Reading Lists

After taking a step back from a full-time operating role in health tech, I’m spending some time diving deep into the history of some of the most successful businesses that have operated in some of the most impactful industries in the US, as well as deepening my understanding of healthcare, and specifically the economics of healthcare. I’ve come up with a reading list that I’m going to work through over the coming weeks — 10 books on business history and 10 books on the economics of healthcare. Sharing it here. Feel free to send any recommendations!

Business History

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson

Tough Calls: AT&T and the Hard Lessons Learned from the Telecom Wars by Dick Martin

Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism by Bartow J. Elmore

Capitalism in America: A History by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge

Disney War by James B. Stewart

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local – and Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy

Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert

Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry by David C. Robertson

Business of Healthcare 

Pricing Life: Why It's Time for Health Care Rationing by Peter A. Ubel

Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care Is Wrong by David Goldhill

Moneyball Medicine: Thriving in the New Data-Driven Healthcare Market by Harry Glorikian and Malorye Allison Branca

Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results by Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal

The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care by Clayton M. Christensen, Jerome H. Grossman, and Jason Hwang

The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care by Eric Topol

Medicare Meltdown: How Wall Street and Washington are Ruining Medicare and How to Fix It by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh

Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer by Shannon Brownlee

The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care—and How to Fix It by Marty Makary