1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. hy some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

2. Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success–and Won’t Let You Fail by Keith Ferrazzi. Achieving goals by building close relationships with a small circle of trusted individuals.

3. 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea by Suzy Welch. Evaluating decisions based on how they will affect your life in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years.

4. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host.

5. House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan. The fall of Bear Stearns and the beginning of the Wall Street collapse.

6. The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide: Protect Your Savings, Boost Your Income, and Grow Wealthy Even in the Worst of Times by Martin D. Weiss. Strategies for protecting your money in the worst of times.

7. Thank God It’s Monday!: How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love by Roxanne Emmerich. Tips on creating a positive environment for both employ­ees and customers.

8. Peaks and Valleys: Making Good And Bad Times Work For You–At Work And In Life by Spencer Johnson. Making both good and bad times work for you personally and pro­fessionally.

9. Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street by Kate Kelly. A Wall Street Journal reporter on the last days of Bear Stearns.

10. How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins. Companies fail in stages, and their decline can be detected and reversed.

11. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. Because life isn’t all about work.

12. Fool’s Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett. How the mar­ket in credit derivatives was perverted by greed, arrogance and delusion, by a Financial Times journalist.

13. Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. How to identify and develop your talents and those of your employees.

14. The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell. An explanation of the economics and politics of the housing boom and its collapse.

15. Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Three keys to being a more effective leader.

1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. The author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Gladwell poses the question: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the “self-made man,” he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don’t arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: “they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, “some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky.”

2. Magic Kingdom for Sale–Sold! by Terry Brooks and Dick Hill. Ben Holiday is a lawyer who finds little satisfaction in his work. His yearning for a simpler life seems thwarted when he finds the magic kinddom of Landover, a close analogy of Earth, with precariously balanced powers threatening each other, massive pollution, and general discontent centering on a lack of faith in leaders. This first volume in the new series is mainly introductory as Ben meets the locals and dashes off a few impossible tasks to assert his right to the throne.

3. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell The best-selling author of Outliers: The Story of Success and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking defines a tipping point as a sociological term: “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” The book seeks to explain and describe the “mysterious” sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.” The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the precipitous drop in the New York City crime rate after 1990.

4.  The White Tiger: A Novel (Man Booker Prize) by Aravind Adiga and John Lee. In a series of letters to the Premier of China, in anticipation of the leader’s upcoming visit to Balram’s homeland, the chauffeur recounts his transformation from an honest, hardworking boy growing up in “the Darkness”—those areas of rural India where education and electricity are equally scarce, and where villagers banter about local elections “like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra”—to a determined killer. He places the blame for his rage squarely on the avarice of the Indian élite, among whom bribes are commonplace, and who perpetuate a system in which many are sacrificed to the whims of a few.

5. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? Do you feel that you are both a person who gets things done and someone who offers penetrating analysis? Well, you can discover whether you are truly an “achiever” or an “analytical” by completing the online quiz. Then, the book will give you “ideas for action” and tips for how best you can work with others. More of a patiencetester than Strengthsfinder, the quiz/book is probably best for those who have lots of time on their hands.

6. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Blink is about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of Outliers: The Story of Success and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling.

7. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. A classic (originally published in the 30’s) and a must-have, this timeless piece of work can help just about anybody get along better with others and win them over to their way of thinking.The book is divided into short sections, each one devoted to a particular principle that is well illustrated with many practical examples.

8. The Secret of Shelter Island: Money and What Matters by Alexander Green. Green explores the complicated relationship we all have with money and reveals the road map to a rich life. The book is arranged around four central themes: “A Rich Mind,” “What Matters Most,” “Attitudes and Gratitude,” and “The Search for Meaning.”

9. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. A motivational book on positive thought for positive results. Byrne leads listeners through her exposition on the secret of life. Quoting from an array of New Age gurus and interpreting more traditional teachers as well, the program integrates sound bites from the various authors, with actors taking many of the roles. Neale Donald Walsh, Denis Waitley, Jack Canfield, and dozens of others make cameo comments throughout the program.

10. Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (Lynn Sonberg Books) by Peter D. Schiff and John Downes. The country has gone from the world’s largest creditor to its greatest debtor; the value of the dollar is sinking; domestic manufacturing is winding down - and these trends don’t seem to be slowing. This book is a warning of a looming period marked by sizeable tax hikes, loss of retirement benefits, double digit inflation, even - as happened recently in Argentina - the possible collapse of the middle class. However, Schiff does have a survival plan that can provide the protection that readers will need in the coming years.

11. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Methods for reducing stress and increasing performance.

12. Fool’s Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tet. Drawing on exclusive access to J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and a tightly bonded team of bankers known on Wall Street as the “Morgan Mafia,” as well as in-depth interviews with dozens of other key players, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Tett brings to life in gripping detail how the Morgan team’s bold ideas for a whole new kind of financial alchemy helped to ignite a revolution in banking, and how that revolution escalated wildly out of control.

13. TJ Walker’s Secret to Foolproof Presentationsby TJ Walker. The book details Walker’s audience-centric approach to preparing, rehearsing, testing, and delivering presentations that will keep listeners talking about the message long after they’ve left the room.

14. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. The author targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. When the instructional tale is over, Lencioni discusses the “five dysfunctions” (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results) and provides a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings.

15. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss.  Ferriss isn’t shy about tooting his own horn: He says he “speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a world-record holder in tango, a national champion in kickboxing, and an actor in a hit television series in Hong Kong.” Is this the sort of person you really want to be taking advice from? Anyway, Ferris offers recommendations and resources for everything from eliminating wasted time to oursourcing your job and getting cheap airfare.

1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. As you’d expect with Gladwell, there are lots of surprises in his explanation of why some people succeed fantastically. Pluck and smarts get less play here than such matters as one’s birth month and access to the right resources at just the right time. There are many points worth pondering in this enjoyable volume.

2.House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan. Cohan’s hot-selling behind-the-scenes account of the financial recklessness at the heart of investment bank Bear Stearns’ collapse is a vividly told page-turner. It’s the definitive work, to date, on the events that signaled, and help set off, the financial crisis.

3. The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide: Protect Your Savings, Boost Your Income, and Grow Wealthy Even in the Worst of Times by Martin D. Weiss. Investor advocate Weiss has produced a guide to the safe havens for money available right now and, he claims, ways to turn the financial crisis into a wealth-building opportunity.

4. Bank on Yourself: The Life-Changing Secret to Growing and Protecting Your Financial Future by Pamela Yellen. Yellen’s secret revolves around using a specific type of whole life insurance as a substitute for traditional banking. And she claims that it offers the reader a bullet-proof financial plan with predictable retirement income.

5. Peaks and Valleys: Making Good And Bad Times Work For You–At Work And In Life by Spencer Johnson. The author of the hypersuccessful Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life has delivered a quick and easy read in the form of a parable about a young man who lives in a valley learning wisdom from an old man dwelling on a nearby peak. The basic lesson: better decisions boost your odds of winding up on higher ground.

6. The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance [Updated & Revised] by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. The authors, long devoted to the dissemination of “carrot culture,” are back, listing techniques for recognizing and praising the performers in an organization, the thing so many managers are afraid to do.

7. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. Ferriss isn’t shy about tooting his own horn: He says he “speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a world-record holder in tango, a national champion in kickboxing, and an actor in a hit television series in Hong Kong.” Is this the sort of person you really want to be taking advice from? Anyway, Ferris offers recommendations and resources for everything from eliminating wasted time to oursourcing your job and getting cheap airfare. Discover your dreams and live them!

8.Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life by Donald J. Trump with Meredith McIver. Built from essays with titles such as “The More You Learn, The More You Realize What You Don’t Know”, and “There Are Times When You Should Move On”, this latest book from Trump is, well, pure Trump. It’s corny, boastful, and relentlessly optimistic. Prepare to be educated.

9. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller. Written by two of the top economists in the world, Animal Spirits is a bold and innovative work that tries to demonstrate how psychological factors led to the current mess. They started writing it together five years ago, which at times leads to it feeling like not all the parts fit together, but the main thesis is a vital one: People and businesses, long thought to act rationally, can wind up being anything but in times of boom or bust. And the ramifications can be sweeping.

10. Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath. This is the latest of the “strengths movement” titles, all of which aim at helping readers recognize and polish their true talents. Here, the authors say they identify keys to leadership and help executives build effective teams.

11. Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse by Thomas E. Woods Jr. If you think that the current financial woes are due more to the Federal Reserve’s actions than to Wall Street finagling, then Woods’ book is for you. The author also joins the list of conservatives who are now piling on the New Deal, saying it worsened rather than ameliorated the Great Depression.

12. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times columnist Friedman offers an urgent plea to unleash U.S. creativity—and capitalism—on the challenges of energy, climate change, and world population growth. “I am convinced that the public is ready,” he writes—“they’re ahead of the politicians.”

13. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter. Management guru and executive coach Goldsmith outlines 20 common habits (often unconscious, often annoying) of successful people that are holding them back from reaching the next level of attainment.

14. The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 by Paul Krugman. This book was originally published in May of 1999, when the word “depression” was used primarily by historians. Suddenly, the book seems hugely more interesting, and Nobel Prize winner Krugman has also added new material and freshened up his older chapters. The result is a highly readable and provocative take on how we should respond to the current mess.

15. The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History by Harry S. Dent, Jr. Dent’s thing is demographics, and his previous books have aimed at revealing how changes in the U.S. population made a “great boom” inevitable. But those days are gone, he now says: Suddenly, the optimist is a doomsayer. The Roaring 2000s, as he titled a 1998 book, are at an end: Wow, that was a short millennium!

There are a handful of reasons to read Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World HC. Among them:

1) You don’t “get” the youngest workers at your organization;

2) You think Millennials (the hipper, more “preferred” term for Generation Y) — those born between 1977 and 1998 — are rotting their brains with their nonstop Internet and video game use; and

3) You think there are a few other rotten things associated with that generation—like their sense of entitlement, lack of respect for elders and poor work ethic.

Don Tapscott’s book is based on a $4 million study funded by large corporations and conducted by his research company nGenera Innovation Network. There is some interesting research indicating that this generation should not be reviled and instead celebrated as its members are revolutionizing every aspect of how society thinks, works and interacts.

Perhaps, as he writes, “the Net Gen norms I describe in this book may turn out to be the key indicators of high-performing organizations in the twenty-first century.”

I found three areas of data particularly interesting: how Millennial individuals’ brains develop — tens of thousands of hours of video games and Internet use before age 20 apparently has positive effect on things like the processing of visual information, hand-eye coordination, and multitasking; how to parent these individuals; and how they’re using the Internet to transform the political process.

But as a business book — i.e., how to attract, retain, and work with this generation — there didn’t seem to be much new information (at least to those of us not hiding under a rock for the past year — or hiding from any major news outlet, anyway). They like work-life balance, freedom, collaboration, social consciousness, being engaged, immediacy, customization, etc., etc.

In fact, at times, the book seems to be largely an emotional response to Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future(Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)—which Tapscott criticizes at length.

Adding to that sense is the fact that Tapscott (also author, among others, of the bestseller Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything) has two millennial children himself — whose actions and activities are referenced and revered dozens of times throughout the book (making it seem at times less a definitive scholarly work, and more a personal, anecdotal tale).

Nonetheless, for HR pros, chapter six is most relevant: “Rethinking Talent and Management: The Net Generation in the Workforce.” Most of this section is dedicated to providing statistics and anecdotes explaining what this generation wants out of work (freedom, collaboration, balance, and so on) — what Tapscott calls the eight norms of Net Gen.

But there is also some interesting commentary about how companies have no choice but to rethink the way they do business in light of this generation — including everything from collaboration and knowledge management, to recruiting by initiating relationships via social networks, to maintaining those relationships when an employees leaves.

In general, while the conversational tone and informal format make the book an easy read, the cheerleading of this generation as the best thing since, well, the Greatest Generation, is a bit harder to swallow. The more than 11,000 young people Tapscott interviewed and about whom he wrote fit into a fairly narrow demographic — which is North American, well educated and fairly well off. And, as the book came out just before the economic recession hit, there isn’t discussion of how this generation — one that the author repeatedly touts as being all about choices — will fare in the era of increasingly narrow employment choices.

Regardless, I buy Tapscott’s conclusion that millennials are not being given enough credit. It’s hard, after all, to disagree with this assertion:

As the Net Generation grows in influence, the trend will be toward networks, not hierarchies, toward open collaboration rather than command, toward consensus rather than arbitrary rule, and toward enablement rather than control. As students, children and consumers, they are pressuring schools, families, and markets to change. As knowledge workers, educators, government leaders, entrepreneurs, and customers, they will be an unstoppable force for transformation.

Sarah McAdams writes the popular “Balancing Act” and “Office Watch” columns for HR Insight. Sarah has reported on human resources for a variety of publications, including the Journal of Employee Communication Management, Corporate Legal Times and The Ragan Report. She has written about many other subjects for publications like the Chicago Tribune, Montreal Gazette, Orlando Sentinel, Self magazine and Daily Variety. McAdams also helped ghostwrite the book Portfolio Life: The New Path to Work, Purpose, and Passion After 50 by David D. Corbett (Jossey-Bass, 2007).

