Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.

How in the world did Bernstein find the energy to write this beautifully created and architectural tome while he was in the middle of his career? From Bernoulli to Taleb (well, almost), Bernoulli traces the history of risk and concludes with insights that are invaluable for students of the risk domain.

A fascinating and important book. Brooks writes on while we think of ourselves as rational, utility maximizing animals, we see everything through the lens of our emotions and unconscious. He asks important questions like: What is the best way to build true relationships? How do we instill imaginative thinking? How do we develop our moral intuitions and wisdom and character? Brooks has always been a keen observer of how we live the way we live, and in this book he offers some possible why’s.

Christensen, Clayton M., and Henry J. Eyring. The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education From the Inside Out. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Collins, James C., and Morten T. Hansen. Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck: Why Some Thrive Despite Them All. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011.

This is another one of Collins’ recipe books. Stories from the field, impressively researched and filled with interesting anecdotes. But then Collins blows his credibility by drawing if-then causation from the stories without giving regard to chance.

• Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.

Foer covers the US Memory Championship as a journalist one year and wins it the next year! The piece takes us back to the time tested ways that the ancients used memory, and what the implications are for our society who has effectively “externalized” our memories.

Hendrickson, Paul. Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Isaacson’s two previous biographies were of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. Isaacson is a scholarly historian and meticulous fact checker and so it is wonderful to have his erudite approach to this very moving biography of Steve Jobs in this unsentimental look at unconventional genius. Isaacson is hard on Jobs. He takes us through the early years at Apple (and even before), and doesn’t spare the image of the ambitious, self-concerned, even narcissistic Jobs. But that turns out to be the least interesting part of the book, particularly for those basically familiar with the Apple creation myth. What is special about this biography of Steve Jobs is how this piece illuminates Jobs building his resilience and gaining in focus and determination by overcoming challenge and adversity, the loneliness of being misunderstood, and may even illuminate the reason why so many overprotected kids do well in school and fail in life (and vice versa). It turns out to be the story of an extraordinary individual, an unstoppable force of nature.

As the world knows by now, Dan Kahneman is an Israeli-American psychologist who, with his research partner Amos Tversky, did seminal work in the 1960's and 70's to create what we now call behavioral economics (or behavioral finance) with the publication of Prospect Theory (1979), and for which he won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2004. Kahneman is simply the most influential psychologist and economist in the world today. This book is the fruit of his last 10-15 years of thinking. It is incredibly dense (meaning there is an “AHA!” moment on every page), beautifully written, and valuable to professionals and lay people alike. I would say it is, along with The Social Animal, one of the most important books of 2011.

Marks, Howard. The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for Thoughtful Investors. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.

Marks writes a thoughtful (and personal) treatise on his unique view of the investment world which applies to both public and private capital markets.

Montefiore, Simon. Jerusalem: The Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

A timely book. From the reaction of the talking heads to the current economic equilibrium, evidently most are poor students of economic history. This would be an excellent read for anyone looking to get a historical perspective on global economic thinking in the last 150 years. Nassar’s incredibly detailed journey into the last 150 years of the great thinkers of economic history sets or “frames” the context beautifully for informed intelligent dialogue on current issues. She terms the three major parts of her book Hope (1843-1911), Fear (1914-1939), and Confidence (1945-2007). One can only hope political candidates have the intellectual curiosity to peruse this history because after a thorough reading, the forces sure look familiar. While we all studied Samuelson in undergraduate economic courses, her choices for inclusion of the most contemporary economists are uninspiring and a critical piece missing from her collection is any description or even acknowledgement of the burgeoning area of behavioral economics, (which has arguably given us most of the insight over the past 20 years). Her oversight may prove to be mistaken.

Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking, 2011.