JP Morgan’s Summer Reading List

Every June, J.P. Morgan Private Bank sends its wealthy clients its official “Summer Reading List,” a collection of 10 books specifically chosen to appeal to the tastes and preoccupations of the wealthy. It is like a virtual book club for billionaires.If you want to know what the wealthy will be reading this summer take a look at this list of books.JP Morgan picked these books for their inspirational messages, thought-provoking content and stunning detail.

In”Passion and Purpose,” dozens of recent Harvard Business School MBAs share personal stories on assuming the mantle of leadership in ways unlike any previous generation. In candid accounts of their successes and setbacks-from launching start-ups to taking on the family business to helping kids in the Arabian Gulf to harnessing new technology and developing clean energy-they reveal how the next generation of ideas, aspirations, and practices are shaping business and redefining leadership around the world.Their personal stories are rounded out with broader perspectives from established luminaries in business, academia, and the public sector, including Dominic Barton (Managing Director of McKinsey & Company), Nitin Nohria (dean of Harvard Business School), David Gergen (CNN analyst, presidential advisor and director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership), Carter Roberts (CEO of World Wildlife Fund), and many others.

Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art is the catalogue of the MoMA’s exhibition (November 13, 2011-May 14, 2012) which presents all five “portable murals”, freestanding frescoes with bold images addressing the Mexican Revolution and depression-era New York created by Diego Rivera at the Museum for his 1931-32 exhibition. In addition to the murals, the exhibition features three eight-foot working drawnings; a prototype”portable mural” made in 1930 and includes materials related to Rivera’s infamous Rockefeller Center mural.

David Novak runs Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant company, parent of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. He learned long ago that you can’t lead a great organization of any size — from a tiny start up to a global giant — without getting your people aligned, enthusiastic, and focused relentlessly on the mission. In” Taking People With You”, Novak shares the secrets of the unique leadership program he’s developed over his fifteen years at Yum! Brands.Novak knows that managers in the trenches don’t need leadership platitudes or business theories. So he cuts right to the chase, with a step-by-step guide to setting big goals, getting your people on board, blowing past your targets, and celebrating together after you shock the skeptics. And then doing it again and again, until consistent excellence becomes a core element of your culture.

Colin Powell’s new memoir, “It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership”, is a collection of lessons learned and anecdotes drawn from his childhood in the Bronx, his military training and career, and his work under four presidential administrations. The memoir also includes Powell’s candid reflections on the most controversial time in his career: the lead-up to the war in Iraq in 2003.

A cooking pot, a golden galleon, a stone age tool, a credit card … every object tells a story. This is a history of the world told through 100 objects we have we have made and left behind. It will take you on a journey back in time and across the globe, to see how we humans have shaped our world, and been shaped by it, over the past two million years.

Drawing on numerous interviews and never-before-revealed documents, acclaimed biographer Sally Bedell Smith pulls back the curtain to show in intimate detail the public and private lives of Queen Elizabeth II, who has led her country and Commonwealth through the wars and upheavals of the last sixty years with unparalleled composure, intelligence, and grace.

The High Line Park is an international tourist destination for thousands of visitors and a regular strolling spot for the neighborhood’s workers and residents.But only years ago it was a derelict section of train tracks, and it took nearly a decade of fighting to turn the High Line into what it is today.That story is chronicled in the book “High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky,” written by park co-founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond. It tells the tale of the project, from its inception in 1999 to the opening of its first phase in 2009.The book features early plans for the park and 250 pages of color photos of the elevated green space. It also chronicles the unique public-private partnership that made the project possible.

In “By Invitation Only: How We Built Gilt and Changed How Millions of People Shop” by Gilt cofounders and coauthors Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, you can discover the story of how two best friends founded a billion dollar startup and how they changed fashion and ecommerce overnight.

A blend of in-depth reportage, historical narrative and gossipy anecdotes, the book, “The Vineyard at the End Of The World” ,the first of its kind in English, traces the rise, fall (in fact, multiple rises and multiple falls) and eventual triumph of the Argentinian wine industry,

In “Thinking,Fast and Slow”,Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.