Gather around dear readers, for it is time to deliver our most popular column of the year. Yes, the InnovationAus.com Ultimate Guide to Summer Reading has landed for 2024.
We are traditionalists here. We follow a process. Which is to say that we have reached out to the leaders of our sometimes weird but always interesting tech and innovation community and asked for book recommendations.
Who has the time to read these days, I hear you ask. Our industry leaders, that’s who. As former US president Harry Truman said: “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers!”
We asked a bunch of these industry leaders three questions:
- What was the best ‘industry’ book you read this year?
- What was the best non-industry book you read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
- What are you planning to read over summer?
Just before we start, there is nothing left for me to do this year except to wish all of our readers a beautiful, relaxing and safe holiday break – and to say thank you for all of your support through 2024.
On with the show!
Senator Tim Ayers is the federal Assistant Minister for a Future Made in Australia (and for Trade) and says his Malaysian counterpart Liew Chin Tong gave him a copy of his Second Takeoff: Strategies for Malaysia’s Economic Resurgence earlier this year and he’s very glad he did.
“It is a deeply thoughtful and purposeful account of modern Malaysia’s economic history and of what is required for Malaysia to grow in the 2020’s and 2030’s,” Senator Ayres said. “Good jobs, deliberate industrial policy and a growing middle class is at the centre of Chin Tong’s argument for Malaysia – the “three middles” – a growing middle class, an indispensable ‘middle’ in global supply chains and a middle power in world affairs.”
The book is very helpful for anyone wanting to understand the contours of economic policy-making in Malaysia, the ASEAN region and for Australians interested in industry policy and investment here and in the region.
The senator’s best non-industry book is a novel and follows the Malaysian theme was The House of Doors by Penang’s own Tan Twan Eng.
“I won’t give too much away, but its multiple plot lines are part historical fiction, partly a meditation on memory, nostalgia and the sadness of repressed lives. Do yourself a favour – it is a ripper!” On a completely different note, Senator Ayres also gives a special shout-out to Radio Birdman: Retaliate First – “a terrific run through of the history of one of Australia’s great punk/hard rock bands.”
“As for the holidays, I am busy reading Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Shah of Shahs to clear the decks for some holiday reading. Ben Shewry’s Uses for Obsession: A (Chef’s) Memoir is at the top of the pile.”
Dr Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, and is the author of many books himself, including most recently The Shortest History of Economics.
Dr Leigh’s best industry book is Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, which he says is the most engrossing book he has read on artificial intelligence. “It’ll help you better understand this fascinating technology and suggests oodles of new ways of playing with it.”
He says Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot was his favourite non-industry book this year. “A compelling and chilling novel. Hard to say too much without spoiling it, but it’s both relevant to our technological era and modern-day debates over violence and control.”
Holiday reading will be Nick Bostrom’s Deep Utopia. “Nick’s 2014 book Superintelligence was one of the AI risk books that led me to write What’s the Worst That Could Happen. The blurb on Deep Utopia suggests that it’s about what happens if we things right, and a superintelligence doesn’t turn us all into paperclips. Can’t wait to read it.”
It is certainly accurate to say that Andrew Leigh is a voracious reader. Here is a complete list of his favourite 2024 books.
The Manager of Opposition Business in the House Paul Fletcher will sadly leave politics at the next election. He has held many portfolios both in government and Opposition. In the current Parliament, he has been shadow minister for government services, for the digital economy and for science.
Mr Fletcher’s best industry book this year was Chris Miller’s Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, “an informative history of the how chip design evolved, how the US delivered successive generations of innovative design, how Taiwan established its key global position and of course the place of China.”
His best non-industry book was Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, the 2023 Booker Prize winner which he describes as “a dystopian vision of an advanced modern nation (Ireland) abandoning democracy and becoming a one party state. A cautionary tale for any politician.”
