Joan's Picks: Friends, Lovers and the Terrible Big Thing and When McKinsey Comes to Town

Friends, Lovers and the Terrible Big Thing by Matthew Perry – star of the TV series Friends. His memoir of his career but also his struggle with addiction which has taken an enormous toll on him – countless stints in rehab costing millions; appalling physical impacts on his body; the sheer amount of drugs he swallowed could have knocked out an army; and yet he’s managed to have this amazing career and date some extraordinary women, but ultimately felt to me like a very lonely man growing old on his own. 

When McKinsey Comes to Town by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe. The McKinsey consulting company has global reach and is enormously powerful and influential. Their staff all have brains the size of small planets but absolutely no empathy for the businesses with which they engage and whilst they claim to be values-led and doing the best for their clients they’re shown to be completely self serving. It’s not unusual for them to have one team advising the government on, say, Big Tobacco, and another team working with the tobacco companies on how to get around the regulations. Some extraordinary case studies and insights in this book. 

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