Most of our employees have hidden talents. We’re a creative bunch and while we love business books, we also love to dabble in various other art forms. We have musicians, collectors, writers, performers…you get the drift. Our shipper/receiver, Todd Lazarski, makes sure the books we have in our warehouse get to our customers safely and quickly. But Todd is also a freelance writer with a distinctively quirky voice and he is happy to tackle a book review occasionally between pallet deliveries and games of Wii Tennis. This month, Todd tackled a comparison piece on new two books about Google, and here’s what he had to say:

Everyone uses Google. Even if you’re a Bing acolyte or don’t know how to change Yahoo as your browser’s default search engine, there is little argument that Google is the definitive chronicler of information and the frontrunner in any effort to “organize the world’s information.” But besides directions to that new restaurant downtown, or info on whether that rash is contagious or not, what can the company and it’s business model show us about getting ahead in the workplace? Apparently, a whole lot – at least two noteworthy, new releases worth.

Aaron Goldman’s Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned From Google is basically an attempt to allay the mystique behind the Internet’s almighty gatekeeper, and offer 20 (one-per-chapter) business-guiding tidbits direct from the company’s playbook. As an author Goldman uses a playful, personal tone, and his experience as one of the company’s biggest clients, to “demystify” Google. While a member of Resolution Media, he assisted the likes of Dell, Visa, Hertz and State Farm to the top of Google searches, and here, Goldman filters his own anecdotes into applicable lessons. Truisms come from the very simple – ‘Relevancy Rules’, ‘Sex Sells,’ ‘Mindset Matters’ – to the extremely simple, ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid,’ to the likes of how to ‘Make Your Company a Great Story.’ The latter depicts the Google work environment like a wonderworld, something akin to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and shows both the effectiveness and methods for establishing a similar vibe back home. Even in the off-chance that none of this is helpful, he points all roads back to the book’s first line, that “Google is an amazing company.” It’s a notion widely taken for granted; but here, it is plainly broken-down, dissected, and applied to everyday business life in revelatory terms.

While Goldman’s tome “isn’t a book about getting to the top of Google”, this is precisely what Vanessa Fox’s work, Marketing in the Age of Google, is. A current speaker and consultant on “search engine strategy,” Fox also used to punch the clock as Google’s search engine spokesperson, and was responsible for “communicating how google’s search algorithm works to millions of Web site owners.” In other words, she knows her stuff, and wastes little time on style or nuance. The statistics (“Americans conduct 22.7 billion online searches a month”) and charts (“Mortgage Refinance Search Trends”) come fast and furious, and largely laid out like a Power Point presentation, this is a nuts and bolts ‘how to’ guide. If you’re already familiar with the difference between ‘Organic’ and ‘Paid’ results, or are interested in a techie’s take on the futures of ‘social search’ and ‘real-time search,’ or simply need extrapolation on the process of ‘canonicalization,’ this is probably the volume to start your query on how to make Google work for you.

As two halves to a whole, each work helps paint a comprehensive view of an endlessly complex entity. (If you still crave another look, Wired magazine’s Steven Levy has a forthcoming work titled Searching for Google. Whether approached from an angle of simple curiosity or practical progress, a little more understanding to one of the interenet’s unquestioned stalwarts can never be a bad thing, especially in an increasingly search-centric world.

The following review was written by our owner, Carol Grossmeyer, and first appeared in our monthly newsletter, the KeenThinker.

It’s been a long time since a book has come across my desk that made me instantly stop in my tracks, so I was thrilled when The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work did just that. I was captured first by the arresting cover, a closeup photo of a woman’s eyes and then intrigued by the simple but powerful title, The Female Vision. While reading this timely study, the overwhelming feeling I experienced was “aha, it’s not just me”—“I am not alone.”

Sally Helgesen, bestselling author of The Female Advantage, and Julie Johnson, a pioneer in executive coaching, have written a book that explains the difference in how men and women approach the business world. For some readers of this review, any hint at gender difference issues becomes political and can raise the “feminist” red flag, but the authors are careful to note that gender/biological differences are relative, not absolute.

Through research, well-documented studies and personal experience stories, Helgesen and Johnson explain in The Female Vision what women “notice,” how they value what they “see,” and how that vision can be a powerful tool at all levels of the business world. But because, for the most part, business schools teach a singular “male” vision (“women’s attention operates like a radar, picking up signals across a wide spectrum, whereas men’s attention operates like a laser, focusing on a single point in depth”), the traditional workplace is not structured to recognize women’s, often more subjective, observations.

The lack of attention to and lack of respect for women’s ways of seeing, their holistic approach to motivation, and their perception of worth and satisfaction has put our marketplace—and culture in general— at a grave disadvantage. Many women at the top of their game end up feeling fraudulent at work as they stifle their best instincts and hesitate to defend the value of what they “see.” In response the stifling may lead to personal self-doubt, but more often the best and the brightest simply “opt out” noting “it’s just not worth it;” they abandon their desire for leadership roles and either do their best at a junior level or leave the corporate world altogether.

Helgesen and Johnson courageously argue, by enumerating the many women who tried to bring the impending disaster to light, that the absence of women’s vision in high-level business leadership roles marked the way to the most recent economic nightmare. They quote the financial journalist Michael Lewis saying, in 2008: “[O]ne of the distinctive traits of the financial disaster was . . . how little women had to do with it.” This argument is not intended to be divisive, but to serve as “a demonstration of what can happen when an exceedingly narrow vision gains ascendancy in the business culture and continues to operate without check.”

The authors discuss how so-called “forward thinking companies” talk the talk about company benefits that address quality of life issues—but talking the talk is not enough. The authors logically guide us through the steps that will allow businesses to also walk the walk. Valuing and utilizing women’s unique vision is truly invaluable to our future success. For example: “The value women place on relationships has increasing marketplace value. Changes in the nature of technology have made relationships—with customers, clients, suppliers, competitors, shareholders, and the community as well as within the organization itself—a far more vital resource for organizations than in years past.”

But women too must learn how to act on their vision, take the initiative. The authors encourage women to find allies, remain present, set boundaries, and they offer practical guidelines to create the conditions for success. The Female Vision is an important book: important for women who, after reading, will not only feel less alone as I did, but will find a helpful guide to begin tapping into their “real power at work;” and important for men who want to help create an environment for their female colleagues and employees to create and contribute their best work. As Marshall Goldsmith explains in his foreword to the book, the reason both men and women should read this book is because no one wants to see talent walk out the door because she “decided it just wasn’t worth it.”

If you’d like to read more from Helgensen and Johnson before picking up their book, head on over to ChangeThis and read their manifesto.