Fooling Some of the People All of the Time

by David Einhorn

(John Wiley & Sons Inc, 400 Pages)

In 2002, David Einhorn, the President of Greenlight Capital, gave a speech at a charity investment conference to benefit a children's cancer hospital. He was asked to share his best investment idea, so he did. He described his reasons why Greenlight had sold short the shares of Allied Capital, a leader in the private finance industry. Greenlight bet that the stock would decline because the company's business was in trouble and its accounting was corrupt. Einhorn's speech was so compelling that the next day, when the New York Stock Exchange opened for trading, Allied's shares remained closed. So many investors wanted to sell or short the stock that the NYSE could not balance all the sell orders to open Allied�s trading in an orderly fashion.

What followed was a firestorm of controversy. Allied responded with a Washington, D.C.�style spin-job� attacking Einhorn and disseminating half-truths and outright lies. Rather than protect investors by reviewing Einhorn's well-documented case against Allied, the SEC�at the behest of the politically connected Allied� instead investigated Einhorn for stock manipulation. Over the ensuing six years, the SEC allowed Allied to make the problem bigger by approving more than a dozen additional stock offerings that raised over $1 billion from new investors. Undeterred by the spin-job, lies, and investigations, Greenlight continued its research after the speech and discovered Allied�s behavior was far worse than Einhorn ever suspected� and, shockingly, it continues to this day.

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is the gripping chronicle of this ongoing saga. Page by page, it delves deep inside Wall Street, showing how the $6 billion hedge fund Greenlight Capital conducts its investment research and detailing the maneuvers of an unscrupulous company. Along the way, you'll witness feckless regulators, compromised politicians, and the barricades our capital markets have erected against exposing misconduct from important Wall Street customers. You will also discover the immense difficulties that prevent the government from sanctioning politically connected companies�making future Enrons inevitable. This revealing book shows the failings of Wall Street: its investment banks, analysts, journalists, and especially our government regulators.

At its most basic level, Allied Capital is the story of Wall Street at its worst. But the story is much bigger than one little-known company. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is an important call for effective law enforcement, free speech, and fair play.

Pow! Right Between the Eyes

by Andy Nulman

(John Wiley & Sons, 240 Pages)

Pow! Radical new methods for reaching jaded, cynical consumers

Put simply, when it comes to your business, your new idea, even yourself, this book can be the difference between a "Who Cares?" and a "Holy Jeez!"

Business, both big and small, is in desperate need of new ways to inspire bored, and cynical consumers who have grown weary of the same old song and dance. In today's information economy, it doesn't matter how many people you reach, but how much attention they pay. And the best way to get attention is with the powerful, but largely misunderstood, element of Surprise. Pow! Enter Andy Nulman (from the back door, obviously) with the art of surprise marketing. An explosive new outlook, surprise marketing solidifies the bond between you and your customers like nothing else, and keeps them coming back for more by providing a continuous flow of what they never expected. Pow! Right Between The Eyes reveals the secrets, theories and tactics of surprise marketing, and wields outrageous real-world examples (and even more outrageous tools like "The Lubricant to Yes" and "Euphoric Shock") to help expand the boundaries of the extreme and create a bigger bang for bigger bucks.

On his quest to unlock the secret of why some things knock your socks off and others put you to sleep, Nulman shares insights from director Alfred Hitchcock, designer Philippe Starck, playwright David Mamet, Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane, Harvard psychologists, songwriters, bloggers and even the inventor of Pirate Booty snack chips. And he shows how today's smartest companies are winning big with such surprises stories like:

• How Oprah's shocking shriek "Everybody Gets a Car" sent website traffic up 800% and helped the Pontiac G6 outsell its competitors by 20%.
• How Target earns $7 billion a year in free publicity from stunts like a floating temporary store in New York's Hudson River or throwing a vertical fashion show where acrobat models walked down the side of Rockefeller Center.
• How Bear Naked Granola reversed the trick-or-treat tradition by sending costumed street teams door-to-door to give away granola samples on Halloween.

Andy Nulman is a wildly-successful businessman and even wilder public speaker who first learned the power of surprise working with Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey and many other comedians as the co-founder and CEO of the Just For Laughs Festival, the world's largest comedy event. His book shares hilarious and effective surprise promotions that he himself dreamed up for the event and in his current position as co-founder, President and CMO of Airborne Mobile, which brings brands like Maxim, Family Guy and the NFL to the mobile media world.

Don't forget to read the book's two Forewords by the legendary John Cleese and CBS Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson. Surprising choices for a business book? Well, what did you expect?

