and success transforming troubled assets...

Love him or hate him, Elon Musk is perhaps the most accomplished and influential leader in today's business landscape. Dive into the definitive biography, Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, on our latest episode. Spanning 700 pages, this epic authorized account lays bare the polarizing man behind the innovations, exposing both triumphs and flaws. We dissect the biography's strengths and weaknesses, and discuss how it sheds light on the ...

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo is a self-help book for anyone who regularly makes presentations. Whether you're an executive, analyst, marketer, or teacher this book will help you improve the impression you make on an audience. By utilizing the legendary keynotes of Steve Jobs as a model, the book presents tips, tricks, and technical techniques to make bett...

How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone by Brian McCullough is a history of the companies, entrepreneurs, technologists, and financiers who launched the modern online world. Covering the years 1993 to 2008, this sweeping volume helps the reader understand not only who the important players were in fostering online communities, e-commerce, social networks, and connected mobile computing, but also the context from whic...

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is a modern management classic. It's about bringing the scientific method to the forefront at the start of a new enterprise. Instead of following a classic waterfall development methodology, Ries emphasizes the importance of building quick MVPs that are easily testable based on actionable metrics. Although just a dozen years old, The Lean Startup philosophy has already gone from controversial to common...

This month we read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. First published in the 1930s, How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the most popular self-help books of all time. Carnegie’s suggestions for how to achieve the title’s objective are largely based on anecdotal wisdom, but the anecdotes are numerous and often hard to argue with. While some of the advice is old-fashioned, and much of it is common ...

Season 3 was a landmark season for our show. We read some amazing books and interviewed some award-winning authors. In this episode we discuss the highlights of Season 3. We pick the best and worst books we read. And we provide a behind the scenes look at our author interviews. Plus, we preview Season 4.

Show Notes

• Season 3 Listener Survey via Google Forms
• David Kopec on Return to the Little Kingdom via CFO Bookshelf
• ...

Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies by Nik Bhatia is one of the most popular books in the world of bitcoin. But it's much more than that. The first half of the book is a history of monetary systems. This sets the stage for a dive into the world of bitcoin, including what makes it special and how it differs from the currencies that preceded it. Finally, Layered Money takes the reader t...

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. is an epic biography of the industrialist by acclaimed author Ron Chernow. Rockefeller was the founder of Standard Oil, a company that was notorious for its monopolization of the oil industry in the late 19th century. An adept businessman and talented strategist, Rockefeller was demonized throughout his career for his sometimes brutal tactics. During the latter half of his life, Rockefell...

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It is considered one of the best books of all time on negotiation. Instead of focusing on economic theory or game theory, it focuses on practical techniques and psychological insight. Voss uses anecdotes from his career as an international hostage negotiator for the FBI to enliven the narrative while alternating with everyday business negotiation scenarios. We are ...

The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley is a comprehensive portrait of the early era of PayPal—predominantly focused on the years between its founding in 1998 and its sale to eBay in 2002. A deeply researched and well written narrative, The Founders provides the backstory of the group of individuals who became known as “The PayPal mafia.” We are privileged to be joined by the book’s author,...

King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone by David Carey and John Morris is more than just a book about Blackstone—it’s a history of private equity. Carey and Morris explain the sometimes esoteric world of this segment of high finance. They recount its cycles of booms and busts from the 1980s through the 2010s, and explain how Blackstone navigated the sometimes tumultuous waters t...