Walter Isaacson
The former editor of Time magazine and CEO of CNN has written the seminal work on Einstein’s life and theory. He tells us Einstein bet his wife he’d win the Nobel Prize for his 1905 work and promised her the prize money in return for a divorce. ‘She takes a week to calculate the odds…and she takes the bet. He didn’t win until 1921 but he did give her the money and she bought three apartment buildings in Zurich.’
Books by Walter Isaacson
“If you like reading about tech bros, Walter Isaacson, author of the fantastic Steve Jobs biography, has turned his pen to Elon Musk. It’s not as good a book—it’s doubtless hard to write with the distance a biographer needs about someone who is not only alive but very vocal and opinionated—but the chapters are short and it’s a very easy read for an overview of where Musk came from and how he got to where he is.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
by Walter Isaacson
The Code Breaker is the story of Jennifer Doudna, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her development of the CRISPR technology that allows gene editing. It is also the story of genes and gene editing and women in science. Walter Isaacson is a veteran biographer. He writes in highly readable prose that is particularly welcome when it comes to writing about science, when the concepts can be difficult. He also writes it like a pacy story, where you want to know what happens next. It is little surprise that on coming out, The Code Breaker went straight to the top of the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.
“Isaacson has really captured the complex brilliance of one of the most extraordinary humans in the world. It’s a favourite of mine.” Read more...
The best books on High Performance Psychology
Michael Gervais, Psychologist
“I love this book…He focuses on why Steve Jobs was such an unusual character but also to what extent he represents the spirit of Silicon Valley and modern entrepreneurship. I think Steve Jobs is, for all his flaws, almost a symbol—and certainly a role model—for a whole generation of young people who want to be entrepreneurs. What’s so interesting about Steve Jobs is that there’s a lot of going against the grain. He defies all the classic definitions about what you would expect from an entrepreneur—certainly for a businessman—so that is beautiful. This is the hippy who comes to business meetings without shoes. It certainly brings out the personal side of entrepreneurship. One of the things about entrepreneurship that I put a lot of emphasis into teaching is that it’s not a thing, it’s a process. It’s not one act; it’s often a career. And here you see, basically, a person’s life work. And it doesn’t go in a straight line—it’s an incredibly crooked path. For every thousand people, one is Steve Jobs and the other 999 have similarly crooked paths but without the success that Steve Jobs had…It’s extremely well-written. It’s a page-turner. You actually want to know how the story ends. And funnily enough, at the end, you like Steve Jobs. You feel guilty about liking him, but you do like him.” Read more...
The best books on Entrepreneurship
Thomas Hellmann, Economist
Kissinger
by Walter Isaacson
Veteran biographer Walter Isaacson's 1992 book on Henry Kissinger. With access to Kissinger's private papers, memos and interviews with him, Isaacson was able to tell the story of one of the most powerful foreign policymakers of the 20th century.
“This biography shows us the creative exuberance of a man with an extraordinary visual imagination.” Read more...
Ian McEwan on the Books That Shaped His Novels
Ian McEwan, Novelist
Interviews with Walter Isaacson
The best books on Einstein, recommended by Walter Isaacson
The former editor of Time magazine and CEO of CNN talks to us about the life and work of Albert Einstein, including the bet with his wife that left her with his Nobel Prize money and him with a divorce.
Interviews where books by Walter Isaacson were recommended
Ian McEwan on the Books That Shaped His Novels
Novelist Ian McEwan talks about five of the books that have helped shape his own, from the biography of a scientific genius to a treatise on the end of time, and discusses the importance of finding “mental freedom”
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The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself
by Daniel Boorstin -
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Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson -
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The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
by Eric Ries -
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The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup
by Noam Wasserman -
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Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed
by Josh Lerner
The best books on Entrepreneurship, recommended by Thomas Hellmann
The best books on Entrepreneurship, recommended by Thomas Hellmann
What are the best books to read if you want to be an entrepreneur? Oxford Saïd Business School’s Thomas Hellmann, DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, shares his top five books—and explains what entrepreneurs can learn from them.
The best books on High Performance Psychology, recommended by Michael Gervais
To reach your full potential you must put as much effort into building mental resilience as you do into work or training, advises high-performance psychologist Dr Michael Gervais. Here, he selects five titles to help you find the right mindset—whether you dream of sporting stardom, artistic achievement or business success.
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Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization
by Ed Conway -
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Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive
by Amy Edmondson -
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How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between
by Bent Flyvbjerg & Dan Gardner -
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Elon Musk
by Walter Isaacson -
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Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
by Siddharth Kara -
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The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Michael Bhaskar & Mustafa Suleyman
The Best Business Books of 2023: the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award, recommended by Andrew Hill
The Best Business Books of 2023: the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award, recommended by Andrew Hill
If you like nonfiction books that will get you up to speed with what’s going on in the world, the Financial Times annual book prize is a great place to start. If you run a business, one or two useful books also feature. Andrew Hill, the newspaper’s senior business writer, talks us through the books that made the 2023 shortlist, from cobalt extraction in the Congo to how to manage the AI genie that’s out of the bottle and coming towards us at speed.
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Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age
by Tom Holland -
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Vergil: The Poet's Life (Ancient Lives)
by Sarah Ruden -
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Ian Fleming: The Complete Man
by Nicholas Shakespeare -
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The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Global History of Mathematics & its Unsung Trailblazers
by Kate Kitagawa & Timothy Revell -
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The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism
by Sebastian Edwards
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023, recommended by Sophie Roell
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023, recommended by Sophie Roell
As summer collapses into fall across the northern hemisphere, Five Books editor Sophie Roell takes a look at the nonfiction books that have been published over the last three months. Reading serious nonfiction books remains the easiest way to get up to speed on not only things you’re already interested in, but lots of things you didn’t know you didn’t know.