Financial Darwinism

by Leo M Tilman

(John Wiley & Sons, 172 Pages)

Today�s complex economic and financial landscape requires a radically new way of thinking and making decisions on the part of executives, financial professionals, regulators, policy makers, and investors. Global systemic financial crises, like the one that ravaged the global financial system in 2007-2008, astonishing financial losses, and ruin of once-venerable institutions serve as convincing evidence on what happens otherwise. In Financial Darwinism, author Leo Tilman lays the groundwork for understanding the new financial order by introducing his evolutionary thesis and then outlines an actionable decision-making framework � which he refers to as Financial Darwinism � that enables financial instructions and investors to fully leverage the power of business strategy, corporate finance, investment analysis, and risk management in order to adapt and thrive. Filled with important insights, unique perspective and breadth of real-life experience, Financial Darwinism will help financial institutions and investors worldwide face modern-day challenges and create a lasting economic value amidst complex, uncertain, and constantly evolving business and market environments

Strategic Alliances

by Steve Steinhilber

(Harvard Business School Press, 112 Pages)

As a top executive, you've almost certainly forged strategic alliances with other companies. Some of these deals have worked--but many others have likely failed. In fact, companies worldwide launch more than two thousand strategic alliances every year, and more than half never deliver as promised.

In Strategic Alliances, Steve Steinhilber proves that, despite the odds, alliances are critical to the business strategy for companies competing globally: customers want integrated solutions to their problems, and that's pushing companies to work together to create differentiated offerings. Equally crucial, well-managed alliances generate important forms of business value, including new products and accelerated growth.

Drawing on his experience as the head of Cisco's Strategic Alliances group, Steinhilber has created tools and guidelines that will help you forge alliances that work. He describes the three essential building blocks of successful alliances and explains how to establish:

• The right framework--by articulating how an alliance will help you achieve your company's strategic business goals and identifying potential partners
• The right organization--by staffing your alliance organization with the right people and constantly honing their skills
• The right relationships--by cultivating trust among the many key internal contacts in your organization and your alliance partners

Engaging and authoritative, Making Alliances Work shows you how to manage strategic partnerships more effectively and maximize their value in a complex and changing business environment.

Skirts in the Boardroom

by Marshawn Evans

(Wiley, 240 Pages)

Inspiring, savvy business advice for professional women on the fast track to success.

S.K.I.R.T.S. in the Boardroom equips professional women with the strategies necessary to combine confidence and compassion, style and substance, and beauty and brains for professional success. A guidebook for helping professional women navigate the male-dominated corporate world, the book offers deep and inspiring advice for any woman who finds herself unmotivated, unhappy, or unsatisfied with her career. A must-have for all women who want to maximize their professional potential, S.K.I.R.T.S. in the Boardroom presents refreshing advice that is sensible, straightforward, and long overdue.

Marshawn Evans (Atlanta, GA) is an entertainment attorney and founder of Marshawn Evans Unlimited, a corporate life-enrichment consulting firm focused on peak performance, diversity, workplace readiness, and dynamic leadership strategies for women. She is also President of EDGE 3M Sports & Entertainment, a national brand management and marketing agency connecting companies and causes with sports figures and entertainers.

The Brand Bubble

by John Gerzema, Edward Lebar

(Jossey-Bass , 240 Pages)

Product Description

This book lays out credible evidence that points to yet another impending bubble. One which, if not corrected, could drive down valuation multiples and stock prices around the world. The authors have concluded from a detailed analysis of a decade�s worth of brand and financial data that business is riding on yet another bubble. A brand bubble.

The traditional business models and strategies marketers have used for generations simply no longer work. While most managers still see metrics like trust and awareness as the backbone of how brands are built, analysis shows they�re dead wrong�these metrics do not add to increased asset value. In fact, by following them, marketers are led astray, actually hastening the declining value of their brands.

The authors lay out a clear path to jumpstart the power of branding again. They show the brands that are succeeding already � and will succeed in the future � have an insatiable appetite for creativity and a questing spirit for change. They understand differentiation and how to evolve it. What they have is a more powerful form of differentiation. These brands offer consumers a palpable sense of movement and direction and contain energized differentiation that drive future corporate financial performance far greater than the traditional brands that have formerly dominated the market.

A Deadly Misunderstanding

by Mark D. Siljander

(HarperOne, 272 Pages)

An Excerpt for A Deadly Misunderstanding

With its glamorous history, mix of European and Arab influences and liberal, cosmopolitan culture, Beirut had once been known as �the Paris of the Mideast.� But those days were long past. There was no mistaking the street where I stood: we were in the center of a war zone.

