Want to know what books Jonathan Tepper recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Jonathan Tepper's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
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Just Kids
Patti Smith
4.3
In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.
This is the single best audiobook ever recorded by Patti Smith. It is not going to change the way you do business, but it might change the way you live. It's about love and loss and art. [source]
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The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies
Jonathan A. Knee
4.0
If Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone are so smart, why are their stocks long-term losers? We live in the age of Big Media, with the celebrity moguls at the helms of the media conglomerates telling us that "content is king" and "growth is good." But for all the excitement, glamour, drama, and publicity they produce, why can't these moguls and their companies manage to deliver the kind of returns you'd get from closing your eyes and throwing a dart? In "The Curse of the Mogul," Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, and Ava Seave lay bare the inexcusable financial performance that lies beneath Big Media's false veneer of power. In an industry built on celebrity, mogul-fueled megalomania has run rampant, with shareholders footing the bill. Moguls have successfully propagated a myth that both makes them appear indispensable to the business and justifies their lousy performance: since they are managers of creative talent and artistic product, being subject to appraisal using traditional strategic, financial, or operational metrics is just unfair, isn't it? But the stark facts speak for themselves: ?Since 2000, the largest media conglomerates have lost $200 billion in market capitalization from their collective balance sheets-making Citigroup's red ink look like a pale blush. ?These media companies have consistently underperformed for over a generation-not just since the Internet emerged as a competitive force but for the decade before anyone ever heard of "new media." ?Misguided investment and acquisition strategies have created the paradox that, in media, the faster revenues grow, the worse the stocks perform. By rigorously examining individual media businesses on their own terms, the authors point out the difference between judging a company by how many times it's CEO is seen in Sun Valley and by whether it generates consistently superior profitability. The book is packed with enough sharp-edged data to bring the most high-flying, hot-air-filled mogul balloon crashing down to earth.
The book The Curse of the Mogul is more relevant than ever. It is one of the best books on business strategy in media, film and television. https://t.co/KhZjhEnpda [source]
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The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economics and the Threat of Financial Collapse
Michael Pettis
4.6
This book presents a radically different argument for what has caused, and likely will continue to cause, the collapse of emerging market economies. Pettis combines the insights of economic history, economic theory, and finance theory into a comprehensive model for understanding sovereign liability management and the causes of financial crises. He examines recent financial crises in emerging market countries along with the history of international lending since the 1820s to argue that the process of international lending is driven primarily by external events and not by local politics and/or economic policies. He draws out the corporate finance implications of this approach to argue that most of the current analyses of the recent financial crises suffered by Latin America, Asia, and Russia have largely missed the point. He then develops a sovereign finance model, analogous to corporate finance, to understand the capital structure needs of emerging market countries. Using this model, he finally puts into perspective the recent crises, a new sovereign liability management theory, the implications of the model for sovereign debt restructurings, and the new financial architecture.
Bridging the gap between finance specialists and traders, on the one hand, and economists and policy-makers on the other, The Volatility Machine is critical reading for anyone interested in where the international economy is going over the next several years.
I can’t believe I didn’t know Michael Pettis is on Twitter. He’s a must follow. I highly recommend his book The Volatility Machine if you want to understand emerging market crises. https://t.co/1ar5NepyDZ [source]
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Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible
William N. Goetzmann
4.2
"[A] magnificent history of money and finance."--New York Times Book Review
"Convincingly makes the case that finance is a change-maker of change-makers."--Financial Times
In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it's easy to see finance as a wrecking ball: something that destroys fortunes and jobs, and undermines governments and banks. In Money Changes Everything, leading financial historian William Goetzmann argues the exact opposite--that the development of finance has made the growth of civilizations possible. Goetzmann explains that finance is a time machine, a technology that allows us to move value forward and backward through time; and that this innovation has changed the very way we think about and plan for the future. He shows how finance was present at key moments in history: driving the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, spurring the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome to become great empires, determining the rise and fall of dynasties in imperial China, and underwriting the trade expeditions that led Europeans to the New World. He also demonstrates how the apparatus we associate with a modern economy--stock markets, lines of credit, complex financial products, and international trade--were repeatedly developed, forgotten, and reinvented over the course of human history.
Exploring the critical role of finance over the millennia, and around the world, Goetzmann details how wondrous financial technologies and institutions--money, bonds, banks, corporations, and more--have helped urban centers to expand and cultures to flourish. And it's not done reshaping our lives, as Goetzmann considers the challenges we face in the future, such as how to use the power of finance to care for an aging and expanding population.
Money Changes Everything presents a fascinating look into the way that finance has steered the course of history.
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