Over summer Mr Fletcher intends reading Vaclav Smil’s Grand Transitions: How the Modern World was Made. “The Czech-Canadian scientist and polymath writes about energy, the economy and nature deploying an extraordinary breadth of knowledge. I have enjoyed several of his other books and have earmarked this one to read over the break.”
Senator Bridget McKenzie is the Nationals leader in the Senate and the shadow minister for infrastructure, transport and regional development. She recommends Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby.
“I have visited Israel a number of times and again earlier this year to see first-hand the sites of the October 7 massacre,” Senator McKenzie says. “My friend and former colleague Josh Frydenberg recommended this book as we both are appalled by the anti-semitism unleashed here at home. I recommend it to Australians who care enough about social cohesion to understand Israels place in the world.”
Senator McKenzie says the best non-industry book she read this year was Ten Years to Save the World by Liz Truss. “Liz was a short-term UK prime minister with a long-term vision for the west. I loved this because it displayed a deep sense of historic place and time in the world and a determination to persevere.”
Over the summer she will be reading Joe Aston’s The Chairman’s Lounge – The Inside Story of how Qantas sold us out. “I am looking forward to reading this great piece of investigative journalism over summer, written by one of Australia’s most incisive and humorous writers.”
Aaron Violi is the Liberals’ Member for Casey and one of the convenors of the Parliamentary Friends of Tech and Innovation. He clearly has artificial intelligence on his mind: “I found Toby Walsh’s Faking It and Machines Behaving Badly to be an important summary of AI and its implications for the future.”
Neale Daniher’s When All Is Said & Done is his best non-industry book – “so many valuable life lessons and a timely reminder of perspective. What feels like a challenge day to day isn’t really when compared to the journey of others,” he said.
And over summer? “I’m a big believer in using mental models to help navigate the challenges and decisions needed to be made day to day, and especially in politics. I’m looking forward to reading all four volumes of The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish. And I always like to read a Malcolm Gladwell book over summer as it gets me thinking in a way I hadn’t previously considered.”
Australia’s outgoing Chief Scientist Dr Cathy Foley says the best industry book she read this year was The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments that Changed Our World by Suzie Sheedy. This is the history of the 20th century physic through foundational experiments.
Dr Foley’s favourite non-industry book was A Promised Land a memoir by Barack Obama, the first of a planned two-volume series. “It documents Obama’s life from his early years through to the events surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden. It also shows how the political process in the US works.”
Over the summer Dr Foley will read Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. “My daughter and I plan to have a mini book club discussion on this one!”
South Australia’s Deputy Premier and Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Susan Close says her favourite industry book was Joellle Gergis’s Quarterly Essay 94 Highway to Hell: Climate Change and Australia’s Future.
“This one will keep you awake at night as the current trajectory of climate change is laid before us, fortunately alongside what can be done if we have the collective will,” Ms Close said.
The deputy premier reached into the vault for her favourite non-industry book: Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. “An oldie but worth a (re)read on how we see can crises coming and avoid them, learning from past successes and failures.”
Over the summer Ms Close plans to read Power, Politics and the Playground: Perspectives on Power and Authority in Education by Don Carter and Adrian Piccoli. “Adrian was NSW education minister when I held the role in SA – summary of how power works from the school yard to parliament house promises to be thought provoking,” she said.
NSW Minister for Innovation, Science and Technology Anoulack Chanthivong has put forward two books from the finance sector – Bill Browder’s Red Notice and Freezing Order.
“An American-British financier’s true story about how the Russian state stole from its own people only to be discovered by Browder’s ethical and articulate lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky who testified against the officials,” Mr Chanthivong said. “This led to Magnitsky being tortured, thrown in detention on spurious accusations, and sadly ended in Magnitsky’s death. Browder took it upon himself to avenge Magnitsky’s death by exposing the truth, leading to the Magnitsky Act in the US.”
