Great Books for Winter Reading

In my prior blog post (Logistics Clusters - a terrific new book by Yossi Sheffi), I reviewed Yossi Sheffi’s terrific new book – Logistics Clusters – which explains how supply chain dynamics are transforming both company competitive advantage, and regional economies. This book is a must-read for all business managers, supply chain service providers, and government officials. It is fascinating, fast-paced, and packed with compelling factual examples.

Three other great books

For additional great reading, I suggest three other books: Reckless Endangerment, Turn Right at Machu Pichu, and The Seven Daughters of Eve.

Reckless Endangerment, by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner is subtitled: “How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Created the Worst Financial Crisis of our Time” – and the book certainly lives up to this description.

It is a gripping narration of the forces that led to the near-collapse of the US economy, complete with a blow-by-blow history and names. The really chilling issue is that most of these individuals are still in power, and history appears to be repeating itself in the current fiscal cliff and budgetary crisis.

Turn Right at Machu Pichu, by Mark Adams is a delightful tale. Adams interweaves the history of Pizzarro’s conquest of the Inca Empire, with the story of Hiram Bingham’s fascinating discovery of the ruins of Machu Pichu, with Adams’ own treks in the area tracing the respective histories and stories. The result is a wonderful amalgam by a great writer. By the way, Hiram Bingham is the Yale professor whose story reputedly formed the basis for the character, Indiana Jones.

The Seven Daughters of Eve, by Bryan Sykes, is an incredibly compelling scientific detective story. In this book, Sykes, a professor of molecular genetics at Oxford, describes his ground-breaking genetic investigations into human origins in a very understandable, compelling style that is hard to put down.

His investigations solve long-standing mysteries ranging from the origin of the polynesians, to the story of global human origins. He traces the development of his pioneering genetic techniques that enabled him to trace the lineage of all contemporary humans back through the shrouds of time to just seven women, whom he calls the “seven daughters of Eve.”