“In today’s post-truth world, it’s more important than ever to separate myth from reality.” So begins this guide to critical thinking by academic and economist Alex Edmans.
The book, Edman’s third, provides a road map for how to separate those myths from the real thing and come to a better understanding of the world, drawing on the approaches of academic research. A finance professor at London Business School, Edmans is well placed to share what professional thinkers can teach us about examining our subjectivity to think more clearly about topics from income disparity to cancer cures.
Some of the lessons will not surprise you: Edmans suggests thinking smarter by seeking articles that take an opposing view to your own, and being aware that company reports, books and newspaper articles are written with an agenda. But a willingness to explore faults even in systems he sees as helpful is a sign the author has a refreshingly open mind.
He is both a critic and a strong advocate for peer reviewed research, highlighting shortcomings even among the most respected publications, while noting its great strength in enabling us to “stand on the shoulders of giants”. Readers are warned about dangers of confirmation bias, groupthink and what Edmans calls “black and white thinking”, where people fail to understand shades of grey and nuance.
The book concludes on a positive note with suggestions. Edmans lays out how individuals might assess situations more objectively, how organisations can create cultures that nurture open debate, and how teaching critical thinking in schools could help build a better society. Edmans might believe that we’re post truth, but he also proposes that it is in everyone’s grasp to become smarter thinkers. Jonathan Moules
Formula One has won many new fans through Netflix reality series Drive to Survive . But do these newcomers know anything about the history of a sport that traces its origins to 1920s Europe? Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg attempt to fill the knowledge gap with this entertaining read.
The pair, whose first book on England’s Premier League also tackled the global explosion of a European sport, manage to retell even the most technical moments of Formula One at a befitting pace. In fact, I binged this book faster than I watched Drive to Survive .
Robinson and Clegg’s achievement is to provide more than enough for both hardcore fans and newcomers. Though they lack a protagonist to follow across the decades, their crash course in F1 history is deeply researched and reported.
Each chapter features legends, from the old guard Enzo Ferrari to tragic icons Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher. The authors interviewed contemporary stars like Mercedes boss Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton, and a 93-year-old Bernie Ecclestone welcomed them into his living room in Gstaad, Switzerland.
However, the history lesson means it takes until the 13th of 16 chapters to really dig into the $8bn deal that transformed the sport. That was when Liberty Media took over, decided it was worth taking social media seriously and started making drivers the stars of the show.
This newfound emphasis is why Liberty Media has been able to take F1 into Miami and Las Vegas, expanding the calendar to 24 grands prix. The group this month unveiled a €4.2bn takeover of Dorna, which owns the commercial rights to elite motorbiking racing series MotoGP. If that goes as planned, the authors could have another European sport to explain to Americans. S amuel Agini
If you are interested in how to make the most of the transformative potential of artificial intelligence — and Ethan Mollick says everyone should be — then you must read this book.
The Wharton management professor and his wife Lilach Mollick, an expert in pedagogical development, emerged last year as sought-after pioneers in how to make AI “dance to our tune”, through constant experimentation with witty prompts and groundbreaking interactions with students. Recognising immediately that generative AI would destroy the essay as a homework assignment, for example, Mollick encouraged his classes to play with the technology and work on AI-fuelled plans that were “ambitious to the point of impossible”.
This book, too, has a playful tone, though it starts by identifying the “three sleepless nights” that Mollick thinks everyone will suffer when they realise how these tools could change our future.
Adopting his own precepts (“Principle 1: Always invite AI to the table”), he co-opts AI in the writing of the book itself — using it to brainstorm ideas, critique passages and even compose an optimistic, if overwrought, ending. Mollick’s own research , and other studies, have shown that those knowledge workers “who had the weakest skills benefited the most from AI, but even the highest performers gained”, so it would be unwise, he suggests, to reject the technology.
Co-Intelligence is entertaining, thought-provoking — and short. It will require regular sequels or updates, given the pace at which generative AI is evolving (a need met in part by Mollick’s Substack, One Useful Thing ). Above all, it is a call to action. To understand the advantages of AI, he writes, we have to use it, becoming “Centaurs” (switching between tasks for which either AI or human skills are best suited) or “Cyborgs” (working in tandem with AI).
Mollick is never blasé about the challenges AI could pose but his default attitude is measured optimism. Using a term invented by JRR Tolkien for unexpectedly favourable endings, he urges readers “to aim for eucatastrophe, lest our inaction makes catastrophe inevitable”. Andrew Hill
Julia Hobsbawm has long been a standout voice on work, from the future of the office, to intergenerational dynamics to disruptive technologies. In her Bloomberg column “Working Assumptions”, she ruminates on office complexities. Now, in a book of the same name, she untangles how the Covid-19 pandemic and generative AI will affect our working lives.
According to Hobsbawm, a working assumption is “like a work in progress combined with a rear-view mirror”; a view about the future based on a snapshot of “what is happening now and what has happened before”.
The pandemic disrupted established norms, from everyday commuting and the five-day week to “job for life” stability expected by older workers. The data on the widening schisms between the “hybrid-haves and hybrid have-nots”, on burnout and workplace stress and our cultural fascination with television about toxic managers amplify Hobsbawm’s claim that “work doesn’t work”.
However, Hobsbawm considers herself “an optimist in a pessimistic world” and sees this epoch of workplace turbulence as an opportunity for reinvention. Working Assumptions is an intricate data-lead exploration of that inevitable upheaval.
Given the disruption she describes, some readers may feel unconvinced by Hobsbawm’s “strenuously pro-work” stance. Also potentially grating for younger readers is her criticism of a generation she sees as failing to share her office optimism. Gen Z, Hobsbawm writes, “[lack] the sense of a lifelong career” are “highly individualistic” and “lack . . . deference”.
What Working Assumptions teaches us is, rather than seeing the turbulence of the post-Covid working world as something to sulk about, we should see it is as an opportunity to innovate and build professional lives that suit us all. Leah Quinn
After two decades at management consultancy Huron, Kandi Wiens found herself teetering on the brink of collapse, her health buckling under the strain of overwork. Renouncing her lucrative career to study the burnout crisis — and now a senior fellow at University of Pennsylvania — her book reads like a survival guide for white-collar professionals in the grip of workplace trauma.
The intervention is timely. Corporate concerns about wellbeing have proliferated since the pandemic amplified deep-rooted structural problems in professional workplaces. Yet in surveys, US workers routinely complain of stress and disengagement — classic burnout.
Wiens presents interviews with hundreds of senior leaders excelling at work despite enduring high levels of workplace stress. Uniting them is emotional intelligence and their ability to use it to guide their behaviour.
Wiens pairs this anthropology of emotional intelligence “strategies” with a practical synthesis of research on burnout to date. She identifies an ideal “window of stress tolerance” — a sweet spot that can improve cognitive function and strengthen our memory.
Chronic stress typically takes our brains offline, dragging individuals or organisations into a negative spiral. But as Wiens shows, it is possible to avoid these traps.
How a person thinks about their ability to handle workplace stress is key: by viewing stressors as challenges rather than insurmountable crises, and practising “adaptive emotional regulation” through mindfulness techniques, they can use pressure to thrive.
It is those with work they consider very meaningful, particularly the helping professions, who are at the highest risk of burnout. While beating it may still require root-and-branch reform to company culture, Wien’s guide will be useful to those struggling now. Alexander James