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Undergraduate Reading List

Jeff Furman's Book Recommendations:

"This is the most overwhelming, fantastic, and mind-twisting novel I have ever read." --on Gravity's Rainbow

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
Lewis brilliantly describes the social characteristics and economic aspirations of Small City USA in the early 1900s and insightfully characterizes the conflict between dedication to pure science and the lure of the industrial research laboratory that has tugged at the hearts of pharmaceutical researchers for the past 100 years. It is as current today as it was a century ago.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le CarréWhile le Carré is heralded as one the foremost authors of spy thrillers of the Cold War era, his books were equally, if not more so, studies of the bleakness and twisted logic of bureaucratic organizations. He depicts their unfeeling machinations and the numbing impact they have on otherwise vibrant individuals.

Jeff Furman
Boston University

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander
This is a favorite childhood story.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
This is the most overwhelming, fantastic, and mind-twisting novel I have ever read. It juxtaposes enchanting prose with chaos and the decomposition of humanity at the end of the Second World War.

Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System Is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What To Do About It by Adam B. Jaffe and Josh Lerner
Jaffe and Lerner are two of the world's leading economists studying innovation. Their book blends years of academic research on intellectual property, patents, and technology commercialization with real-world tales of realized and stifled innovation.

The Informant: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald
Before writing about Enron, Eichenwald, a senior writer and investigative reporter at The New York Times, first achieved best-seller status with this book. The story recounts the true tale of price-fixing and a wave of international corporate crimes at Archer Daniels Midland in the mid-1990s. Five pages into this book you will forget that you are reading a work of nonfiction. The reality of this case is more engrossing, suspenseful, and frightening than any John Grisham novel.

Conspiracy Of Fools: A True Storyby Kurt Eichenwald
Conspiracy of Fools is Eichenwald's account of the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of Enron. He recounts events in a narrative style that draws the reader into each moment. Using published testimony, meeting minutes, and evidence from interviews with first-hand participants, Eichenwald reconstructs events as they occurred, incorporating conversations among participants and interpolating characters' thoughts and motivations.

The Billion Dollar Molecule: One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug by Barry Werth
In the late 1990s and early part of the new millennium, the industrial and economic landscape of Boston and Cambridge was changed by the rise of two nascent industries: biotechnology and the Internet. Werth's book brings readers inside one of the startups characteristic of this transformation. Specifically, Werth tells the story of Vertex, a Cambridge biotech, as it sets out on its quest to design "the perfect drug."

Moneyball: The Art of Winning at an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
Lewis' book addresses a question that has baffled Major League Baseball fans for more than half a decade: How have the Oakland As, one of baseball's poorest franchises, been able to outcompete many of their richer rivals and make the playoffs in four of the past five seasons?

Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
This is an extraordinary tale of the life and transformations of one of the U.S.'s most polarizing and charismatic civil rights-era leaders.

Biographical info:Jeff Furman's research focuses on topics in strategy, international business, and innovation. Specifically, he investigates the factors driving company- and location-specific differences in innovation and scientific output. Furman attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a BA in psychology from the College of Arts & Sciences and a BS in economics from the Wharton School. In the years following his graduation, he worked in health care and public policy consulting in Washington, D.C., and spent time working and studying in Germany. He completed his PhD at the Sloan School of Management at MIT in August, 2001. A summary of his research and list of published and working papers can be found at http://people.bu.edu/furman.