The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success in Business and Life
Avinash Dixit, Barry Nalebuff
W.W. Norton & Company, $22.00

Game theory means rigorous strategic thinking. It is the art of anticipating your opponent’s next moves, knowing full well that your rival is trying to do the same thing to you. Though parts of game theory involve simple common sense, much is counterintuitive, and it can only be mastered by developing a new way of seeing the world. Using a diverse array of rich case studies from pop culture, TV, movies, sports, politics, and history the authors show how nearly every business and personal interaction has a game-theory component to it.

Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets & Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas
Bill Bonner
Wiley, $35.95

Since first publishing Hulbert Financial Digest in 1979, Bill Bonner has taken an honest look at the challenges facing the U.S. economy. Ultimately, whether or not he was proven right or wrong, he always wrote with clarity and conviction. Dice Have No Memory is a collection of his best writings, along with new material that gives context to his columns while offering insights into what changes have occurred since their original publication. Dice Have No Memory is a rousing look at Bill Bonner’s literary economic perspective, global market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm
Thomas Kelley, Jonathan Littman, Tom Peters
Broadway Business, $44.95

IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid’s I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.

At many companies, being first with a concept and first to market are critical just to survive. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley-based design firm IDEO, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative and energized company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit.

Artistry Unleashed: A Guide to Pursuing Great Performance in Work and Life
Hilary Austen, Roger Martin
University of Toronto Press, $35.00

Artistry Unleashed is about working and living at the edge of what you know – and beyond. Surprise, uncertainty, ambiguity, intensity, and change are all disruptive forces that we often avoid or fear, yet they are the essential origin of both creativity and great performance. Imagine that you could make effective progress with no clear plan or destination in view, achieve excellence without sacrificing creativity, and invest passion even as you apply reason and intelligence. Learn how artistry, when allowed to escape studio walls, can help painters, CEOs, athletes, scientists, chefs, and you to achieve these powerful capabilities.

Innovative Intelligence: The Art and Practice of Leading Sustainable Innovation in Your Organization
David Weiss, Claude Legrand
Wiley, $39.95

Innovative Intelligence answers the question: How can we close the innovation gap by making individuals and organizations systematically and sustainably innovative? The key to systematic success is to ensure that organizational practices and culture genuinely foster innovative thinking. Innovative Intelligence presents the case for a new focus for leaders centred on innovative thinking, and demonstrates how leaders can maximize the innovative capacity of their employees and teams. It shows how to embrace a culture of innovation and have it permeate throughout the organization, at every level.

Saving Europe: How National Politics Nearly Destroyed the Euro
Carlo Bastasin
Brookings Institute Press, $28.95

The recent global financial crisis has left many casualties in its wake, including millions of jobs, record-high housing values, healthy pension funds, a sense of safety associated with state finance, and many long-serving politicians and public officials who were shown the door. Monetary union in Europe was nearly another major casualty, putting the future of the euro in peril. Saving Europe reveals how international economics and national politics pushed monetary union to the brink of extinction, how that disastrous development was avoided, and why the long-term viability of a common currency challenges politics as we know it.

Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis
Matthew Lynn
Bloomberg Press, $33.95

In Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis, Bloomberg columnist Matthew Lynn explores Greece’s spectacular rise and fall from grace and the global repercussions of its financial disaster. Page by page, he provides a thrilling account of the Greek financial crisis, drawing out its origins, how it escalated, and its implications for a fragile global economy. Along the way, Lynn looks at how the Greek contagion has spread like wildfire throughout Europe and explores how government ineptitude as well as financial speculators compounded the problem. Blending financial history, politics, and current affairs, Lynn skillfully tells the story of how one nation rode the wave of economic prosperity and brought a continent, a currency, and potentially, the global financial system to its knees. Lively, engaging, and thought provoking, Bust reminds us just how interconnected the world really is.