It was the fall of 1982. Israeli troops were poised all along the country�s southern border, ready to go in and wipe out the Palestinians who were dug in along that same border and determined to repel the Israelis at any cost. It was a standoff ready to explode at the smallest spark. I had just spent an hour visiting Camille Chamoun, the eighty-two-year-old Christian former president of Lebanon, hoping to get his read on the situation. The conversation had been inconclusive.

Chamoun�s house was located on the Christian side of the barren strip of scorched earth that divided Beirut into its two warring, irreconcilable halves: East and West, Muslim and Christian. The desolate strip of land had been dubbed, with an irony I�m sure nobody intended, the Green Line. I�d never seen anything less fertile, less evocative of life, less green, than this parched place.

We emerged and stood for a moment, blinking under the glare of the Mideastern sun and chatting with our Israeli security guard, when suddenly a shot rang out.

I should have ducked, but instead I froze. This was only my second trip to the Mideast, and I hadn�t yet acquired the war-zone reflexes that would come in the years to follow. Like a carpenter�s calluses or coal miner�s cough, a kind of hair-trigger vigilance comes with the territory, part and parcel of the seasoned diplomat�s trade. In central Africa, you learn how to cope with mosquitoes: in Beirut, you learn how to duck bombs and bullets. But as a freshman congressman just learning the ropes, I was pretty green myself, and I was still staring dumbly at the rubble-strewn streets, looking vaguely for the source of the sound when I was grabbed and yanked roughly to the ground�and a sharp pinnnggg! rang out, tearing a small cloud of dust from the wall just inches from where my head had been. The young Israeli dragged me ten or fifteen feet to a bus, pitched me in, and jerked the door closed. Palestinian snipers were closing in.

With the sound of my heartbeat pumping in my ears, one thought flooded through my racing brain: What the hell am I doing here?

The Integrity Dividend

by Tony Simons

(Jossey-Bass, 256 Pages)

�If you walk the talk, practice what you preach, stand up for your beliefs, put your money where your mouth is, follow through on your promises�do what you say you will do�your business will make more money. You will also be more trusted, more powerful, more personally successful, have more loyal and committed people, and be more at peace with yourself.��From the Foreword by Jim Kouzes

Corporate and government scandals continue to deepen our mistrust of leaders. While credibility is the foundation of effective leadership, most leaders struggle, and sometimes fail, to align their words and their actions. Now for the first time, leadership expert Tony Simons has measured the bottom-line value of business leaders who live by their word and actually do what they say they are going to do. In The Integrity Dividend Tony Simons shows how leaders� personal integrity drives the profitability and overall success of their organization. This groundbreaking book is based in on solid research and reveals that businesses led by managers of higher integrity enjoy deeper employee commitment, lower turnover, superior customer service, and substantially higher profitability. This improved performance is the integrity dividend.

Simons conducted dozens of focus groups, surveyed thousands of employees, collected financial and operational numbers, and interviewed over 100 senior executives and executive coaches. The book lays out the research clearly and provides proven tools for managing common integrity challenges. It offers guidance for building individual credibility and for creating an organizational culture of integrity and accountability. Throughout, Simons uses real-world insight and stories drawn from senior executives, line managers, and coaches.

The Integrity Dividend is a fresh view of leadership at a time when it is most needed.

Iconoclast

by Gregory Berns, Ph.D.

(Harvard Business School Press , 224 Pages)

No organization can survive without iconoclasts -- innovators who single-handedly upturn conventional wisdom and manage to achieve what so many others deem impossible.

Though indispensable, true iconoclasts are few and far between. In Iconoclast, neuroscientist Gregory Berns explains why. He explores the constraints the human brain places on innovative thinking, including fear of failure, the urge to conform, and the tendency to interpret sensory information in familiar ways.

Through vivid accounts of successful innovators ranging from glass artist Dale Chihuly to physicist Richard Feynman to country/rock trio the Dixie Chicks, Berns reveals the inner workings of the iconoclast's mind with remarkable clarity. Each engaging chapter goes on to describe practical actions we can each take to understand and unleash our own potential to think differently -- such as seeking out new environments, novel experiences, and first-time acquaintances.

Packed with engaging stories, science-based insights, potent practices, and examples from a startling array of disciplines, this engaging book will help you understand how iconoclasts think and equip you to begin thinking more like an iconoclast yourself.

Author Bio:
Gregory Berns, MD, PhD, is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University. He has written for numerous science publications and has been interviewed on National Public Radio, CNN, and ABC's Primetime. He has been profiled frequently in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other media.

