Recommended Reading
Whether you’re a Harvard MBA looking to broaden your viewpoint about employee relationships, a long-time family employee of your family business looking to branch out in new directions, or a prima ballerina deciding to join the family business, there’s a world of books that meets your specific needs.
NGN Book Reviews feature our favorite family business as well as general business books to help you broaden your knowledge base in the areas that matter to you most.
Book Reviews
A Journey Through Wealth (Review by Natalie McVeigh)
This book has been long overdue because of (1) the challenges of engaging in candid conversations around wealth, family, success and struggles; and (2) obtaining a genuine first-person perspective that includes anecdotes of other contemporaries to sketch a broader picture and illustrate “there is no one way.” It’s a fun, easy read that takes you on a trip through one person’s journey with wealth. The narrative of this book highlights the story arch of the Risher’s—Jennifer and her husband, David. We follow their progress into the land of wealth and its language and culture....
Celebrating Family Business
A rich and lively survey of the great families who rule industry by the acclaimed author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Alexander Hamilton: here is the essential, endlessly engrossing biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.—the Jekyll-and-Hyde of American capitalism.
The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times
This is the frank and honest story of the Thornton family and their confectionery business.
Sam Johnson and the company that made him proud.
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son - Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House - of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly - known on 'Change as
"I’m not a businessman—I’m a business, man." —Jay Z
In the tradition of Rich Cohen’s Sweet and Low and Sean Wilsey’s Oh the Glory of it All, a memoir of a city, an industry, and a dynasty in decline, and the story of a young artist’s struggle to find her way out of the ruins.
Entrepreneurialism
Discover What Makes Family Businesses Beat the Odds and Thrive over Generations
40 leading venture capitalists come together to teach entrepreneurs how to succeed with their startup
Popp examines the Shaw family business to present a study of entrepreneurism that puts the family centre stage.
The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create.
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable.
The book begins with a probing and useful theory of social entrepreneurship, moving through history to illuminate what it is, how it works, and the nature of its role in modern society.
The premier guide to setting up and managing your business’s finances
To achieve unimaginable business success and financial wealth—to reach the upper echelons of entrepreneurs, where you’ll find Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sara Blakely of Spanx, Mark Pincus of Zynga, Kevin Plank of Under Armour, and many others—you have to change the way you think.
Family Dynamics
Generation to Generation presents one of the first comprehensive overviews of family business as a specific organizational form.
As a successful business owner, you realize that financial success is just the beginning.you still have many other challenges to face.
How many times have you thought about starting a diet or quitting smoking without doing anything about it?
This is the most comprehensive book on sustaining the family business and contains international examples and cases and essential tools and checklists of best practice.
Through pages filled with wisdom, tips, guidelines and experiences, the authors seek to navigate brothers and sisters who work in the family business or who are active owners through the challenges and opportunities and to retain the integrity of the family while serving the business.
In this widely popular book, David Horsager presents the ultimate guide to earning, maintaining, and even rebuilding the most critical factor of every business relationship—trust.
The simplicity of the prose serves to heighten the power of the message. You will bookmark passages in order to refer back to the author's wisdom.
The Balance Point offers a step-by-step guide to tackle business transition challenges in these times of economic insecurity.
Financial Acuity
What if there were a way to cut through all the financial mumbo-jumbo? Wouldn’t it be great if someone could really explain to us--in plain and simple English--the basics we must know about investing in order to insure our financial freedom?
After interviewing fifty of the world’s greatest financial minds and penning the #1 New York Times bestseller Money: Master the Game, Tony Robbins returns with a step-by-step playbook, taking you on a journey to transform your financial life and accelerate your path to financial freedom.
Two professors combine their fascinating and cutting-edge research in behavioral science to explain how money can buy happiness—if you follow five core principles of smart spending.
Financial Analysis Tools and Techniques, a business-focused revision of Erich Helfert's perennial college bestseller Techniques of Financial Analysis, is a quick, easy read for nonfinancial managers and an excellent refresher and reference for finance professionals
DON’T LET YOUR FEAR OF FINANCE GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR SUCCESS
An astonishing fact is that the vast majority of the wealthy come from middle-class or working-class backgrounds.
At a certain level of wealth, money makes parenting harder, not easier.
Rich Dad Poor Dad, the #1 Personal Finance book of all time, tells the story of Robert Kiyosaki and his two dads—his real father and the father of his best friend, his rich dad—and the ways in which both men shaped his thoughts about money and investing.
NxtGen Life
Follow the transformative journeys of a diverse group of 23 millennial leaders from top universities who reveal a more human and multifaceted view of achievement and growth.
Jim Stovall has penned three delightful parables for anyone who wants to be inspired or give the gift of inspiration.
Dhammapada means "the path of dharma," the path of truth, harmony, and righteousness.
Are you stressed out, overbooked, and underwhelmed by life? Fed up with pleasing everyone else before you please yourself? It's time to stop giving a f*ck.
This #1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing.
The author of the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, tackles the critical question: How do we change?
The Motivation Manifesto is a pulsing, articulate, ferocious call to claim our personal power.
This book is about self development and awareness for individuals and includes tools that can help a family get along better and have a more successful business.
Succeeding In The Business
Smart, substantive, succinct. The book packs a wallop when it comes to building a successful multigenerational family business. Isaac identifies the major issues facing multi-generational and addresses them in a digestible format.
If approximately 70 percent of all businesses are family businesses, and two out of three don't survive to the next generation, what can you do to make sure your business will survive and thrive?
Sons in the Shadow explores the dynamics of family relationships in businesses both large and small about which relatively little has been written.
Preparing the next generation to inherit the family enterprise is the single most important determinant of a successful generational handoff.
At a certain level of wealth, money makes parenting harder, not easier.
Much of the advice we’ve been told about achievement is logical, earnest…and downright wrong.
Generation to Generation presents one of the first comprehensive overviews of family business as a specific organizational form.
This book will help HR managers and founders/owners develop a formal process within the company and also provide insights from family firms on how to manage sensitive topics ranging from family member compensation; family member appraisal, etc., and serves as a guide to HR managers struggling to get a "seat at the table" in family firms.
Supercharge The Business
The author of the legendary bestseller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn’t lie in the message itself, but in the key moment before that message is delivered.
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.
Business communication sucks. At each meeting and presentation, we are inundated with information, leaving us thirsting for inspiration.
The cult classic that revolutionized marketing by teaching businesses that you’re either remarkable or invisible.
Metrics are a hot topic. Executive leadership, boards of directors, management, and customers are all asking for data-based decisions.
A step-by-step system for seven-figure success.
Looking to improve your customer experience? These 68 strategies will show you how to stand out from your competitors, whatever your business.
Storytelling has come of age in the business world. Today, many of the most successful companies use storytelling as a leadership tool.
Women in Family Business
The Remarkable discoveries about what drives and sustains successful women leaders.
Women who want to succeed in their family's businesses face situations and challenges that don't often arise in publicly-held companies.
The family business becomes much more complex as it goes from the founder to next generations.
Women in Family Business: What Keeps You up at Night? addresses the psychological, relational and financial issues impacting women in family owned businesses.
Myths & Mortals, Family Business Leadership and Succession Planning provides insights and strategies for successors of family businesses.
Working women today are better educated and more well qualified than ever before. Yet men still predominate in the corporate world.
A groundbreaking book which provides original insight into the debate about why men and women do not understand one another.
Through stories and interviews the authors explore the changing role women play in today's family business, looking at how to encourage and support women family members, to the challenges women face in finding the right balance between work and life, to the role spouses play in couples that work together.