Professional

    Reading these books recently has provided valuable insight into networking, marketing, customer service and thinking like a businessman. Particularly impressive: Stinnett's thesis on the importance of listening well to clients' needs and only then seeking to address those needs.

    I welcome your suggestions on additional reading material on doing business, relating to clients and conveying to potential clients the importance of good writing.
 
    • Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

    • Bill Stinnett, Think Like Your Customer: A Winning Strategy to Maximize Sales by Understanding How and Why Your Customers Buy

    • Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz, Never Eat Alone: The Ultimate Networker Reveals How to Build a Lifelong Community of Colleagues, Contacts, Friends, and Mentors

    • Jeff Howe, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business

    •  Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

    • David Kord Murray, Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the
Ideas of Others

   • Michael Gill, How Starbucks Saved My Life: A down-and-out, ex-advertising executive takes a job at a Manhattan coffee shop and discovers the value of so-called menial work and of a respect-driven workplace.
    
    • Robert Sutton, The No-Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't: Coincidentally, I read this right after the Gill book -- quite the flip side! The lesson: One's attitude makes all the difference.
    
    • Marilyn Johnson, The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries: a terrific read on the journalists who write what often are the most popular, interesting articles in newspapers.

    • Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle: Even for those not working in hi-tech or living in Israel, this book teaches the values of out-of-the-box, counterintuitive thinking; of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts; and of taking lemons and making lemonade from them.

    • Nick Tasler, The Impulse Factor: Why Some of Us Play It Safe and Others Risk It All: This is a most enlightening analysis at how the way we're wired to make decisions affects us at work and in life generally.

    • Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing: Timely happenstance brought me to listen to this CD while interviewing for a big editing contract with a government agency. Fogarty and her buddies Aardvark and Squiggly shooed wayward rules back into this editor's head. Thanks, Grammar Girl!


Personal (all nonfiction, except where indicated)
    
    • Michael Wex, Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods: I listened to this on CD, and can imagine no more enjoyable way to commute than by listening to the author's voice as he examines the roots of Yiddish expressions. Want to laugh while learning a ton? Read -- better yet, listen to -- this book. 

    • Helene Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street: The author makes her long-dreamt-of visit to London and meets interesting people throughout.

    • Mark Bowden, The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL: an in-depth look at a championship game that marked America's seismic shift toward big-time professional sports -- and toward television's central role in that explosion.

    • James Hansen, First Man: a biography of astronaut Neil Armstrong. Beyond the sometimes-excessive scientific detailing is a fine examination of the legend and of the man. 

    • Lena Kuchler-Silberman, My Hundred Children (Hebrew): the memoir of a woman who survived the Holocaust and set aside a nascent career in Poland's academia to rehabilitate, through personal ministration and love, the lives of the orphaned and broken children who'd emerged from the horrors.

    • Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million: a beautifully told, intensely personal story of the author's effort to account for all the details of both the lives of his uncle, aunt and four cousins in the family's ancestral village of Bolechow, Poland, and of their murders during the Holocaust. This book is the ultimate tribute to these six relatives, for Mendelsohn has restored their existence. 

    • Zev Chafets, A Match Made in Heaven: an engaging examination of evangelical Christian support for Israel.

    • Father Daniel Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets: a French priest's interviews of elderly witnesses throughout Ukraine to document the hundreds of killing fields, pits and ravines. 

    • Brigitte Gabriel, They Must Be Stopped: a well-argued book on the dangers we in the West face from radical Islam, why we must defeat this enemy and how to do so.

    • Michael D'Antonio, Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O'Malley, Baseball's Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles: an insightful biography that led me to, just maybe, reconsider the man whom Borough of Churches natives still vilify for uprooting their beloved team in 1957.

    • Bart Andrews, Lucy & Ricky & Fred & Ethel: The Story of I Love Lucy: an excellent history of how this classic television show came to be.

    • Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries: a novel about an ordinary woman, born under unusual circumstances, living a plain life of many lows and few highs.

    • Bruce Markusen, The Team that Changed Baseball: an account of the first recognizably diverse clubs, the 1971 champion Pittsburgh Pirates.

    • Samuel Freedman, Who She Was: the journalist's lovingly told narrative of the family and social factors in the 1930s and 1940s that shaped the character of his deceased mother.

    • Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: a smart book about the heretofore unknown woman whose cells, since her death in 1951, live on and continue to inform medical research -- and about the attendant ethical issues.

    • Mitch Albom, Have A Little Faith: A True Story: The author has a series of Tuesdays With Morrie-like meetings that teach him how faith and life experiences shaped the lives of his ever-positive elderly rabbi and of an ex-con black minister.

    • Donna Rosenthal, The Israelis: Ordinary People In An Extraordinary Land: The title says it all -- an enticing book each of whose chapters is devoted to the diverse ethnicities that make Israel such a special place.

    • David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered: a nicely written and comprehensive biography on football coaching legend Vince Lombardi.

    • Philip Roth, The Plot Against America: a novel playing out what may or may not have been a nightmare of a premise (depending on your perspective): Charles Lindbergh's winning the presidency in 1940.

    • Bruce Feiler, America's Prophet: Moses and America's Story: Who knew that American citizens and leaders, from Pilgrims to presidents, were so influenced by Moses and the exodus experience?

    • Ronald Kessler, In the President's Secret Service: Like behind-the-scenes looks at how government agencies run -- in this case, the one protecting America's most important person? Read this book.