Recommendations

The internet is big. Here are some of my favourite things.

Videos

• Justice by Michael Sandel (moral philosophy 101)
• The Sagan Series (short science videos)
• The Feynman Series (short science videos)
• Cosmos (science videos)
• Infinity – Dangerous Knowledge (the complexity of the universe)
• Rome (roman historical fiction from Caesar to Augustus)
• I, Claudius (roman historical fiction from Augustus to Claudius)
• Baraka (great movie)
• Lots of philosophy videos (philosophy)
• Carrier PBS Series (life aboard a US aircraft carrier)
• Naufragés des villes – (poverty in Montreal)
• The Power of Nightmares (3 part series on Terrorism and Neocons)
• The History of Surgery (5 part series on surgery)
• First as Tragedy, then as Farce – RSA – Slavoj Žižek
• Eben Moglan on Freedom without free software (1 hr)
• HyperNormalisation – (3 hr)
• The Trap (6 hr)

Books

Compliance

• Run to Failure (about BP) – Abrahm Lustgarten
• Exposure (about PFAS and Dupont) – Robert Bilot

Business and Management

Overall

• Scaling Up by Verne Harnesh
• The Effective Executive – Peter Drucker
• Built to Sell – John Warrilow

Strategy

• What is Strategy – Michael Porter
• Zone to Win – Geoffrey Moore

Negotiation

• Getting to Yes
• Difficult Conversations
• Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss

Sales and Pricing

• Mastering the Complex Sale by Jeff Thull
• Confessions of a Pricing Man by Hermann Simon

Quality and Operations

• The Goal – Eliyahu Goldratt

Fun Business Bio Stories

• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
• Acquired Podcast (see LVMH, Costco, Amazon episdodes)
• Losing the Signal (about Blackberry)
• The Spotify Play

Political / Economic

• Capital in the 21st Century – Thomas Picketty
• Capital et Idéologie – Thomas Picketty
• The Tyranny of Merit – Michael Sandel
• And the Weak Shall Suffer What they Must – Yanis Varoufakis
• The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
• Fooled by Randomness – Nicholas Taleb
• Worldly Philosophers – Robert Heilbroner
• The Deficit Myth (first half at least) – Stephanie Kelton
• They thought they were free (first half) – Milton Mayer

Social Sciences and Anthropology

• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
• Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky
• From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp
• The Black Jacobins – C.L.R James

History & Biography

• Champlain’s Dream – David Hackett Fischer
• A Fair Country – John Ralston Saul
• Mahomet et Charlemagne – Henri Pirenne
• Humanly Possible – Sarah Blackwell

China

• Deng Xiaoping – Ezra Vogel
• Age of Ambition – Evan Osnos
• The Great Wall – Julia Lovell

Fiction

• Les Misérables – Victor Hugo

Shorter readings

• Longform.org
• Palladium Magazine
• 3QuarksDaily

Essays of note

• Discours sur la servitude en français moderne – Henrie de la Boétie (1549)
• The Myth of Asia’s Miracle – Paul Krugman – Foreign Affairs (1994)
• Trial by Fire (on the death penalty) – David Grann – New Yorker (2009)
• Culture and Leisure – W.H. Auden (1966)
• The ecstasy of influence – Jonathan Lethem – Harper’s (2007)
• A history of violence – Steven Pinker – The Edge (2011)
• Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm – Yohai Benkler (2002)
• The Case for Reparations – Ta-Nehisi Coates
• 5,000 Years of Debt – David Graeber
• Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Now out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989 – Tim Kuran
• The Israel Lobby – Merscheimer and Walt

TED Talks

• Let’s talk about injustice – social injustice in the USA.
• A Doctor’s Touch – about doctor’s real job.
• Benjamin Zander – on passion and classical music.
• Jill Bolte Taylor – on the right side of your brain.
• Ken Robinson – on education and creativity.
• Salman Kahn – on education in a digital world.
• Jonathan Haidt – on morality for liberals and conservatives.
• Aaron Huey – on the destruction of native american communities.
• Lisa Kristine – on glimpses of modern slavery.
• Richard Dawkins – on the strangeness of science.
• Salman Kahn – How AI could save education

News & Magazine of note

• Financial Times
• Al Jazeera English
• Courrier International
• Le monde diplomatique
• Lapham’s Quarterly
• Nouveau Projet
• Urbania

Some of my own talks

• Montreal Ouvert at TEDxConcordia
• Time to upgrade democracy at TEDxMontreal
• Lois d’accès à l’information à la commission parlementaire à l’Assemblée nationale du Québec
• Revenu de base (TEDxQuébec)
• ECO Canada video about my career path – Jonathan Brun and in French

Dad Tips