We've also heard a lot about change, lately. Below I list 5 books that changed my perspective on something; not all have a business angle, but each does have something universal to offer readers.

1. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, 1st edition

If you're discouraged by the dark cloud of political rhetoric that has settled over the U.S. for the past, oh, two years, I recommend reading Whitman's introduction to Leaves of Grass as a reminder of why we should care so deeply about our country and government:

"...but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislature, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors...but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships--the freshness and candor of their physiognomy--the picturesque looseness of their carriage...their deathless attachment to freedom--their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean [...] their delight in music [...] their good temper and openhandedness--the terrible significance of their elections--the President's taking off his hat to them and not they to him--these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it."

2. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience by Yi-Fu Tuan.

This is an incredibly accessible and enjoyable book about the cultural significance of geography and physical orientation. Tuan explores the ways people have historically made sense of their surroundings. For instance, he examines why we form attachment to "home," how time affects our sense of space, and why certain cross-cultural similarities exist among groups that have had no exposure to the habits and values of others (e.g., our proximity to others, or the prominence of right-handedness). I read this book as part of a grad school project on "sense of place" in virtual environments, and it has changed the ways I perceive the space around me and my values with regard to architecture and place.

"What sensory organs and experiences enable human beings to have their strong feeling for space and for spatial qualities? Answer: kinesthesia, sight, and touch. Movements such as the simple ability to kick one's legs and stretch one's arms are basic to the awareness of space. [...] Space assumes a rough coordinate frame centered on the mobile and purposive self. [...] Purposive movement and perception, both visual and haptic, give human beings their familiar world of disparate objects in space. Place is a special kind of object. It is a concentration of value, though not a valued thing that can be handled or carried about easily; it is an object in which one can dwell."

3. Emergence: Labeled Autistic by Temple Grandin

Reading Emergence was like a thousand light bulbs turning on in my world. I grew up with a mentally disabled family member, but until I read Temple Grandin's words about what it felt like to be overwhelmed by her existence, I did not fully appreciate the complexities of the minds around me. Grandin has also contributed greatly to our understanding of the animal world, and has worked as a scientist to develop more humane ways of interacting with animals.

"But as a child, the "people world" was often too stimulating to my senses. Ordinary days with a change in schedule or unexpected events threw me into a frenzy, but Thanksgiving or Christmas was even worse. At those times our home bulged with relatives. The clamor of many voices, the different smells--perfume, cigars, damp wool caps or gloves--people moving about at different speeds, going in different directions, the constant noise and confusion, the constant touching, were overwhelming. One very, very overweight aunt, who was generous and caring, let me use her professional oil paints. I liked her. Still, when she hugged me, I was totally engulfed and I panicked. [...] I withdrew because her abundant affection overwhelmed my nervous system."

4. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

Of the few voices we have from this dark period in our world history, Primo Levi's is perhaps the most renowned and penetrating. Survival in Auschwitz is his memoir of the 10 months he spent in the death camp. He details the subcultures that develop within even the most degrading of circumstances, reflects on our instincts and desire to overcome in the face of utter hopelessness, and creates an arresting, almost visceral reading experience that helped me understand, in my sheltered experience, what millions of people endured through no fault of their own.

"If we were logical, we would resign ourselves to the evidence that our fate is beyond knowledge, that every conjecture is arbitrary and demonstrably devoid of foundation. But men are rarely logical when their own fate is at stake; on every occasion, they prefer the extreme positions. According to our character, some of us are immediately convinced that all is lost, that one cannot live here, that the end is near and sure; others are convinced that however hard the present life may be, salvation is probable and not far off, and if we have faith and strength, we will see our houses and our dear ones again. The two classes of pessimists and optimists are not so clearly defined, however, not because there are many agnostics, but because the majority, without memory or coherence, drift between the two extremes, according to the moment and the mood of the person they happen to meet."

5. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

I know we give the Heath brothers a lot of love here at 800-CEO-READ, but I hope that my selection demonstrates the transformative nature this recent business book can have on the way you do your work. As a relative newcomer to the world of business books, Made to Stick will forever stick (no pun intended) in my mind as one of the first and most influential business books I have read on communication. I can't tell you how many times we referenced ideas from Made to Stick while working on The 100 Best. And while we recognize that the book borrows definitions and terms from other places (most notably, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell), Made to Stick is the only one that lays out a practical and useful way of putting these ideas to work.

