The Business Bottomline

The Individualised Corporation: Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher Bartlett Harper Business, $26.00

London Business School and Harvard Business School combine as Ghoshal and Bartlett overturn the 1920s management model. The co-authors of the Managing Across Borders analyse management techniques and explain why they dont work, citing actual case studies. The road to corporate self-renewal starts here.

Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace: James Wallace John Wiley & Sons, $24.95, hardcover, 320 pages

In Hard Drive, Wallace charted the largest consumer marketing effort in history the launch of Windows 95. Overdrive takes up the Microsoft chronicles again: but this time, the company that Gates built is cast in the unfamiliar role of lumbering corporate giant in the battle for cyberspace. Riveting reading.

The Death of the Banker: Ron Chernow Vintage Books, $12, 128 pages

Much briefer and chattier than most of Chernows books on economics and finance, The Death of the Banker is a collection of three long essays. He begins with an overview of banking dynasties, and then explores the histories of J Pierpont Morgan and the Warburg family. This insiders conclusions are startling, but inescapable.

Real Time: Preparing for the Age of the Never-Satisfied Consumer: Regis McKenna

Harvard Business School Press, $19.95

McKenna takes The consumer is king to its logical outcome; then he tells you what you can do about it. The book touches on concerns ranging from the exploding variety of breakfast cereals to the home office to multimedia and the carving up of the infobahn. Recommended by Forbes.