In the USA, the largest market in the world, around 10,000 business books are published annually. Almost all of them are of course irrefutable, but inevitably only a few clunkers slip through the strict filters of the publishers. Here are some (completely imaginary) examples of titles to avoid in 2022.
Make yourself comfortable with your colleague! An academic and a coach with no practical management experience serve almost 300 pages of wishful thinking about how a combination of determination, empathy, diversity, inclusion – and hugs! – Will put a smile on the face of your exhausted employees and allow you to postpone their long overdue raise for a few more months.
The ME in the team. The recently retired CEO of a company you’ve never heard of spent a tiny fraction of his million dollar hiring a ghostwriter. The result is this numb account of his heroic military service and the subsequent seamless rise to the top, glossing over embarrassments, lawsuits, profit warnings, and repeated layoffs. History written by the winner.
Square pegs: get your strategy in shape. Seven partners of a well-known management consultancy transform their PowerPoint slides and the confidential insights that you as a customer have given into a seemingly completely new strategy. The good news: you now know where your fees have gone. The bad news: You will shortly receive a box of free copies for you and your leadership team, the heaviest and least welcome business card in the world.
Who stole my fable A bizarre story of forest dwellers finding a way to end their longstanding feud and embarking on a miracle of common creation that increases the forest’s returns while combating climate change. Told in monosyllabic and two-syllable words, punctuated by blank pages and bad cartoons. Aesop, it is not. $ 30 hardcover from an airport bookstore near you. Will sell millions.
Kill them: leadership teachings of the tyrants. There is much to be said for autocrats and dictators, but in the past this has mostly come in the form of unconvincing praise from crouched henchmen. Now finally a slim manual that enumerates the real business advantages of an iron leadership style and puts the bullets back in bullet points, from Attila the Hun to Stalin.
Recommended
Rich, richer, richest. Who would have thought it would be so easy to join the hyper-rich? Incredibly good-looking co-authors with a highly regarded Instagram account explain the secrets of the crypto and meme trading and invite you to put your hard-earned retirement savings on their Twitter-led investment strategy and become the next Warren Buffett or Elon Musk . Hurry before they pull the ladder up and the whole Ponzi scheme collapses.
The Bumper Book of Branding. Text is so 2021. Enjoy this huge picture book, complete with hand-drawn graphics and glossy, bespoke photographs, all in an incredibly large format that is only suitable for display on the atrium coffee tables of the marketing agency that funded it. Paired with an online course in reputation management and a global motivation tour (tickets available now, if Omicron allows it).
The deepest dive: the scandal that briefly shook global capitalism. Three US newspaper reporters who never got along well were persuaded to turn their illegibly detailed, award-winning series of investigative reports into a very, very long book. Each chapter begins with a limousine pulling up in front of a luxury hotel. After that, the writers will give up journalism for PR and never speak to each other again. Close family members only.
Nudge me when I fall asleep. Well-known social science experiments are retold for the thousandth time in an optimistic tone that suggests that they contain the secret of life itself. You will learn to enjoy trivial breakthroughs all the time! For the first time you’ll understand how a coach resurrected an obscure US sports franchise! You will wonder why the writers make more money than the adjunct professors who did the research in the first place! You’ll never buy a behavioral science book again.
Hi Ho, Hi Ho: The unthinkable future of work. Did you know we spend more time working than sleeping? You did? Anyway, with this book you can spend the time you are not in work reading about work and maybe, if you are lucky, dreaming about it. Gigworker: Look at the idea of a utopia in which you have a real job again. Full-Time Employees: Tremble at the thought of a dystopia where gig staff take over your job. Bosses: Remember that reading business books during working hours is a criminal offense.
Andrew Hill has been helping filter books for FT’s Business Book of the Year Award since 2005, and luckily, there has never been a shortage of potential winners.