"No special expertise is needed to apply these principles. There are no licensed stickologists. Moreover, many of the principles have a commonsense ring to them: Didn't most of us already have the intuition that we should "be simple" and "use stories"? It's not as though there's a powerful constituency for overcomplicated, lifeless prose. But wait a minute. We claim that using these principles is easy. And most of them do seem relatively commonsensical. So why aren't we deluged with brilliantly designed sticky ideas? Why is our life filled with more process memos than proverbs?

Sadly, there is a villain in our story. The villain is a natural psychological tendency that consistently confounds our ability to create ideas using these principles. It's called the Curse of Knowledge. (We will capitalize the phrase throughout the book to give it the drama we think it deserves.)"

Now, we'd like to ask you: What are the books that changed your perspective? How can they help others?

The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Rick Levine Christopher Locke, Doc Searls & David Weinberger

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky

Life After the 30-Second Spot: Energize Your Brand With a Bold Mix of Alternatives to Traditional Advertising by Joseph Jaffe

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

Re-Imagine!: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age by Tom Peters

Web Analytics: An Hour A Day by Avinash Kaushik

You can find brief descriptions of each book and join the conversation at the original post.

That post was so popular that the author went back to his bookshelf looking for less appreciated books, and came up with a list of 6 Brilliant Business Books That Are Highly Underrated. That list was:

The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander

Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance by Jonas Ridderstrale & Kjell Nordstrom (out of print)

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi & Tahl Raz.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web by David Weinberger.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg & Lisa T. Davis.

Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation by Richard Farson & Ralph Keyes (out of print)

It's good to see David Weinberger on both lists. His most recent book, Everything is Miscellaneous, was also terrific. Head here to join the conversation.

In his astonishingly prescient book, The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy, David M. Smick argues that we have inherited an impressive global economic system. It, with the U.S. as the hub, has produced unprecedented levels of global prosperity. But it has now spun wildly out of control. It can't be fixed with the shock and awe of a $700 billion rescue package, Smick says. The fundamental architecture needs to be reformed.

We posted an excerpt of the book when it was released last month, which you can find here.

The writers at The Economist have covered a number of intriguing books in their last few issues. In the last issue, they reviewed Yasheng Huang's Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State. It tells a story of China's shift from the rural, entrepreneurial capitalism that existed in the '80s to "the 'Shanghai model' that dominated the 1990s: rapid urban development that favoured massive state-owned enterprises and big foreign multinational companies."

The issue of September 27th-October 3rd has reviews of both The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs (here) and Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is driving the Future of Business. The Partnership's been released at an unfortunate time, but The Economist gives it a good review, offering that "... amid the torrent of negative news, Charles Ellis's exhaustively researched history of Goldman Sachs paints a convincing picture of an institution that has got most of the important things right." We've covered Crowdsourcing a few times in the past, and you can listen to Kate's interview with Jeff Howe, the book's author, here. The Economist review is here. And Wired had this video of Jeff Howe on the front page of their blog today.

On the 26th of last month, I listed 8 books that Jia Lynn Yang at Fortune wrote "belong in everyone's briefcase." Sadly, I couldn't find a link to his synopsis of each book at the time, but that has now been remedied and you can find the list and book descriptions here.

The October issue of Inc. contains a skimmer's guide to Changing the Game:How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business Leigh Buchanan specifically suggests:

Chapters Five though Eight describe how games can be used to manage and motivate employees. Edery and Mollick believe that even the most tedious task can be made fun if they incorporate elements of gaming. Their examples include Microsoft's in-house competition to find bugs in Vista and a program that allows IT administrators to destroy errant code using an interface similar to Doom.

I'm assuming "Doom" is a videogame, otherwise that doesn't sound very pleasant. So, Jack and Todd, how about that office Wii™?

...Buffett himself has attributed his success to "focus." Schroeder writes: "He ruled out paying attention to almost anything but business--art, literature, science, travel, architecture--so that he could focus on his passion." As a child, Schroeder relates, Warren carried around a coin-changer as his prized possession, and when his dad offered him a trip at age 10, he asked to go to the New York Stock Exchange (NYX). Not long after, Buffett read a book called One Thousand Ways to Make $1,000 and announced to a friend that he was going to be a millionaire by the time he was 35. "That was an audacious, almost silly-sounding statement for a child to make in the depressed world of 1941," Schroeder writes. "But...he was sure he could do it."