1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. How and why certain products and ideas become fads.

2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. A new edition of the author’s principles for solving problems.

3. Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan by Suze Orman. Managing your money in hard times.

4. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Methods for reducing stress and increasing performance.

5. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink. Why right-brainers will rule the future.

6. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shales. A reinterpretation of the New Deal and the Great Depres­sion.

7. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler  and Cass R. Sunstein. Improve decision making by applying the new science of choice architecture.

8. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter. What the wealthy teach their children about money that others do not.

9. The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M. R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill. How to cultivate trust in business, politics and personal relationships.

10. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Book & DVD) by John Medina. The 12 principles on how the brain function and its effects on the way we work.

1. Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success–and Won’t Let You Fail by Keith Ferrazzi. Ferrazzi offers a nine-step approach to building what he calls “lifeline relationships,” an inner circle of deep, trusting peer support partners who serve as advisors, cheerleaders, and accountability watchdogs.

2. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? Do you feel that you are both a person who gets things done and someone who offers penetrating analysis? Well, you can discover whether you are truly an “achiever” or an “analytical” by completing the online quiz. Then, the book will give you “ideas for action” and tips for how best you can work with others. More of a patiencetester than Strengthsfinder, the quiz/book is probably best for those who have lots of time on their hands.

3. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Methods for reducing stress and increasing performance.

4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. A new edition of the author’s principles for solving problems.

5. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink. Just as information workers surpassed physical laborers in economic importance, Pink claims, the workplace terrain is changing yet again, and power will inevitably shift to people who possess strong right brain qualities. His advocacy of “R-directed thinking” begins with a bit of neuroscience tourism to a brain lab that will be extremely familiar to those who read Steven Johnson’s Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life last year, but while Johnson was fascinated by the brain’s internal processes, Pink is more concerned with how certain skill sets can be harnessed effectively in the dawning “Conceptual Age.” The second half of the book details the six “senses” Pink identifies as crucial to success in the new economy-design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning-while “portfolio” sections offer practical (and sometimes whimsical) advice on how to cultivate these skills within oneself.

6. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss.  Ferriss isn’t shy about tooting his own horn: He says he “speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a world-record holder in tango, a national champion in kickboxing, and an actor in a hit television series in Hong Kong.” Is this the sort of person you really want to be taking advice from? Anyway, Ferris offers recommendations and resources for everything from eliminating wasted time to oursourcing your job and getting cheap airfare.

7. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter. Robert Kiyosaki reveals how he developed his unique economic perspective from his two fathers: his real father, who was highly educated but fiscally poor; and the father of his best friend - an eighth-grade drop-out who became a self-made multi-millionaire. The lifelong monetary problems experienced by his “poor dad” pounded home the counterpoint communicated by his “rich dad”. Taking that message to heart, Kiyosaki was able to retire at the age of 47. This book lays out his philosophy and aims to open readers eyes by: exploding the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich; challenging the belief that your house is an asset; showing parents why they can’t rely on schools to teach their children about money; defining once and for all an asset versus a liability; and explaining what to teach your children about money for their future financial success.

8. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin. Greatness doesn’t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness. The skills of business—negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest—obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort.

9. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter. Are there things you do that have helped you succeed so far, but that how have your career idling in neutral? Executive coach Goldsmith identifies 20 such ways of behaving, from an obsessive need to show how smart you are to a habit of withholding information. The authors also provide a program to help you change your irritating ways. But will this stuff really help you get ahead? Let’s put it this way: Don’t pass up any chances to marry the boss’s daughter.

10. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now. When consumers you ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.

11. The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M. R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill. How to cultivate trust in business, politics and personal relationships.

12. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Book & DVD) by John Medina. Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. Medina’s fascinating stories and sense of humor breathe life into brain science. You’ll learn why Michael Jordan was no good at baseball. You’ll peer over a surgeon’s shoulder as he proves that we have a Jennifer Aniston neuron. You’ll meet a boy who has an amazing memory for music but can’t tie his own shoes.

13. Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. How to identify and develop your talents and those of your employees.

14. Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard . This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid.

15. Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller–Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Napoleon Hill and Arthur Pell . In the original Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, Hill draws on stories of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other millionaires of his generation to illustrate his principles. In the updated version, Arthur R. Pell, Ph.D., a nationally known author, lecturer, and consultant in human resources management and an expert in applying Hill’s thought, interweaves anecdotes of how contemporary millionaires and billionaires, such as Bill Gates, Mary Kay Ash, Dave Thomas, and Sir John Templeton, achieved their wealth. Outmoded or arcane terminology and examples are refreshed.

