Ford Library Blog

The Director’s Picks

Fuqua School Dean Blair Sheppard asked Ford Library Director, Meg Trauner to select 5 recent business books that should “be on his nightstand”.

Click the titles below for information on location and availability.

• The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria
  - Optimistic view of a world no longer dominated by the U.S.
  - Also available as an audiobook.
• What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis
  - Control is out. Connection is in.
  - Also available as an audiobook.
  - Read the full review.
• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
  - Based on new research in neuroscience.
  - Read the full review.
• Imagining India: the idea of a renewed nation by Nandan Nilekani
  - Cultural intelligence on how India operates.
• Fool’s Gold: How the bold dream of a small tribe at J.P. Morgan was corrupted by Wall Street greed and unleashed a catastrophe by Gillian Tett
  - Gripping narrative and education on derivatives.
  - Read the full review.

Tett, Gillian. Food’s Gold: How the bold dream of a small tribe at J.P.Morgan was corrupted by Wall Street greed and unleashed a catastrophe. Free Press, 2009.

In 2003, Warren Buffet described derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” He was later proved to be a prophet. Yet a decade earlier, when credit derivatives were first conceived, they appeared to be a win-win for the financial world, freeing up capital, diversifying risk and increasing profits.

This is the story of a small group of young employees at J.P.Morgan investment bank, who discovered the latent power of derivatives, products which initially seemed so promising, but later evolving into cyber-world instruments that even the financiers struggled to understand.

Fool’s Gold is a lively narrative that reports behind the scenes about the workings of an elite company and its bankers. The story also describes the complicated financial instruments and shows how they combined with greed and stupidity to create a global financial disaster.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Jarvis, Jeff. What would Google do?. Collins Business, 2009.

Media leader and founder of Entertainment Weekly, Jeff Jarvis, describes Google as the first post-media company. He analyzes company principles and shows how companies, organizations and people can use Google’s worldview to re-engineer their own strategy and behavior.

In business, the mass market is gone. Today’s economy is a mass of niches. Google goes to where the customers are, instead of requiring the customers to come to Google. As a network and platform, Google organizes and distributes content to an enormous market and payment is made by people and companies who want to reach that market.

For example, in the old economy, the media covered the cost of publications by charging readers and viewers. In the new economy, the publications are free — media charge advertisers for reaching the customers.

Author Jeff Jarvis recommends that every human being needs a search presence on Google. “Today, if you can’t be found in Google, you might as well not exist.” Exaggeration and hyperbole are abundant in this book. Yet the underlying ideas ring true and the conversational style makes this book an interesting read.

This title is also available in audiobook format in Ford Library.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Moreton, Bethany. To serve God and Wal-Mart : the making of Christian free enterprise. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Historian Bethany Moreton recounts the birth and growth of Wal-Mart from one store in Bentonville, Arkansas to the largest retailer in the world. Interwoven into this story is a complex network of cultural ideals, including devotion to free markets, the family and evangelical Christianity.

In the post WWII years, the US government redistributed wealth from the industrial North to the rural South and the New Christian Right learned to harness electoral power to promote “family values.” Sam Walton took a discount retailer in a rural town in the Sun Belt and built a regional chain around Christian and family values, which later evolved into a global powerhouse. This story shows how business, religion and government are interconnected in modern America and brings clarity into the current political landscape.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Part of Duke’s special collections library, the Hartman Center’s historical print archives and multimedia resources promote the study of sales, advertising and marketing in society.

They provided the material for a recent Perkins Library exhibit looking at advertising in the 1960s titled, “Not Just Mad Men: Real Advertising Careers in the 1960s”. You can see an audio slide show on the Duke Today site.

Take a look at their advertising image databases which range from Ad Access (newspaper and magazine ads from 1911 to 1955) to Medicine and Madison Avenue (health-related ads from 1911 to 1958).

Four Cups of Starbucks

Fuqua’s Start-up Cafe proudly serves Starbucks coffee. MBA’s crowd the counter, getting their fixes of caffeine at $4 a pop. Outside of Fuqua, Starbucks seem to be everywhere. Stores can be found around the globe and in the US, they are located surprisingly close to other stores. Two of the top Starbucks are within fifteen yards of each other. What it is about the product and the company that is irresistible to more than forty million customers?

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce and Culture explores the rise of the Starbucks Corporation and the caffeine-crazy culture that fueled it success. This is a story of how a small Seattle coffeehouse took a standard commodity, shaped it into a luxury product and made it synonymous with a cultural experience. The book includes anecdotes about familiar products and stores, and covers free trade and global issues related to coffee production.

It’s not about the Coffee: Leadership experiences from a life at Starbucks. The founding director of Starbucks International describes the strategies he used to build Starbucks into the success it is today. Behar helped establish the Starbucks culture, which stresses people over profits. He shares his ideas and skills that transported the company from a regional outlet to global brand. The voice of experience and in-house examples from a popular company provide a foundation for a discussion of leadership skills.

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