The Road Ahead

Bill Gates

Love him or loathe him, Mr. Microsoft is certainly an influential voice in the modern business world and The Road Ahead is definitely an important addition to any business library. Gates' description of the beginnings of the information age, while somewhat over-emphasizing his own contributions and downplaying those of his competitors, is nonetheless as clear and enlightening as any in print today.

His view of the digital future--from hardware to software and education to entertainment--should be read and studied by all who use technology in their business today or plan to use it on the road ahead.

Machiavelli's The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli

To describe someone as being Machiavellian is to attribute to the person ruthless ambition, craftiness and merciless political tactics. Being Machiavellian, can often be politically expedient. Machiavelli based his work in The Prince upon his basic understanding of human nature.

He held that people are motivated by fear and envy, by novelty, by desire for wealth, power and security, and by a hatred of restriction. In the Italy in which he was writing, democracy was an un-implemented Greek philosophical idea, not a political structure with a history of success; thus, one person's power usually involved the limitation of another person's power in an autocratic way.

I know This Much Is True

Wally Lamb

Some may be daunted by its length, its seemingly obsessive inclusion of background details and its many digressions. The topics it explores are mental illness, dysfunctional families, and domestic abuse are rendered with unsparing candor. But thanks to well-sustained dramatic tension, funky humor and some shocking surprises, this sinuous story of one family's dark secrets and recurring patterns of behavior largely succeeds in its ambitious read.

The narrative explores the theme of sibling responsibility, depicting the moral and emotional conundrum of an identical twin whose love for his afflicted brother is mixed with resentment, bitterness and guilt. Narrator Dominick Birdsey, once a high-school history teacher and now, at 40, a housepainter in upstate Connecticut, relates the process that led to his twin Thomas's schizophrenic paranoia and the resulting chaos in both their lives.

Hannibal

Thomas Harris

Years later, posing as scholarly Dr. Fell, curator of a grand family's palazzo, Hannibal lives the good life in Florence, playing lovely tunes by serial killer/composer Henry VIII and killing hardly anyone himself. Clarice is unluckier: in the novel's action-film-like opening scene, she survives an FBI shootout gone wrong, and her nemesis, Paul Krendler, makes her the fall guy. Clarice is suspended, so, unfortunately, the first cop who stumbles on Hannibal is an Italian named Pazzi, who takes after his ancestors, greedy betrayers depicted in Dante's Inferno.

Red Dragon

Thomas Harris

Lying on a cot in his cell with Alexandre Dumas's Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine open on his chest, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter makes his debut in this horror novel, which is even better than its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs. As in Silence, the pulse-pounding suspense plot involves a hypersensitive FBI sleuth who consults psycho psychiatrist Lecter for clues to catching a killer on the loose.

Night

Elie Wiesel

In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family.

His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died.

Tuesday's with Morrie

Mitch Albom

This true story about the love between a spiritual mentor and his pupil has soared to the bestseller list for many reasons. For starters: it reminds us of the affection and gratitude that many of us still feel for the significant mentors of our past.

It also plays out a fantasy many of us have entertained: what would it be like to look those people up again, tell them how much they meant to us, maybe even resume the mentorship? Plus, we meet Morrie Schwartz--a one of a kind professor, whom the author describes as looking like a cross between a biblical prophet and Christmas elf. And finally we are privy to intimate moments of Morrie's final days as he lies dying from a terminal illness.

World Ethics

Torres Gregory and Giancola

Unique among multicultural-minded introduction to ethics, World Ethics is first and foremost an introduction to ethical ethical theory. It is firmly committed to exploring ethical theories of the World.

Consisting of sixty primary source readings from a variety of world philosophical tradition including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Gandhi, and Karl Marx just to name a few. The coverage of the European tradition in this volume alone is richer than most ethical anthologies. It also equally covers treatment of Asian, Feminist, and a number of other contemporary cultural theoretical perspectives.

Gifted Hands

Ben Carson

This popular book by Dr. Ben Carson whose inspiring story tells of a frustrated inner-city kid whose faith in God helped him become director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. While pursuing his career, Carson encountered prejudice, negative peer pressure, and politics in getting a job. His sense of humor, faith in God, patience, and his belief in the work ethic come through without preaching.

