Fort Myers Florida Weekly

Business and Investing Books

Fool’s School

To improve your investing skills, it’s good not only to read books about investing, but also to learn about business in general and about what makes a company great. Here are some books you might check out:

“Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t” by Jim Collins (Harper Business, $35). In this classic, Collins answers the question “Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority?” by analyzing the histories of 28 companies.

“Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales From the World of Wall Street” by John Brooks (Open Road Media, $35). Both Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have recommended this book. It offers illuminating business stories from the 1950s and 1960s about companies such as Ford Motor Co., General Electric and Xerox.

“Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk” by Peter L. Bernstein (Wiley, $23). This book will take you from ancient Greece to modern days, covering topics such as probability, risk, gambling and the growth of the insurance industry.

“Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation” by Edward Chancellor (Plume, $20). It’s helpful to understand how markets sometimes get carried away, creating booms that are followed by busts. This book offers eye-opening stories about speculation in tulips in the 1600s, the 1929 stock market crash and day traders in the modern era.

“The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations” by Daniel Yergin (Penguin, $22). This riveting book can help you understand how the energy industry works — as well as how the world works, as it reviews geopolitics involving Russia, China, the Middle East and the United States.

“The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms To Fail” by Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business Review Press, $28). This book can teach you a lot about disruptive companies such as Apple and Amazon.com. It discusses Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and many others, so it can teach you about effective leadership, too. ¦

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