...However, at 838 pages not counting footnotes and index, the book itself would have benefited from some focus. And a good editor might have cut a few of Schroeder's pet phrases, such as "elephant bumping," which she uses to refer to gatherings of the rich and powerful. But despite these quibbles, The Snowball is an astute, and at times riveting, read--especially now.

It's a very favorable review and will give you a good idea of the book's content and tone. I know Jack is working his way through it right now and will likely have thoughts to offer soon.

I wouldn't want to be a financial writer with a book coming out later this year--every pre-plunge-written text about the U.S. economy and its health is going to sound hopelessly dated.

That said, he does praise Lewis's long view approach that "provides some helpful context about how we got here" and the book's "interesting, sometimes unflattering portraits of the various people involved."

I would have to believe that if anyone can pull a book off in this moment, Michael Lewis can. And, I personally appreciate books that provide context in heady times, even if they're not able to tell the end of the story. According to the publisher marketing, Lewis's account of the situation goes back to cover "the crash of '87, the Russian default (and the subsequent collapse of Long-Term Capital Management), the Asian currency crisis of 1999, the Internet bubble, and the current sub-prime mortgage disaster." I'm looking forward to seeing a copy arrive here.

Today, I'm offering a book and CD set of James M. McPherson's book entitled Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.

McPherson is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History at Princeton University and is the bestselling author of Battle Cry of Freedom (won the Pulitzer Prize), For Cause and Comrades and Crossroads of Freedom.

Joseph Glatthaar, author of Forgotten Allies said this about the book: "This is vintage McPherson. Smart, shrewdly analytical, insightful, and elegantly written, Tried by War is sure to become the standard treatment of Abraham Lincoln as commander in chief."

Now, that's about the author, but to win this set - here's what I need from you: Lincoln's bicentennial celebration of his birthday is next year and we all know that he was an Illinois state legislator, but where was he born?

The first one to email me at roy@800ceoread.com will get a copy of Trial by War and its CD AND a copy of Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich on CD.

ACT FAST and GOOD LUCK and TGIF!!]]> Book Reviews 2008-10-03T11:05:00-06:00 http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/008475.html Another seemingly awesome read just came to my attention per a client that wanted these books for a meeting this month for her employees. It's called Green Collar Economy and boy does this sound like exactly what this country needs... 8475@http://800ceoread.com/blog/ Another seemingly awesome read just came to my attention per a client that wanted these books for a meeting this month for her employees. It's called Green Collar Economy and boy does this sound like exactly what this country needs right now. It's by Van Jones and it's basically a wake-up call to our economy and the movers and shakers within its walls. Jones also goes into what individuals must do on a more direct and personal approach.

It's not only a must read for business owners, investors, entrepreneur strategists, etc - but this "acclaimed activist" more than likely offers this solution to be considered for political players to take into account. Read this for one of the most courageous and timely reads this fall by one of the most daring authors - here's what others say:

"The Green Collar Economy is a both a rallying call and a road map for how we can save the planet, reduce our dependency on budget-busting fossil fuels, and bring millions of new jobs to America." -- Fred Krupp, Environmental Defense Fund President and New York Times best-selling co-author of "Earth: The Sequel"

"This book illustrates the link between the struggle to restore the environment and the need to revive the US economy. Van Jones demonstrates conclusively that the best solutions for the survivability of our planet are also the best solutions for everyday Americans." -- Al Gore

"Van Jones reminds us that the worst of times can also be the best of times -- that a nation with an abundance of resources it’s wasting -- beginning with its youth -- has an enormous opportunity to stop foolishly bankrupting itself by chasing resources it is running out of -- like oil." -- Carl Pope, Executive Director Sierra Club

Luciano in Brazil has a different way of reading books. Instead of taking the traditional notes, he mind maps each book he reads. His theory is that by committing yourself to a mind map for a book, your mind is engaged and will remember more.

Luciano offers tips on getting started here.

And, in that line, of reading and noting, there's a new book out on what notes in a book reveal about the reader.

