Do you really want to save the planet? Then cut down drastically on eating meat and dairy products! Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner explain this counterintuitive piece of logic in Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. The methane emitted by the exhalation, flatulence, belching and manure of cows and pigs is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, What the Dog Saw, a collection of his self-professed favourite articles for The New Yorker, has just been published. Gladwell is everywhere these days. When you think about it, the journey of this University of Toronto history graduate to becoming one of the most influential people in the world is quite astonishing. His grades weren't good enough to stay on for postgraduate work, and he was rejected by more than a dozen ad agencies. He moved to Indiana, and got a job as junior writer on the American Spectator. For nearly 10 years he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business and science before becoming the newspaper's New York City bureau chief.

In The 48 Laws of Power and The 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene gave us a view of today’s dog-eats-dog world as no less treacherous than the backstabbing royal courts of Renaissance Europe, or the political machinations of imperial Rome. Life is endless battle and conflict, and you cannot fight effectively unless you can identify your enemies. Greene’s strident views have catapulted him into a very lucrative space, with Google, Microsoft, and the US Olympic Governing Body among his clients. But not even this disciple of Machieavelli could have foreseen that the Power book would become a rule of law with the hardest rappers and the most serious street cats.

As the grandson of grandparents who were exterminated by the Nazis in the Holocaust, and as someone active in Holocaust commemoration, I am well-versed in Holocaust literature, including memoirs by Holocaust survivors. But I do not recall ever being so moved as I was by reading Voices from the Forest – the story of Abraham and Julia Bobrow, written by Stephen Paper and edited by their late son Jerry. Maybe my emotions were so raw because I met this remarkable couple, now in their late eighties, in September in Southern California. I have met dozens and dozens of Holocaust survivors, but Abe and Julia are the first I have met who actively fought the Nazis, who physically killed Nazis, who defiantly stood up to the Nazi killing machine.

A few years back, London Business School professors Gareth Jones and Rob Goffee wrote two best sellers: The character of a corporation, and Why should anyone be led by you? Now they inject new life into the tired debate over talent, specifically the clever people who create “disproportionate value” for their organisations. In Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People, the authors explore what clevers are like, and why clever people are difficult to lead and manage. Goffee and Jones suggest that if clevers are to unleash their full potential, their leaders should lead them differently. Yanky Fachler recently interviewed Professor Goffee in his LBS office overlooking Regents Park in London: