The Globe and Mail

 

Blogs

Featured:

Tuesday, December 8, 2009 12:14 PM

Stocking stuffers for the Street

Andrew Willis

When she published research reports, top-ranked income trust analyst Barbara Gray at Odlum Brown routinely tosses in references to the business book she’s reading.

It’s an engaging habit, and one that seems to have won fans, as Ms. Gray decided this Christmas to extend her services to clients into the world of literary reviews.

The Vancouver-based analyst recently fired out a list of the 12 best business strategy books she’s read in recent years, an even dozen potential stock stuffers.

There are a number of books Ms. Gray likes that I'd be thrilled to see under the tree. To her list, I would add two worthy volumes that are now on the shelves: I’m in the middle of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s, "Too Big To Fail," and it's wonderfully engaging; you can feel the fear that gripped the Wall Street elite in last year’s financial crisis. And friends say Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson's “The Education of an American Dreamer” is terrific.

Here are the books Ms. Gray enjoyed:

Books of Christmas Past...

- Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, by Howard Schultz

- SWOOSH: The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There, by J.B. Strasser & Laurie Becklund

- The Home Depot: Built from Scratch, by Bernie Marcus & Arthur Blank

- Sam Walton: Made In America, by Sam Walton

Books of Christmas Present…

- Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne

- Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t, by Jim Collins

- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

- Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods – and How Companies Create Them, by Michael J. Silverstein & Neil Fisk

Books of Christmas Future…

- What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

- The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, by Chris Anderson

- Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson

- The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, by Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor

Latest Comments

Most recent posts from the Streetwise blog

TD gives employees extra day off 9:31 AM EST

They're back: KKR files for NYSE Listing 7:59 AM EST

Ex-premier Davis to leave Torys LLP Mar 11, 2010 5:37PM EST

Bay St. comes up big for Women in Capital Markets Mar 11, 2010 4:22PM EST

Most recent posts from the Streetwise blog

More business and investing posts

Market Blog

At noon: Dow, TSX surrender earlier gains 12:23 PM EST

Market Blog

Money market funds: Low yield, high fees spell trouble 12:01 PM EST

More business and investing posts

Streetwise Contributors

May 28/ 2009 - Jeff Gray is photographed for logo in Toronto, Ont. May 28/2009. Photo by Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail May 28/2009

Jeff Gray

Jeff Gray joined The Globe in 1998. After stints as a reporter in sports and as a copy editor in news, he helped relaunch globeandmail.com as a breaking news website in 2000. He moved to The Globe's Toronto city hall bureau in 2004, writing a weekly column about traffic and public transit. He has also worked for the world desk of the BBC's news website in London and for CBC News. He covers legal affairs for The Report on Business.

 

Andrew Willis

Andrew Willis joined The Globe and Mail in September of 1995. His career has included stints at a number of publications, including The Financial Post, The Financial Times of Canada, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, and MacLean's magazine. He also did freelance writing for Investment Executive magazine. He appears on television for BNN TV and CBC Newsworld.

Andrew has co-written a book, The Bre-X Fraud, with business journalist Douglas Goold.

Read Streetwise Tuesday through Friday in the pages of Report on Business.

 

Steve Ladurantaye

Steve Ladurantaye wrote about technology companies in Ottawa before reporting for the Peterborough Examiner and Kingston Whig-Standard, where he won a National Newspaper Award for explanatory journalism. After joining the Globe and Mail in 2007, his work has regularly appeared in Report On Business and Globe Investor Magazine.

 
Boyd Erman

Boyd Erman

Boyd Erman is a long-time business journalist who has worked at Dow Jones, Bloomberg, and the National Post before joining the Globe and Mail. Over the years, his areas of coverage have included economics, monetary policy, debt markets and corporate finance.

In addition, he is a regular commentator and guest host on Business News Network.

 
Globe and Mail reporter Tara Perkins

Tara Perkins

Tara Perkins has been a business reporter since 2004, following a brief stint as overnight editor of globeandmail.com. She has been writing for the Globe's business section since the spring of 2007, covering the banking sector during the course of the financial crisis. Prior to that, she worked for the Toronto Star. Tara has a Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson University and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Guelph.

 
Jacquie McNish

Jacquie McNish

Jacquie McNish has been a business writer with The Globe and Mail since 1988. Prior to that she was a reporter with The Wall Street Journal.

During her time at The Globe and Mail, she has served as the paper's New York correspondent and won three National Newspaper Awards. She is the author of The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey's Bay Hustle and Wrong Way: The Fall of Conrad Black, for which she and co-author Sinclair Stewart won the National Business Book Award. She is a co-host of Market Morning on the Business News Network.

Related Links