ESCP students share their recommendations on what to read this summer
For the second summer edition of the ESCP Student Reading List, we asked students across programmes to recommend a book connected to this year’s theme: “Choices & Consequences: Books that shape how we think, decide and act.”
The result is a reading list that moves across memoir, economics, philosophy, psychology, fantasy, and art. Some books helped students challenge assumptions. Others gave them language for responsibility, freedom, attention, grief, belief or imagination.
This year we’ve partnered with the ESCP Library to highlight the titles available at ESCP campus libraries.
Happy reading!
Accountable reads
Books that help us understand ourselves, our systems and the world we live in
The Art of Thinking Clearly – Rolf Dobelli
A concise guide to the cognitive biases and mental shortcuts that shape everyday decision-making. Through short chapters, Dobelli explores how errors in judgement influence the way we think, choose and act — often without us realising.
This book reveals the common thinking mistakes we all make and shows how they affect our decisions. It’s easy to read, practical, and helps you think more clearly.
Bachelor in Management
The One Minute Manager – Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
A compact management classic built around simple, practical lessons in leadership, feedback and team motivation. Written as a short business parable, the book introduces management techniques designed to help people work with greater clarity and confidence.
In 100 pages, you understand some of the basic underlying principles of efficient management.
Bachelor in Management
The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills – David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu
An evidence-driven critique of austerity policies and their social consequences. Drawing on public health, economics and policy analysis, the book argues that decisions about public spending are never purely technical: they affect lives, health systems and societies.
It is essential for ESCP students to understand policies affecting our future as business and political leaders, and as citizens.
Master in Management
Bold reads
Books that challenge assumptions, confront power and reframe personal courage
Born a Crime – Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah’s memoir recounts his childhood in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa as the son of a black mother and white father, a relationship that was illegal under apartheid law. Combining humour, pain and historical insight, the book reveals how personal experience can illuminate systems of injustice.
It makes you think about the reality of apartheid, especially for children.
Master in Management
Ce qui vient au monde – Pascale Dewambrechies
A sensitive novel following Louise, a woman shaped by grief, memory and the social expectations placed on women’s lives. Through an intimate story of loss, autonomy and feminist struggle, the book explores how personal choices can become acts of resistance and self-definition.
What really stayed with me is how the book shows that our way of thinking and acting is often built through struggle, and that choosing for yourself can be a form of resistance.
Bachelor in Management
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
A foundational work on attention, motivation and the state of deep engagement Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”. Drawing on psychology and research, the book argues that fulfilment is shaped by how we direct our attention and commit ourselves to meaningful challenges.
What if happiness isn’t about relaxing more, but about choosing the right challenges?
Bachelor in Management
Creative reads
Books that open new perspectives and imagine different ways of seeing
Le Shin Jin Mei – Sosan, translated by Taisen Deshimaru
A philosophical text rooted in Zen thought, presented with commentary that helps open its ideas to contemporary readers. Centred on perception, attachment, non-duality and inner clarity, the book invites readers to consider how different cultural and philosophical traditions can reshape the way they see the world.
It made me question my relationship with the world and my perceptions, as well as the different states the human soul can experience.
Pre-Master Year
L’Inconnue du portrait – Camille de Peretti
A novel built around the mystery of a painting and the lives connected to it. Moving through family secrets, love, memory and history, Camille de Peretti’s story explores how art can hold traces of the past and how those traces continue to shape identity across generations.
A captivating novel full of secrets, suspense, love, and emotion. Through the mystery of a painting, it explores history, identity, family, memory, and human relationships, offering a rich range of emotions and reflections that stay with you long after reading.
Master in Management
Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation – Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov’s landmark science-fiction trilogy imagines a vast Galactic Empire in decline and a plan to preserve knowledge across centuries of upheaval. Built around history, prediction, politics and civilisation at scale, the series continues to invite readers to think about power, time and the future of societies.
A trilogy that has inspired sci-fi for 80 years. A brilliant journey through time in a very far future.
MSc in International Project Management
Bonus reads from ESCP Faculty
Accountable
The Caring Company - Isaac Getz and Laurent Marbacher
The Caring Company: How Great Companies Do One Thing Better Than the Rest shows how businesses can choose to serve the common good as #1 priority and still achieve higher performance.
Bold
Women Who Win - Tracey Munro (Contributor Marie-Hélène Cussac)
Women Who Win is a practical, step-by-step guide for structural business building, financial positioning, and operational scaling. It features frameworks for navigating structural inequities, securing capital, and breaking through glass ceilings in the startup space, as well as actionable psychological tools to dismantle imposter syndrome, handle high-pressure environments, and develop a confident leadership identity.
Creative
The Power of Consumer Creativity - Marie Taillard and Chloe Preece
This book explores the many dimensions of consumption as a creative act using the seven C's of creativity framework. Leading scholars from marketing and consumer research illustrate how acts of consumption are infused with novel thinking, cultural expression, and personal meaning across cutting-edge topics including vintage retail, gaming, biohacking, parenting and degrowth.
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