THINK BIG

Ben Carson

After telling the story of how he overcame an inner-city background to become a world renown neurosurgeon (Gifted Hands), Dr. Ben Carson now gives an inspirational look at the philosophy of life that helped him meet life's obstacles and leap over them.

How To Become CEO

Jeffrey Fox

Fox presents 75 commonsense rules about successfully conducting your career. Rules like "Know Everybody by Their First Name" and "No Goals No Glory" may seem obvious; others, such as "Don't Take Work Home from the Office" or "Don't Have a Drink with the Gang" may not. Each is accompanied by page or two of succinct and thought-provoking explanation.

For example, for rule 27, "Don't Hide an Elephant," Fox writes, "Big problems always surface. If they have been hidden, even unintentionally, the negative fallout is always worse. The 'hiders' always get burned, regardless of complicity. The 'discoverers' always are safe, regardless of complicity." Wise and to the point, the book will help just about anybody's career, whether you want to become CEO or not.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Stephen Covey

Covey realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. Before you can adopt the seven habits, you'll need to accomplish what Covey calls a "paradigm shift"--a change in perception and interpretation of how the world works. Covey takes you through this change, which affects how you perceive and act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing your "proactive muscles" (acting with initiative rather than reacting), and much more.

Kaffir Boy

Mark Mathabane

In stark prose, Mathabane describes his life growing up in a nonwhite ghetto outside Johannesburg--and how he escaped its horrors. Hard work and faith in education played key roles, and Mathabane eventually won a tennis scholarship to an American university. This is not, needless to say, an opportunity afforded to many of the poor blacks who make up most of South Africa's population. And yet Mathabane reveals their troubled world on these pages in a way that only someone who has lived this life can only relate.

Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess

Told by the central character, Alex, this brilliant, hilarious, and disturbing novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism. Anthony Burgess' 1963 classic stands alongside Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World as a classic of twentieth century post-industrial alienation, often shocking us into a thoughtful exploration of the meaning of free will and the conflict between good and evil.

Managing Up

Badowski and Gittines

Badowski leverages lessons she learned in building a stellar relationship with her boss. She offers smart and solid advice beginning with her "Can you start on Monday?" interview with Welch, and then turning to the skills of "navigating a boss Monday through Friday."

The book's chapter titles may sound prosaic, but her approach crackles with energy and fresh ideas. For example, she writes about trust by including "time-tested phrases for breaking bad news." She details the perils of being unprepared and puts in a good word for nagging. She also makes a persuasive argument for the advantages of cultivating impatience to enhance productivity. With splashy anecdotes and checklists, Badowski offers realistic and and disciplined counsel.

1984

George Orwell

In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction.

He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party.

Blink

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 The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling.

Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.

The 48 Laws of Power

Robert Greene

"Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective," writes Robert Greene. The laws cull their principles from many great schemers--and scheming instructors--throughout history, from Sun-Tzu to Talleyrand, from Casanova to con man Yellow Kid Weil. They are straightforward in their amoral simplicity: "Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit," or "Discover each man's thumbscrew."

Each chapter provides examples of the consequences of observance or transgression of the law, along with "keys to power," potential "reversals" (where the converse of the law might also be useful), and a single paragraph cleverly laid out to suggest an image.

The Origin of Species

Charles Darwin

Many people assume that Darwin's initial account of natural selection is so out of date that it is to be avoided in favour of more recent text books of evolutionary theory. While it is true that huge gains have been made in the one and a half centuries since the first publication of "The Origin", there is nothing in this work which is wrong. Darwin was too good a scientist and too cautious.

Some claim that Darwin admitted of the possibility of Lamarkian mechanisms. They have not read the original. Darwin knew nothing of the molecular basis of genetics, but knew that natural selection did not need a Lamarkian mechanism. He simply did not rule it out, although he found it improbable. Everything that is stated in this great classic is as true today as it was at the time of first publication.

The Audacity of Hope

Barack Obama

In The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics—a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the "endless clash of armies" we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of "our improbable experiment in democracy."

He explores those forces—from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment.