We asked FORBES' editors and writers to select the most entertaining and illuminating nonfiction books of the year. Here are the top 10 volumes they came up with.
The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America's Cup, by Julian Guthrie. The entertaining tale of billionaire Larry Ellison's quest for the America's Cup, including his improbable partnership with a Croatian immigrant radiator-shop owner. Ellison gave extensive access to the author, who describes him pursuing the Cup with the same relentless competitiveness he showed in the software business.
Brick by Brick: How Lego Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry, by David C. Robertson with Bill Breen. Ten years ago Lego was on the verge of bankruptcy. Now it dominates the toy industry. Brick by Brick tells the surprising saga of how the company's management innovated its way to success with lessons that can be applied to all sorts of businesses.
The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, by Gregory Zuckerman. Three men named George Mitchell, Harold Hamm and Mark Papa—they'll never be household names—unleashed a torrent of oil and gas that's reshaping civilization. Zuckerman details their epic adventure with skill that makes it required reading for anyone looking to understand fundamental forces at work in our world today.
The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, by Angus Deaton. A Princeton scholar reveals exactly how vast parts of the world have made stunning material progress in modern times and shows why the rest haven't, and how they too can now make great advances. Hint: The answer isn't aid programs.
Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, by Nick Bilton. The founders of Twitter are idealists who talk about changing the way the world communicates, but the social network's history is as rife with infighting, jealousy and backstabbing as any other company's. From the Jack Dorsey creation myth to forgotten co-founder Noah Glass, Bilton takes a 360-degree view of Twitter's path from afterthought to IPO.
The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, by Nina Munk. Munk tracks a messianic economist's quixotic attempts to show that he can end African poverty. In one village his team gets farmers to grow maize instead of traditional matoke; there are no buyers for the bumper crop, and rats end up eating much of it. Munk describes a growing gulf between good intentions and hard reality with nuance and sensitivity.
I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford, by Richard Snow. Long before his obsessions and ego got the better of him, Henry Ford was a brilliant mechanic with bold ideas about how things should be made and how people should be paid. His early career is one of America's great can-do tales, and Snow, a former editor of American Heritage (at the time owned by Forbes) tells it splendidly.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, by Brad Stone. The billionaire's story laid bare, from the father he never knew to his boardroom tantrums--or "nutters," as his employees call them. The fact that Bezos' wife felt compelled to write a one-star Amazon review of the book suggests how close it has gotten to him. [Correction: This entry originally named the wrong title, One Click, by Richard L. Brandt.]
One Summer: America, 1927, by Bill Bryson. Joyously readable on any subject, Bryson is at the top of his game here, weaving the epic summer seasons of Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth and countless other colorful characters (such as Philo Farnsworth, the ignored farm boy inventor of television) into a truly American panorama. Anyone fascinated by the 1920s will love this book.
Trading Bases: A Story About Wall Street, Gambling, and Baseball (Not Necessarily in That Order), by Joe Peta. In a volume that's part memoir, part trading bible, Peta explains how an incapacitating accident—he was hit by an ambulance while crossing a New York street—set him free to combine his love of financial markets with his passion for baseball, cooking up a stats-based betting strategy that cleaned up in Vegas and gave him a new lease on life.
(Reviews by Susan Adams, Dan Bigman, Abram Brown, Tim Ferguson, Daniel Fisher, Rich Karlgaard, Alex Knapp, and Steve Schaefer.)
