Archives: Books
GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?
Inspired by Bill Simmons’ epic The Book of Basketball, Tyler Cowen translates a lifelong passion for economics into an entertaining and erudite analysis of who qualifies as the greatest economist of all time.
Through vivid storytelling, Cowen examines the lives of history’s most influential economic thinkers, from the passionate idealism of a young John Stuart Mill to the analytical brilliance of Milton Friedman.
Delving into long-forgotten lectures, private letters, and formative childhood moments, Cowen unearths surprising insights into what drove these great thinkers. Was Alfred Marshall’s photographic memory the key to his theories of supply and demand? Did Adam Smith’s absent father help spark his visionary ideas?
In the end, Cowen crowns a surprising winner and makes a compelling case for the under-appreciated qualities that separate the good from the truly great. Call it juvenile, or overly hierarchical, but Tyler will force you to think about economics in a new way. Think he’s wrong? Tell it to the AI.
Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World
How do you find talent with a creative spark? To what extent can you predict human creativity, or is human creativity something irreducible before our eyes, perhaps to be spotted or glimpsed by intuition, but unique each time it appears?
Obsessed with these questions, renowned economist Tyler Cowen and venture capitalist and entrepreneur Daniel Gross set out to study the art and science of finding talent at the highest level: the people with the creativity, drive, and insight to transform an organization and make everyone around them better.
Cowen and Gross guide the reader through the major scientific research areas relevant for talent search, including how to conduct an interview, how much to weight intelligence, how to judge personality and match personality traits to jobs, how to evaluate talent in online interactions such as Zoom calls, why talented women are still undervalued and how to spot them, how to understand the special talents in people who have disabilities or supposed disabilities, and how to use delegated scouts to find talent. Talent appreciation is an art, but it is an art you can improve through study and experience.
Identifying underrated, brilliant individuals is one of the simplest ways to give yourself an organizational edge, and this is the book that will show you how to do that. Talent is both for people searching for talent and for those who wish to be searched for, found, and discovered.