Top Channel Books Of 2007

Michael Malone

Bill and Dave

Veteran tech writer Michael Malone's impressive retelling of the founding and growth of Hewlett-Packard is as much a manual on managing by "The HP Way" as it is a history of two Stanford buddies who did very, very well. Malone is out to seed the next generation of entrepreneurs with a whole bunch of crazy ideas, including respect, pride, responsibility and quality. It's a wild ride.

Carly Fiorina

Tough Choices: A Memoir

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who comes across as a wrecking machine in Bill and Dave, tells her story in Tough Choices, particularly on the vastly controversial acquisition of Compaq Computer that dominated her reign. After her dismissal by an angry board of directors, HP's subsequent success has led some to reconsider her tenure in a more positive light.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

In Freakonomics, our 2007 VARBusiness 500 Awards speaker, Stephen Dubner, and co-author Levitt apply economic analysis to a host of social and policy topics (crime, abortion, parenting) and discover, (surprise!) that incentives matter and unintended consequences can swamp the best thought-out plans.

Jessica Livingston

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

Livingston, herself a founder of venture firm Y Combinator, interviews the entrepeneurs who launched companies ranging from Apple, Lotus and Research in Motion to Craigslist, TiVo and Hotmail. She winds up with a handbook of everything that can go wrong, and right, in launching at technology startup.

Andy Oram and Greg Wilson, editors

Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think

In 33 chapters, top programmers talk abut how they approached significant software challenges (from sorting genes to operating Martian rovers), and how they created solutions. While the languages discussed run the gamut of modern computer science, including Java, Lisp, Scheme, Haskell, JavaScript, and many others, you don't need to be a programmer to appreciate how they identify the core questions to be answered in a project, and build solutions from there.

Tom Perkins

Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins

Venture capitalist extraordinare Tom Perkins looks at his life at HP, Genentech, Kleiner-Perkins, and back to HP in this sprawling memoir. Along the way, he provides glimpses into his marriage to romance author Danielle Steele, his vintage car collection, and his adventures building and sailing the world's largest private yacht.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Math guru and former senior Wall Street trader Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness, looks at the impact of uncertainty and unexpected events. He suggests we know far less about cause and effect than we give ourselves credit for, and (putting a twist on Ayres and Gladwell) suggests the most significant events are the ones we never see coming -- although we can hedge against their downsides.

Malcolm Gladwell

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Gladwell, our featured VARBusiness 500 Awards speaker in 2006 takes a surprising look at decision-making in society today. Identifying the emotional factors that sometimes cloud our judgment. He reports that, properly trained, our most primitive tools -- including intuition and instinct -- are frequently the ones that provide the best answers to complex problems.

Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker

Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life

With calm dignity, and without cursing or fireworks, Tony Dungy took his Indianapolis Colts to a Super Bowl victory in 2007 by treating players like adults and expecting them to behave that way. Dungy explains his personal values and formula for success and a leading a "winning life." (And when it's time to talk sports, you'll be ready to go.)

Michael E. Gerber

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

If you think mastering technology means you'll be able to master running a business, you're a victim of the "E Myth." Michael Gerber has built a small empire consulting with small business owners, getting them focused on working on their businesses rather than in their businesses. Whether you run a small business, or sell to them, these insights can point you in the right direction.

Ian Ayres

Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart

Yale Law professor Ian Ayres tackles the increasing power of vast databases and statistical analysis in optimizing decision-making and anticipating future events. Smart organizations will embrace new levels of data mining in hiring, managing, and developing new products, and numerical literacy will become increasingly critical for a well-educated citizenry. Ayres lays out the reasons.

Scott Adams

Cubes and Punishment: A Dilbert Book

The Dickens of the dot-com era, no one gets the foibles of the technology world better than Scott Adams. He's dead-on, and hilarious, in illustrating the lives of the techies, the salesmen, the marketing people, and the hapless executives that have built our modern economy, cube by cube by cube.