What Is the Best Book You Read in 2009?

What Is the Best Book You Read in 2009?: "
Public Offering asked faculty members what books they enjoyed most this year and here’s what they said. (Take a look at last year’s list for more titles.)



Daniel Ames How to Break a Terrorist by Matthew Alexander is the story of the author’s experiences as a member of a U.S. intelligence and interrogation team working in Iraq in 2006. On one side, he struggles to coax information from hardened fighters as well as hapless suspects. On the other, he struggles with different attitudes in the military on the effectiveness of harsh interrogation techniques. It’s a fascinating glimpse into what is, for most of us, an unknown world. And the underlying story holds some lessons for how many of us might approach the “ordinary” conflicts in our everyday lives.

Ray Fisman Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein is an enormously entertaining and instructive look inside the world of the original economic gangsters.

Ray Horton I’ve read a number of good books on the now two-year-old economic crisis, including Robert Skidelsky’s Keynes: The Return of the Master, Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market and Animal Spirits by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller. But the best of the bunch in my opinion is John Cassidy’s new book How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities. He does the best job of tying the theory problems to the rationally irrational behaviors that nearly sunk the ship of modern finance.

	What is your book pick of the year? Please share your nomination.

Malia Mason The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing.

Emi Nakamura This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff.

Many notable books and ideas were published by faculty authors this past year as well. Several of these have been recently featured in Columbia Ideas at Work including: The Curse of the Media Mogul by Bruce Greenwald, Jonathan Knee and Ava Seave; The Aid Trap by Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan; and Value Above Cost: Driving Superior Financial Performance with CVA: The Most Important Metric You’ve Never Used by Don Sexton.
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