Well, it’s become weirder. And the label of “generally prosperous” rarer.
In 2006, many workers viewed their “number” — how much money one needs to feel secure forever after retirement — as the realization of their daydreams (traveling the world, spending days on the golf course, volunteering for a nonprofit, writing a novel, opening an inn).

The economic distress of today, however, leaves them more concerned with keeping what they already have: their jobs, their homes, their health care. Indeed, a new AARP study revealed that more than 65 percent of workers over the age of 45 now say they plan to put off their previously planned retirement dates.

As Eiseberg wrote in a March article in Portfolio magazine (itself a victim of the recession, Conde Nast announced last month), “f**k you” money has become “I’m f**ked” money.

Still, The Number is arguably as useful in this climate as it was when first published. After all, it’s less of a guide to investing (although it does provide “10 commandments” of investing and a formula for determining your own “number”) and more an argument for reconsidering priorities and forming a plan. “If expectations outstretch your Number, then change your stated values, rewrite the rules. Put simple pleasures first, money second. That way nobody will think you failed. In the words of that noted financial gerontologist Sheryl Crow: ‘It’s not having what you want. It’s wanting what you’ve got,’” Eisenberg wrote in the book.

The problem, he says, is that Americans have been consumed with wanting what the Joneses have. “Getting incensed over who has what strikes me as a waste of psychic energy and a waste of time. Better to invest this valuable energy, and use that time, to come to terms with who you are, or, if it better pleases you, to make more money. Others can write books on how to die rich or how to die broke. How to die laughing that’s up to you,” wrote Eisenberg, former longtime editor-in-chief of Esquire.

But regardless of whether we’re talking about the Old Number or the New Number, if you want to end up laughing (or, at the very least, eating), you have to have a financial plan. And if you’re like the majority of Americans have, you don’t.

And thus one of his messages for HR pros is this: knowledge is power. If employees are stressed about their 401(k)s, their 529 plans, or their health care, one of the best things the company can do is help them plan for the future. Help them map out the reality of the situation and come up with a strategy for dealing with it.
As Eisenberg writes, “An unexamined life may or may not be worth living — but it’s almost always more costly than an examined one.”

In addition to countless case studies of workers who’ve faced their financial situations head on, and figured out their own “numbers,” The Number provides some useful tools for doing the examining. The book’s six “Eisenberg Uncertainty Principles” will help HR pros understand why many workers avoid planning for the future. The authors “10 commandments” of investing provide some basic tenets for any economic climate.
And the good news for those of us whose eyes gloss over at the mere sight of a spreadsheet is that you don’t have to have a Series 7 certification to understand the financial stuff in this book. Eisenberg writes in plain — and often entertaining — English.

And although the premise of the book is coming up with a realistic dollar amount the reader will need to be secure for the rest of his life, there are only a few pages that actually focus on how to calculate that number.
That’s because Eisenberg is more concerned with shaking up our preoccupation with consumption.

“The bottom line here is that the things that truly matter in life do not come with daunting price tags attached,” he writes. “Sure, we all need food, health care, and shelter from the storm. But other than that, we don’t need an especially big Number to buy that which we ‘can’t live without,’ the things that are ‘bedrock important’.”

Arguably, knowing one’s number — and having a plan to acquire it — have never been more important to today’s worker. Need convincing? Read this book.

Sarah McAdams writes the popular “Balancing Act” and “Office Watch” columns for HR Insight. Sarah has reported on human resources for a variety of publications, including the Journal of Employee Communication Management, Corporate Legal Times and The Ragan Report. She has written about many other subjects for publications like the Chicago Tribune, Montreal Gazette, Orlando Sentinel, Self magazine and Daily Variety. McAdams also helped ghostwrite the book Portfolio Life: The New Path to Work, Purpose, and Passion After 50 by David D. Corbett (Jossey-Bass, 2007).

1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. hy some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

2. House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan. The fall of Bear Stearns and the beginning of the Wall Street collapse.

3. The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide: Protect Your Savings, Boost Your Income, and Grow Wealthy Even in the Worst of Times by Martin D. Weiss. Strategies for protecting your money in the worst of times.

4. Peaks and Valleys: Making Good And Bad Times Work For You–At Work And In Life by Spencer Johnson. Making both good and bad times work for you personally and pro­fessionally.