Even BusinessWeek is reviewing business books with a bent toward the larger picture rather than your more typical business book. Susan Berfield recently reviewed pollster John Zogby's The Way We'll Be:The John Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, calling it "provocative but occasianally maddening." Although she believes "Zogby comes across as a serious man with his finger reliably on the pulse of the U.S. public," she doesn't agree with all of his assessments. Namely this quote from the book:

The people who are losing their jobs are adjusting. They're altering their ambitions . . . to bring them in line with the realities of their lives.

And, this one, concerning the growing disparity between the rich and poor:

Rather than boil with resentment that some have so much when others have so little, most Americans seem to accept the billionaires among us and even empathize with the problems that come with having too much of everything.

In effectively simple response, Berfield writes "We do?" However, due to the fact that Zogby has done polling for such corporate clients as Coca-Cola, IBM, and Microsoft, there are bound to be significant insights for entrepreneurs on the changing demographics of this country, and I know a few folks in the office were looking forward to checking that out.

Christopher Farrell's review of The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do About It by Robert J. Shiller in the September 15th issue is more positive. This probably won't help with the nuts and bolts of your business, but if you're interested in a good look at broader economic issues and government policy, Farrell calls Shiller's diagnosis "one of the best cases ... for New Deal-scale short-term intervention by Washington."

Adam Aston's review in the September 22nd issue is given two pages, probably because he reviews Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded. He hilariously writes of the book that "if Fareed Zakaria and Al Gore met and co-authored a long-winded book, this would be it," but lavishes great praise on the book throughout, even suggesting sections of it if you're not going to read the entire thing. Many of you are going to read this book regardless, but for those of you on the fence, Aston's review might be persuasive.

Getting into your more traditional business book, Inc.'s "skimmer's guide" this month is to Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years by Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui, and contains this summary:

The backstory: Mui is co-author of Unleashing the Killer App, among the best books about the business implications of technology. He and Carroll worked together at a consulting firm. If Killer App is Mui's Paradiso -- a celebration of the bold and innovative--this new book is his Inferno--an indictment of the bold and chowderheaded.

And, although they don't post book reviews online, Jia Lynn Yang also wrote briefly and positively of Billion Dollar Lessons in Fortune's September 1 issue, and Daniel Okrent reviewed Randall Stross's Planet Google in the issue of September 15, writing:

Though Stross's eyes occasionally pop at the wonders being concocted in the Googlian halls, this isn't a fan book; he's as insightful on the company's failures (the oafishly naive start of it's book-scanning operation, the financial swamp of its video efforts) as he is on its triumphs.

I'd just like to say that "the oafishly naive start of it's book-scanning operation" gave more than a few people in the book publishing industry prematurely gray hairs. That's just how intimidating the force that Okrent describes as "the 21st century's most notable company/employer/verb" has so quickly become.

Though an overall fan of the book, Nick Hornby disagrees with that specific sentiment. Writing about it on his blog on Tuesday, he grabbed hold of Wheelan's analogy and took it to a hilarious conclusion. After making a concise point about the very different nature of corn and music as products, he goes on to write:

(One reason why people--OK, evil people--feel it's OK to download, say, a Jay-Z album without paying for it is that there are few outward signs that Jay-Z is suffering as a result.) Or is the record company the farmer, in Wheelan's analogy? Well, if the farmer had spent decades overcharging grotesquely for corn, ... then perhaps the thieves would have been cheered all the way to the bootleg farmer's market.

This being a family blog, I cut out what exactly the record company execs spent their "grotesque" profits on, but Hornby continues from there, comparing some of the more innovative ways musicians have been releasing their music to traditional farming (and pointing you to online resources for free music along the way).

Because the truth is we really cannot do two things at the same time--we are only one person with only one brain. Neurologically speaking, it has been proven to be impossible. What we are really doing is switching back and forth between two tasks rapidly, typing here, paying attention there, checking our "crackberry" here, answering voicemail there, back and forth back and forth at a high rate. Keep this up over a long period of time, and you have deeply engrained habits that cause stress and anxiety and dropped responsibilities and a myriad of productivity & focus problems. It's little wonder so many people complain of increasingly short attention spans!

The quote above is taken from Dave's guest-post at The Cranky Widgets Blog.Since its release on the 18th, the book and author have been on a "blog tour," being reviewed and interviewed all over the blogosphere. If you're interested in learning more about Dave and his ideas, I've put links to many of those posts below.

