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593 points ZeroTalent | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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WoodenChair ◴[] No.43943001[source]
I've read over 100 business books. Why? Because I enjoy the genre and its many sub-genres. From both an entertainment and a practical perspective. And that's also why I co-host the podcast Business Books & Co. [0].

In my opinion, the author of this post is correct about his criticisms of the specific books in the post (we did several of them on the show). Many business books overly generalize, are not empirically rigorous, and are better seen as anecdotal and/or entertainment.

But you also need to understand that "business books" is a very broad category that includes many sub-genres like entrepreneurial storytelling (Shoe Dog), "big idea" books (Zero to One), career up-skilling (Radical Candor), economic history (Titan), and self-help (How to Win Friends and Influence People). Many of these cross over into non-business genres as well.

So, in some sense the author here is doing the same kind of over-generalization that many of the books do. He's mostly speaking about the "big idea" books as if those are the whole genre. What is a business book? It's ill-defined but I think there are many great ones outside the "big idea" space. For example, we just interviewed John Romero on the show to discuss his 2023 autobiography Doom Guy[1]. In my opinion, it is absolutely a wonderful business book from the entrepreneurial storytelling sub-genre. But it doesn't fit the mold that this post talks about.

0: http://businessbooksandco.com

1: https://pnc.st/s/business-books/e9076f47/doom-guy-with-john-...

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mettamage ◴[] No.43944343[source]
So WoodenChair (fun username!), from your perspective, what books would you recommend that actually has some value in business?
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WoodenChair ◴[] No.43947478[source]
"Business" is so broad it's hard to give you recommendations without knowing what you're looking for. That's kind of the point of my post. But as one example, as I mentioned in my post, I loved Doom Guy. If you're building a business in the video game industry you should definitely check it out.

I would also recommend all of the other books in my post that I mentioned by different sub-genres (Shoe Dog, Radical Candor, etc.).

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1. mettamage ◴[] No.43977406[source]
Thanks! I just was curious about a broad selection.