Crossroads
By Peter Nolan
Marshall Cavendish
€25 ISBN 9780462099682

This book is likely to make the rounds, as it moves on from ‘how I/we/they caused the credit crunch' narratives to a much broader consideration of ‘the meaning of it all and where we're headed' – or, as the subtitle puts it: The End of Wild Capitalism & the Future of Humanity.

In the second half of the book the author settles on the benign scenario of cooperative dialogues between America and China and America and the Islamic world. Many of the less palatable alternatives, including nuclear war with China, are explored at sufficient length to be hair-raising. The first half of the book sets up the ‘crossroads' by providing a thematic history of capitalism — the goods and wonders it has produced and then, inevitably, all its wild excesses and contradictions.

Lingering on the disastrous recent history of finance, the author has no immediate solutions, merely citing the need for global regulation of the global financial system — and the effect is to undermine his earlier assertion that the era of wild capitalism is over. To the same extent his insistence on a ‘collective' alternative never really materialises, and by the end the author is happily quoting the historian E.H. Carr on the fanciful nonsense of "collective security" and how the illusion of it (in the League of Nations) helped bring on the Second World War.

Reminiscent of Paul Kennedy's Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (1993), the overall effect of Crossroads doesn't quite expel the air of an elegant study somewhere in Cambridge (the author holds a chair at Judge Business School), a publisher's deadline and the absence of solutions except on paper, where human beings bury their silly differences and grasp the pragmatic. Fittingly, by the end, Nolan chooses to retreat into a private epilogue to his father, who belonged to a simpler, more honest age and "like Thoreau, …was essentially a mystic, enthralled by the immensity of existence".

The first crop of this season's business books...

How the Mighty Fall
By Jim Collins
Random House
€20 ISBN 9780977326419

How companies typically decline, following success but also how this can be guarded against or reversed.

Growth Management
By Andrew Lester
Palgrave Macmillan
€29 ISBN 9780230577503

Explores the need for businesses to fulfil two roles — both delivering cash today and providing sustainable growth.

The Back of the Napkin
By Dan Roam
Marshall Cavendish
€15 ISBN 9780462099477

A guide to using simple drawing to synthesise concepts, solve problems and sell ideas by an expert in visual thinking.

The 50th Law
By 50 Cent and Robert Greene
Profile Books
€17.50 ISBN 9781846680687

Hip-hop superstar 50 Cent joins best selling author Robert Greene to provide strategic counsel on winning in business and life. No fear is the credo!

The Fall of the House of Credit
By Alistair Milne
Cambridge University Press
€23 ISBN 9780521762144

A haunting expose of the hows and whys of the banking crisis, coupled with an argument for restoring old-fashioned terms of credit.

The Upside of the Downturn
By Geoff Colvin
Nicholas Brealey Publishing
€20 ISBN 9781857885286

Advocates 10 management strategies to prevail in the recession and even thrive.

Globalisation Laid Bare
Introduction by Richard Branson
Gibson Square Books
€14 ISBN 9781906142339

Diverse experts including Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, and eco-feminist Dr Vandana Shiva address ethical globalisation.

The Myth of the Rational Market
By Justin Fox
Harper Business
€20 ISBN 9780060598990

History disproves that investors are always rational and that markets are always right.

Change By Design
By Tim Brown
Harper Business
€20 ISBN 9780061766084

How design thinking can meet people's needs and what is feasible in technical, commercial and social terms. A relevant tool for social challenges like energy saving.

Can Capitalism Survive?
By Joseph A. Schumpeter
Harper Collins
€7 ISBN 9780061928017

Discover why the renowned economist says it can't, while outlining the heart of his philosophical ideas.