If you need a stocking stuffer for your business friend check this out.

Jeffrey Gitomer is a phenomenon. He is the hardest working man in the business of motivation. I have known Jeffrey for well over a decade. In fact, the updated version of The Sales Bible still carries my name on the cover. Weird but true. Jeffrey called and asked if I would give him a plug for the hard cover of the book and I did (and that is why my quote is on the cover).

For the past two years he has been flooding the market with a series of brilliant books on laser focused issues. The Little Red Book of Selling started things, and that book was quickly followed by The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, then The Little Black Book of Connections (read my review here), and now The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude.

The reason I decided tell you about this library is that I spent some time with the YES book and loved it. So I went back to the other books and found that there is a reason that Jeffrey is the only person, that I know of, who has every had three different books on The Wall Street Journal weekly best seller list during the same week.

Now, what makes his books so special? They are a perfect size. They fit in your hand and feel comfortable. The pages are four color. The takeaways in each book are bite-sized and just perfect to read on an airplanethat is why you have seen these books stacked on the shelves at airport bookstores. Jeffrey’s writing is extremely conversational and fun to read. Plus, the books have rounded edges and those cool ribbon page markers. They also lay open without breaking the spine. Whats not to like about that?

These books are the perfect gift for the business person in your life. Honest!

As readers of this blog know I like music. I like all kinds of music. I have to tell you all that, at the ripe age of sixty five, Bob Dylan has done it again. His new album called Modern Times is about as perfect an album as I have heard in a long time. Now we know that Mr. Dylan may not have the best voice on the planet but what he has, he uses brilliantly.

When you think back over his career and how he has always never followed the pack. How he has always been the dog leading the pack. The Martin Scorseses No Direction Home really documented this.

This album reminds me of what it would be like to be sitting on the porch and grandpa Bob was playing music to his grand kids on the front porch right after dinner on a warm summer night. The music is deceivingly simple, amazingly melodic, and just fun to hear.

Now I understand that this blog is about business books and business. Think about the fact that Bob Dylan has been doing the exact same job for forty five years and does something this different and good. Do we still have that creative burst in us after forty five years? I hope so. Drucker did, Deming did, Buffett does, Bennis does, Peters does.

When a baseball book is done right, it is unbelievably good. I mean like Boys of Summer and pretty much anything Roger Angell wrote. Nine Innings by Dan Okrent. I could go on but…

When we created a marketing piece this year I was asked to display the ISBN of my favorite all-time book. Now this is the best book of all time! Dickens, Hemingway, Hiaasen. Who would get the call? I did spend serious thinking about this because the marketing piece was going to authors and publishers so the book had to be pretty cool or I would look goofy. My choice was another baseball book. Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. A portion of the book was made into Field of Dreams. Baseball books can capture a smell, a feeling, a mood extremely well and both Shoeless Joe and Echoing Green do that.

What has brought this rambling on? Over the weekend I finally finished another baseball book. The book is called The Echoing Green by Joshua Prager sad to say the book is being published in September of this year but you can pre order it here.

The book is the story of the shot heard around the world. For you youngsters or non baseball fans, that is the home run that decided the National League Pennant in 1951. It was the final inning of a three game playoff to decide who would go to the World Series. It is also the story of two baseball players Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson. The hitter and the pitcher of the shot. But as in most great baseball books, this is a book about an era, about a team and about a world that seems more in control. An aside, I actually got to see Bobby Thomson play for the Milwaukee Braves before a young player came up and moved him. That player was Henry Aaron. Yeah, Im that old.

The book came from a Wall Street Journal article in 2001 where the author reveals that the Giants were stealing the catchers signs to the pitcher in the Polo Grounds with a telescope and they had been doing that for a chunk of the year of 1951.
Why am I writing about this on a business book blog? I have no idea but it is kind of like why does a dog licks its butt, because it can because I can, I guess is the answer.

Seriously this is a great read that you will remember for a long time.

A while ago I posted my thoughts about a book called Chasing Daylight. Today’s New York Times reviews the book here. After thinking about the book for the past week, I continue to love the book. Check it out. Read it.

I have been on vacation this week. Now I take two kinds of vacations. Vacations where I go away and turn everything off and veg. Then I have vacations where I read in bed for an hour in the mornings, cook soup, putter in the garden and hit the links; these are the vacations where the Blackberry is turned on and I stay in touch with the office. This has been that kind of vacation.

I want to tell you about two books that I have read this week and loved. They aren’t my typical suggestions for you as they aren’t books about business. I actually read other kinds of books, too. Michael Connellys The Lincoln Lawyer is the best lawyer/courtroom book I have read in ages. This guy has been writing really good noir books for years. This is a brighter book with a great plot.

The other book is a coffee table book called The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher. This book is hard to explain. As she states in the dust jacket,

All cities, big and small, rely on a vast array of interconnecting systems to take care of their citizens most basic needs; keeping water bubbling through the pipes, traffic moving on the streets, power flowing to businesses and homes. Largely invisible, and almost always taken for granted, these are the basic building blocks of urban life. But how exactly do these systems work? Using New York Cityamong the largest and most complex of world citiesas its point of reference, The Works answers that question.

Now if that was all that the book offered, it would be interesting. The book is really richly detailed with great graphics. I learned the reason behind those stacks that have steam coming out of them on the streets of New York. Check it out.

Now, I have to depart because I have tee time shortly.