Relevance

by Tim Manners

(Portfolio, 224 Pages)

This book goes on sale September 18, 2008.

Branding expert Tim Manners says that marketers should give up the flashy practices and groupthink of the last fifty years--the demographics-driven strategies, fashion-obsessed things, and old-fashioned advertising. Today's customers don't care about those things. All they want to know is, "Why should I care? What's in it for me?"

Saving the World at Work

by Tim Sanders

(Currency, 224 Pages)

From Publishers Weekly
The Responsibility Revolution is underway, and it's challenging the importance of the bottom line, argues Sanders (Love Is the Killer App), former CSO of Yahoo. Both consumers and employers have turned away from price consciousness to demand that companies make a difference to society through their products, manufacturing methods, environmental efforts and community outreach. According to the author, casual consumers now represent the minority; mindful consumers have brought in a new value system, paying as much attention to a company's environmental and social policies as to its pricing structures. Companies that do not clean up their acts will be left in the dust, losing customers who want their money to go toward good causes and employees who place more importance on green factors and job satisfaction than pay scale. Through success stories like Horst Rechelbacher, the brains behind the ecologically sound cosmetics company Aveda, and Lee Scott's greening of Wal-Mart in 2004, Sanders makes a compelling argument for the necessity for businesses to appeal to their customers' hearts as well as their wallets. (Sept.)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Little Book That Saves Your Assets

by David M. Darst

(John Wiley & Sons Inc, 224 Pages)

While it's difficult to outperform the market year in and year out, some people continue to earn substantial market-beating returns from their portfolios. How do they do it? With the help of savvy asset allocation strategies, such as those developed by author David Darst, one of the world's leading thinkers in the field of asset allocation. Now, with The Little Book That Saves Your Assets, Darst discusses how readers can invest like the rich by implementing this proven approach in their everyday investment endeavors.

Based on brilliant thinking and innovative research, this book is crisp, clear, and down-to-earth. It explores both the art and science of asset allocation and makes this crucial method accessible to anyone--investors and professionals alike--all of whom can benefit from asset allocation strategies. Along the way, Darst details the importance of spreading assets among uncorrelated classes, and building a portfolio that can beat the market at best, and match it at worst. Page by page, he describes the principles behind this process and stresses the substantial investment returns that the right mix of stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, gold, commodities, and other assets can bring to the average portfolio.

Wealthy individuals and financial institutions have successfully used this strategy to achieve excellent returns in a variety of markets. And with The Little Book That Saves Your Assets, these same strategies can now be understood and used by anyone.

1,000 Dollars and an Idea

by Sam Wyly

(Newmarket Press, 256 Pages)

The rags-to-riches story of an amazing business wizard�from the Louisiana cotton fields to the worlds of computers, retailing, fast food, high finance, and green energy�life lessons from a man ahead of the pack and ahead of his time.

"My work is to create companies and build them," says the billionaire whom Fortune magazine, over thirty years ago, characterized_as "one of the most, if not the most, important entrepreneurs" of the century. This was even before Wyly contributed to nearly every great technological, service industry, and investment business breakthrough in the second half of the twentieth century.

Now, in his fast-paced, fascinating, and candid memoir, Wyly reveals the thought processes, relationships, and financial machinations behind the building of his diverse businesses over the last four decades.

Here's the story of how he worked his way through Louisiana Tech selling class rings and why, after his first job in which he broke sales records for IBM (along with Ross Perot, a fellow IBM salesman) and a brief stint at Honeywell, he decided to risk $1,000 of his savings to found the first "computer utility" company in the business world. This was in 1963. Two years later, he took his University Computing Company public and became an instant millionaire.

Never losing his entrepreneurial spirit, Wyly undertook one challenge after another, such as:
� Waging a successful anti-monopoly battle against AT&T, enabling him to build a "telephone highway" for computers
� Growing the modest Bonanza Steak House chain, which he "inherited" as the result of a bad debt, to a total of 600 outlets before selling it for a huge profit
� Creating a new systems software company, Sterling Software, which he eventually sold for $4 billion
� Dividending Sterling Commerce to public shareholders and selling to AT&T_for $4 billion in 2000
� Expanding the small arts-and-crafts chain Michaels Stores from 10 to 1,000 stores before selling it for $6 billion in 2006
� Founding Green Mountain Energy, which has become the largest and most profitable green business in the country.

Part autobiography and part inspirational self-help business guide, Wyly not only provides his homespun life lessons in the practice of starting and building businesses, but he also delivers refreshing new insights into how many American businesses operated from the 1950s to the present.

