The New York Times has published its July, 2014 Best Sellers List for Business Books.

At the First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas, we have presented synopses of Business Books every month since April, 1998. As I have observed often, this New York Times best sellers list is the list that I pay the most attention to. The main reason: It comes out monthly. I think that the hourly updated list (Amazon), and the weekly lists that are published, don’t quite reveal which books are slightly more lasting in their appeal.

And, there are a lot of factors that go into what makes a best-seller. At times, there are “bulk buys,” at times by the authors themselves. (Here’s a recent story/controversy about a Christian author who “padded’ his numbers that way).

But, whatever factors and explanations are behind the lists, I believe this New York Times monthly list is always worth a look.

And, to remind my readers with the obvious, there are excellent books that never make it to best-seller levels, and there are best-sellers that are not all that excellent. But, generally, the best-seller lists provide insight into the issues that are currently of interest and concern to business thinkers.

This month’s list is topped by the Thomas Piketty book, Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Surely, worth a careful look – it has prompted many, many articles and many discussions and disagreements…

Still on the list are Lean In, Outliers; The Power of Habit; Thinking, Fast and Slow; and the newer book Flash Boys. We have presented each of these at the First Friday Book Synopsis. (You can purchase our synopses, with our multi-page comprehensive handouts, and the audio recordings of our presentations, at our companion site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com).

Our two selections for the July First Friday Book Synopsis on July 11 (the 2^nd Friday of July, because of the holiday) are both on this month’s list: Think Like a Freak, and #GIRLBOSS.

Here’s the July, 2014 Business Book Best Sellers List from the New York Times. (Click over to the list for brief descriptions of each book).

1	CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, by Thomas Piketty.
2	THINK LIKE A FREAK, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
3	FLASH BOYS, by Michael Lewis.
4	OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell.
5	LEAN IN, by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell.
6	#GIRLBOSS, by Sophia Amoruso.
7	THINKING, FAST AND SLOW, by Daniel Kahneman.
8	STRESS TEST, by Timothy F. Geithner.
9	THE POWER OF HABIT, by Charles Duhigg.
10	THRIVE, by Arianna Huffington.