A Distinction With a Difference

Business books are better than books about business.

Books about business tell clean stories, often from an outsider’s perspective, on why things came to be. Books about business share anecdotes and quotes that are jammed into chapters like sardines, often failing to point out all the what ifs.

The what ifs are the most interesting part of business.

This became crystal clear to me after reading Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs. Netflix’s rise to dominance is only obvious with the passage of time. Nothing was preordained. A million things had to go right and a million things could have gone wrong.

That’s not to say books about business aren’t good, in fact, I learned a lot from these:

But if I had to recommend you start somewhere, this list of business books contains some of the best that I’ve ever read:

Thank you for reading, and I hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving with their family.

(* indicates the ones I didn’t read).