On Leadership by Tony Blair is a favourite. “Blair writes incisively that leadership is about being focused, methodical, strategic, and agile. He also talks about how leadership skills can be learnt, and just because someone is in a leadership position, that doesn’t automatically make them a leader.” Also recommended: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro – a sad love story about regret and reflection.
For holiday reading, Mr Chanthivong will look at Attlee and Churchill – Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace by Leo McKinstry, and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Highly recommended is The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami.
Pioneering quantum startup Q-CTRL’s founder and chief executive Professor Michael Biercuk says Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes is a must-read.
“It highlights how a cadre of famous American physicists worked to undermine regulations in the US by raising doubts about how ‘settled’ the science was,” Michael said. “It showcases how ideologues can distort even science for their purposes and how the same is happening today.”
Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator board adviser Kate Pounder’s best industry book is The Genes that Make Us, by Edwin Kirk, a practising geneticist and geneticist pathologist at Sydney Children’s Hospital. “A very readable overview of the way genetics is transforming the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions, particularly for rare and hard to diagnose cases. It serves as a great reminder of the pioneering research and treatment being undertaken here in Australia.”
Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley is Kate’s favourite non-industry book. “A new memoir about different forms of loss and how people deal with it. Hands-down the funniest, frankest, smartest and most incisive book I read all year. Also one of the shortest, at just under 200 pages,” she says.
Over the holidays Kate will read Australian Gospel, by Lech Blaine. “I liked his first book, and his second seems to cover even more incredible ground.”
Here’s one out-of-the-box from the ANU Tech Policy Design Centre’s founding director Johanna Weaver, a big believer that we can all learn a lot from fiction: The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp.
“Set in the near future in a hyper-connected world, when ‘the system’ is hacked and the world grinds to a halt, Scarlet Friday is stranded overseas,” Johanna says. “Part cautionary tale of the perils of unbridled tech optimism without effective tech policy, part commentary on what it means to be an indigenous Australian today but, ultimately, a story of hope and Australian ingenuity. I predict this book will win all the Aussie fiction awards in the new year.”
Johanna’s best non-industry book is Kingmaker by Sonia Purnell, which unravels the life of the Barbara Churchill/Harriman. “An unbelievable story of power, politics and passion, Pamela played a direct role in so many historic events that, if her life was written up as a novel, you would dismiss it as implausible. A biography worthy of an extraordinary woman.”
Over the summer she will be reading Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright, “which has been in my must-read book pile for a while now; it needs a commitment of time that only summer can give. I’m also looking forward to tucking into The Golden Road by historian William Dalrymple, which reflects on how ancient India transformed the world, and if it will again.”
ExoFlare cofounder and CEO (and Data61’s former founding chief) Adrian Turner’s recommends War and Wheat by Dennis Voznesenski as his favourite industry book, which outlines how prior wars have impacted Australia’s food supply.
“It reinforces that food security is a national security consideration,” Adrian says. “It will hopefully spark a different discussion in the country about the need to make our food system more resilient to disruptions to food production inputs and to other types of threats, including biosecurity threats.”
For fiction, Adrian suggests reaching back to The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. “It’s a short book that can be read in a couple of hours, that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. It tells the story of an old fisherman who has a long struggle with a giant marlin by himself out at sea. It was a book selected by a book club I’ve recently joined.”
Over the summer Adrian will be reading Misbelief by Dan Ariely. From the author of Predictably Irrational is described as “an eye-opening exploration of the misinformation crisis, examining what drives otherwise rational people to adopt deeply irrational beliefs”.
“This topic is only going to get more important as AI plays a bigger role in communications, and in the face of social media ripping apart the fabric of our societies with little or no accountability to the people and societies impacted,” he says.
The winner of the Innovation Leadership Award category at the 2024 InnovationAus Awards for Excellence and NeedleCalm CEO Lauren Barber has called-in two recommendations for her summer reading.