Interviews:
Virtually Organized
Black Belt Productivity

Reviews:
awake@thewheel
Get Rich Slowly
Slacker Manager
Change Your Thoughts

Jeffreys, author of Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug, details the journey this once highly esteemed company took once it made a deal with the devil. Part corporate biography, part history, and part moral tale, Hell's Cartel is, as the reviewer puts it, "not a pretty history. But it is gripping, full of warnings about the potential of corporations to mutate into criminal enterprises."

Here's a snippet from the review:

"IG Farben and Hitler: A Fateful Chemistry
How a company whose Nobel-winning scientists discovered vital medicines became a Nazi collaborator"

IG Farben traced its origins to the efforts of men such as Carl Bosch of BASF Group, who led the effort to mass-produce synthetic ammonia. The work was crucial to solving a worldwide shortage of fertilizer and preventing mass starvation. He and other scientist-managers made Germany the dominant producer of drugs and chemicals in the years before World War I. Bosch was a man of conscience but also deeply patriotic. During World War I he became a national hero after leading a crash effort to develop synthetic nitric acid, essential to producing explosives. Most notoriously, BASF chemist Fritz Haber, who had developed the processes used to make ammonia, came up with the idea of using chlorine gas as a weapon.

Read the entire article here: businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_34/b4097098922518.htm?chan=magazine+channel_opinion

If you like books in this vein, also check out The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug by Thomas Hager.

It is reviewed by Garret M. Graff, author of The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House. The most interesting piece of the review is the story he relates from the book:

Friedman tells the story of a Marine Corps general in Iraq who requested solar panels to power his bases. Asked why, he explained that he wanted to win his region by "out-greening al Qaeda." Instead of trucking in gas from Kuwait at $20 a gallon--money that fuels oppressive petro-dictatorships--in convoys that are vulnerable to roadside bombs, why not beat the insurgents by taking away their targets and their funding?

Also reviewed in this issue, and given four whole pages to Friedman's one, is Neal Stephenson's Anathem. Anathem is not a business book--it's a 960 page powerhouse of science-fiction. If you love good science-fiction, however--or just really good writing--our sister company's book buyer tells me it gets no better than Stephenson. It will be the next non-business book I read.

If you missed the links above, links to the reviews are below.

Hot, Flat and Crowded
Anathem

Watercooler Wisdom: How Smart People Prosper in the Face of Conflict, Pressure, & Change by Keith Bailey and Karen Leland - The authors of the book surveyed 20,000 executives, managers, and staff from around the world and discovered how everyone from CEOs to secretaries can flourish despite the stresses of the workplace. It's a practical guide that offers powerful techniqes for coping with conflict, pressure and change.

The Well-Ordered Office: How to Create an Efficient and Serene Workspace by Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Ph.D. - According to the author's research, there are about an average of 150 hours spent every year looking for things in offices or cubicles. Taking the time to organize is making time to enjoy the things you really love. Kendall-Tackett draws on her own experience as an organizer and practicing psychologist and offers simple strategies for overcoming these issues once and for all.

Working with the Self-Absorbed: How to Handle Narcissistic Personalities on the Job by Nina Brown, ED.D, LPC, NCC - In this book, you learn to manage the destructive behaviors of narcissists in the workplace and to ensure that your work gets the credit it deserves. Brown helps the reader to find realistic strategies for ignoring outrageous narcissism and help to establish a seperate-but-equal working environment with that coworker.

Thinking Outside the Cubicle: How to Change the Job You Have into the Job You Want by Norman J. Meshriy, MS - Meshriy helps to find tips and strategy to increase job satisfaction by transforming the workplace from within. He tells how to deal with frustrating bosses, difficult coworkers, and hone job skills. Restructure jobs to match goals, build rewarding business relationships, and become more secure to leave the office at the end of the day.

Lacy was a reporter for BusinessWeek and has been following Silicon Valley and the dotcoms for about a decade now and offers readers what exactly is happening there. Many Americans have long thought that there is no more life in the 'Valley' and there is no 'new wave' coming. Lacy points out that is a huge misconception and says that many people starting out now in the web have learned from past mistakes and making "groundbreaking new Web companies".

Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good is a must read for 'Valley-fanatics' and any aspiring entrepreneur that want to take advantage of the next wave of the internet (Web 2.0).