About the Author

Sam Wyly, a self-made billionaire of Scottish-Irish descent, grew up in Louisiana, attending local schools before eventually going to Louisiana Tech to study journalism and accounting. He was awarded a scholarship to the University of Michigan Business School, where he earned his MBA. Always an avid reader, student of history, and environmentalist, Sam and his brother, Charles, his partner in many of his businesses, together funded The Charles Wyly Sr. Tower of Learning at Louisiana Tech, built in memory of their father. Sam is an active proponent of clean air through clean energy. Recently, he and his wife, Cheryl, purchased the independent Explore Booksellers and Bistro in Aspen, where he maintains a home, as well as in Dallas and New York City.

Unleashing Innovation

by Nancy Tennant Snyder, Deborah L. Duarte

(Jossey-Bass Inc Pub, 0 Pages)

In 1999, Whirlpool was undergoing a company-wide reorganization to meet the demands of the post-globalization marketplace. To succeed in executing their transformative Brand-Focused Value-Creation strategy, Whirlpool needed to be both operationally excellent and innovative.

In publications such as BusinessWeek and Fast Company, the media have celebrated Whirlpool's transformation into a leading-edge innovator and Nancy Tennant Snyder's role as chief innovation officer. Ten years after this remarkable transformation, Unleashing Innovation tells the inside story of one of the most successful innovation turnarounds in American history. Nancy Tennant Snyder and coauthor Deborah L. Duarte reveal how Whirlpool undertook one of the largest change efforts in corporate history and show how innovation was embedded throughout the company, which ultimately led to bottom-line results.

Unleashing Innovation is filled with illustrative examples from Whirlpool and Whirlpool's cutting-edge brands including Jenn-Air, Bauknecht, KitchenAid, and Brastemp. Snyder and Duarte reveal the inner workings of Whirlpool's innovation machine, a framework that creates consistent and profitable innovation by involving all of Whirlpool's employees, and they debunk the myth that innovation comes only from the geniuses at the top. Rather than a cookie-cutter "how to" manual, Unleashing Innovation shows what happens when an organization creates a machine that involves everyone and fosters an environment that puts the emphasis on "learning and creating, dreaming, the mythology of heroes, and the spirit of winning." Unleashing Innovation shows how the engine of its innovation can be adapted to run in any business of any size and captures the steps the company took along the way, the key learnings, the tools used, the challenging setbacks, and the critical successes.

How the Wise Decide

by Aaron Sandoski, Bryn Zeckhauser

(Crown , 224 Pages)

ABOUT THIS BOOK
Discover the formula used by twenty-one of the world�s most extraordinary leaders to make consistent and smart decisions.

How do the wise decide and lead businesses and organizations to great success is the question Bryn Zeckhauser and Aaron Sandoski posed to themselves after landing their first jobs as managers. Despite the best training the world could offer�Harvard MBAs and stints at McKinsey & Company, the elite powerhouse consulting firm�they felt unprepared when faced with the pressure to make critical decisions. So they set out on a three-year quest to discover how people with remarkable success and experience in both corporate and public life��the wise��went about making crucial, often make-or-break decisions.

* How did William George, when CEO of Medtronic, get the real story about why a critical tool used by cardiologists was failing and use that information to fix a systemic problem within the company?

* When inventor Dean Kamen has to make a decision about investing in a new technology, why does he find it useful to �fill a room with barbarians� to get the best thinking from his team?

* How did Shelly Lazarus assess the risks of making a nontraditional career move, a decision that eventually led her to being appointed CEO?

* How did Stephen Schwarzman and Peter Peterson, the founders of The Blackstone Group, turn $400,000 of their own money into one of the world�s preeminent alternative asset managers with $100 billion under management?

These and the other accounts of the direct conversations Zeckhauser and Sandoski had with twenty-one major leaders show that between wise decisions and poor ones lie vast fortunes and extraordinary contrasts in success. How the Wise Decide distills their wisdom, and it reveals how you can use this wisdom to be on the winning side of the ledger.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRYN ZECKHAUSER is a senior fellow at Harvard University�s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and a principal at Equity Resource Investments, a real-estate investment firm with funds in the United States and Asia. She developed her interest in strategic decision making working with portfolio companies at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and with her Fortune 500 clients at McKinsey and Company.

AARON SANDOSKI is managing director of Norwich Ventures, a medical device venture capital firm. He began his professional career with the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and has also been a teaching fellow at Harvard University, where he won the Allyn Young Teaching Prize.