The first is Quantum Body by Deepak Chopra, an exploration of the science of living a longer and healthier life. The second is Ayurveda: The Science of Self-Healing by Dr Vasant Lad, which is a general introduction to Ayurveda, the alternate health science of India.
CSIRO director and innovation system expert Professor Roy Green is putting forward a political memoir as his favourite industry book recommendation – A Long March by Kim Carr, the former Labor Minister of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.
“The book covers an important period of Australia’s economic history from the Whitlam government to the present day, with an inevitable focus on the development of industry and innovation policy,” Roy says.
“There are many entertaining anecdotes and diversions along the way, but the reader is left with a sense of loss that this immensely talented individual was not given the chance to complete his ‘Powering Ideas’ 10-year project, first thwarted by the switch from Rudd to Gillard in 2010 and then by Labor’s failure to regain government in 2019.”
“My ‘non-industry’ book sounds like fiction but it’s not – far from it. Drawing on 30 years of research, the eminent historian and journalist Anne Applebaum sketches out the complex, interconnected nature of the threat to democracy in her new book Autocracy, Inc – the dictators who want to run the world. This is no longer a story of troublesome personalities, if it ever was, but networks of corporate and political power, whose collective self-interest is pursued at the expense of the rest of us, particularly the demonised ‘others’.
“Over the summer, I plan to read Zachary Carter’s The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes. Can anything more be usefully said about this towering figure of 20th century economic theory and public policy? Ask me again when I’ve read the book, but in the meantime it’s worth repeating for every generation that ideas matter. Not only can they be transformational at key moments in our history, but they need to be sustained against the opposition they provoke, sometimes, as with Keynes’ contribution, because they are successful.”
My colleague Joe Brookes – the senior reporter at InnovationAus.com – has thrown his hat in the ring with some recommendations.
His best industry book for the year is Rick Morton’s Mean Streak, which details not just how a brutal chapter in Australia’s punitive welfare system came to be, but how Robodebt was insulated from reason by bureaucrats, consultants and the political masters they were so eager to please.
Over nearly 500 pages, Mean Streak uncovers how the few people that questioned the illegal quest to raise billions from Australia’s most vulnerable people by ‘smoothing’ data were ignored, evaded or shouted down.
David Marr’s uncomfortable but necessary Killing for Country: A Family History lays bare the brutal racial violence of early colonial Australia.
“A mammoth, multi-year research effort and Marr’s storytelling honed over half a century of writing combine for a powerful expose on the massacre of Indigenous Australians and the Native Police enlisted to carry it out,” he says.
And over summer? “I finally have a copy of The Big Con by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington and am intrigued by Josh Bornstein’s Working for the Brand”.
And finally, before I sign off for the year, here is my own contribution.
What was my best industry book for 2024? We live in an era in which Big Tech increasingly rules the planet. I found The Everything War – Amazon’s ruthless quest to own the world and remake corporate power by Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli is a wake-up call to regulators, a compendium of bad corporate behaviour and unchecked market power.
And a special mention goes to Mean Streak by Rick Morton, an eye-popping expose of terrible behaviour within the public service in relation to Robodebt.
One of my favourite books this year was The Chairman’s Lounge – The inside story of how Qantas sold us out by Joe Aston. It is an incredible piece of journalism, painting a grim picture of influence peddling and greed. And written in caustic and insightful good humour.
Over the summer … I have very much enjoyed the spook television series Slow Horses based on books by Mick Herron and starring Gary Oldman. I plan to read The Secret Hours, which looks like a prequel exploration of characters, set in London and Berlin. These books are easy, and my brain needs a rest.
And finally, for the past 18 months I have shared an office at Parliament House with a fellow journalist Ryan Cropp, who is also the author of the biography Donald Horne: A Life in the Lucky Country the winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for History. This book has had great reviews – and so much of Donald Horne’s published views still resonate today.
That’s a wrap. To all of our readers – have a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s break. I hope you get to relax ahead of another big year in 2025.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.