Books of the Year
MT marks the turning of the year with a bibliophile's retrospective. We asked three well-read senior executives to describe their favourite volumes of 2006. First up ...
HOWARD DAVIES: WHEN POWER OVERREACHES ITSELF
With the recent avalanche of Hitleriana, I had begun to think there was nothing more to learn about the Third Reich. But The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze proved me wrong.
Tooze is an economic historian from Cambridge, whose book sheds new light on the structure of the Nazi regime and on the reasons for the war in the East. He takes a relentlessly economic line, focusing on the availability of natural resources, industrial production and the scale of the war effort. Even though one knows the end - so to speak - it is a gripping story.