5. 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea by Suzy Welch. Evaluating decisions based on how they will affect your life in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years.

6. The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance [Updated & Revised] by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. How recognition and incentives drive employees to excel.

7. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host.

8. Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life by Donald J. Trump. Informal essays on success in business and life.

9. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. Because life isn’t all about work.

10.  Strengths-Based Leadership by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie. Three keys to being a more effective leader.

11. Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse by Thomas E. Woods Jr. A free-market look at the stock-market collapse and an argument against the bailout.

12. Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. How to identify and develop your talents and those of your employees.

13. How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. Neuroscience reveals that the best decisions are a blend of feeling and reason, and learning more about how we think can help us make better decisions.

14. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. A financial trader with an expertise in probability theory and statistics, debunks much about economic forecasting, and uses examples ranging from how a book becomes a best-seller to how an entrepreneur becomes a mogul.

15. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. How a green revolution can renew America, by the New York Times columnist.

1. Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success by Sylvia Lafair.  Lafair explores what happens when patterns originally created to cope with family conflicts are unleashed in the workplace. Throughout the book she shows how to break the cycle of pattern repetition and offers the tools that can turn unhealthy family baggage into creative energy that will foster better workplace associations and career success.

2. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Stephen R. Covey. Mainly about resolving conflicts and influencing people, this guide covers every conceivable aspect of talking with others. People hear facts and stories and turn them into shared knowledge when they’re not attacked or overpowered- - in other words, when they feel safe. No mushy mental health lesson, the program explains many types of communication errors and describes the best ways to achieve mutual purpose.

3. Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard . This story is about adjusting attitudes toward change in life, especially at work. Change occurs whether a person is ready or not, but the author affirms that it can be positive. His principles are to anticipate change, let go of the old, and do what you would do if you were not afraid.

4. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. The author targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. When the instructional tale is over, Lencioni discusses the “five dysfunctions” (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results) and provides a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings.

5. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox. Alex Rogo manages a failing manufacturing plant. When his district manager tells him that profits must increase or the plant will be closed, Alex turns to Jonah, a former professor. With the help of the enigmatic Jonah and the plant staff, Alex turns the plant around while at the same time abandoning many management principles he previously thought were ironclad.

6. Robert’s Rules Of Order Newly Revised In Brief (Roberts Rules of Order (in Brief)) by Henry M. III Robert, William J. Evans, Daniel H. Honemann, and Thomas J. Balch. Thisguide briefs readers on the rules most often needed at meetings — from debates and amendments to votes and nominations and includes sample dialogues, helpful references to the “big” book throughout, and handy tips for elected or appointed officials, Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised in Brief is the essential abbreviated meeting rulebook.

7. Leading Change by John P. Kotter. The methods managers have used in the attempt to transform their companies into stronger competitors — total quality management, reengineering, right sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds — routinely fall short, says Kotter, because they fail to alter behavior. This book identifies an eight-step process that every company must go through to acheive its goal, and shows where and how people — good people — often derail.

8. The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life (J-B Warren Bennis Series) by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan. If you are looking to rally a company’s employees around a new vision, consultant Zaffron and business professor Logan tell how to “create a future.”

9.Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box created by The Arbinger Institute. Through the story of Tom—a “shluck” in his manager’s words—readers discover that identifying and treating individual leadership problems as if they were separate and distinct is not enough to transform people into successful leaders. The authors suggest that the key to leadership lies not in what we do, but in how we “are.” They explore this compelling secret: Self-deception is the central player and trap underlying all leadership failures, relationship issues, and performance problems in organizations.

10. The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by by Michael Watkins. Whether challenged with taking on a startup, turning a business around, or inheriting a high-performing unit, a new leader’s success or failure is determined within the first 90 days on the job. This hands-on guide offers proven strategies for moving successfully into a new role at any point in one’s career.

1. Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan by Suze Orman. Managing your money in hard times.

2. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. How and why certain products and ideas become fads.

3. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Methods for reducing stress and increasing performance.

4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. A new edition of the author’s principles for solving problems.

5. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shales. A reinterpretation of the New Deal and the Great Depres­sion.

6. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter. What the wealthy teach their children about money that others do not.

7. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink. Why right-brainers will rule the future.

8. The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M. R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill. How to cultivate trust in business, politics and personal relationships.

9. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. A six-week program for personal-finance literacy, with guidance on bank accounts, credit cards, student loans and more.

10. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler  and Cass R. Sunstein. Improve decision making by applying the new science of choice architecture.