Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press, 272 pages, $29.95, Hardcover, February 2012, ISBN 9781422133316

As a service company, when we receive feedback about a negative situation, we immediately act to resolve the conflict and then try to put a process in place to avoid such a thing happening in the future. Most books on service describe ways to do this: how to react to or plan for customer service breakdowns.

Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business asserts that service is not about reacting, but building customer satisfaction into the business model itself, so that employees and the systems they work within provide excellent service as a matter of routine.

What is surprising about the case stories in Uncommon Service is that the authors focus on how the companies are really bad at something, and how that serviced the great things they did in ways that allowed them to be unapologetic about the bad things. Commerce Bank, for example, chose (proven) nice service people over smart financial service people. The cost of the employees was higher than the super smart ones, so unlike other banks who hired super smart people, Commerce Bank kept their fees high, didn’t budge on them, and banked (no pun intended) that word-of-mouth of their great service would end up making them successful—and it did. The bad (higher fees) serviced the good (awesome service).

As the authors’ explain:

This point is crucial to understanding how to design uncommon service. In our experience, the number one obstacle to great service—number one by a long shot—is the emotional unwillingness to embrace weakness. But it couldn’t be clearer that to win in one area, you must lose in another. Progress requires sacrifice. Some part of your service offering must be thrown under the bus. […] Choosing bad is your only shot at achieving greatness. And resisting it is a recipe for mediocrity.

This is not how most of us think, yet the authors make some very interesting and data-backed observations to support their theory. In typical Harvard Business Review fashion, the book is packed with lengthy case studies, making it an interesting and convincing read that will help you find your opportunity to choose “the bad” while achieving your own uncommon service success.

Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired—and Secretive—Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky, Business Plus, 223 Pages, $26.99, Hardcover, January 2012, ISBN 9781455512157

Apple, one of the most iconic companies of this century, has created many life-changing products (products we mostly didn’t know we needed until they made them, and now can’t live without), yet we know little about the inner workings of this organization… other than what Apple wants us to know.

One thing I found particularly illuminating is Apple’s ability to say no. This company, with over $108 billion in revenue, and 30 years of business, can fit their entire product line on an average-sized conference room table. Their marketing and communications team continually simplifies their corporate message. Found at the bottom of a 2011 Apple press releas:

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

That is the entire company in three sentences. This is a lesson we all can learn, from limiting our product line to crafting our elevator pitch.

Inside Apple follows through on its promised internal view of this unique company and is particularly intriguing due to the loss of Steve Jobs, Tim Cook’s new position at the helm, the criticisms of its current manufacturing system, and the dominance of i-everything instead of the Mac computer. What will Apple do next? Lashinsky makes it clear that even Apple doesn’t know.

Apple is a company of paradoxes. Its people and institutional bearing are off-the-charts arrogant, yet at the same time they are genuinely fearful of what would happen if their big bets go bad. The creative side of the business … is made up of lifers or near lifers who value only an Apple way of doing things—hardly the typical creative mind-set. The operations side of Apple runs like any company in America, but better, and is led by a cadre of ex-IBMers, the cultural antithesis of Apple. Apple has an entrepreneurial flair yet keeps its people in a tightly controlled box, following time-tested procedures. Its public image, at least seen through its advertising, is whimsical and fun, yet its internal demeanor is cheerless and nose-to-the-grindstone.

Adam Lashinsky is the senior editor at large for Fortune and as such is uniquely qualified “to hack into Apple’s closed world and to decode its secret systems so that aspiring entrepreneurs, curious middle managers, envious rival CEOs, and creatives who dream of turning insights into inventions can understand the company’s processes and customs.” He is also a compelling storyteller whose prose moves quickly and is never dragged down by exclusivity or jargon. At a time when books about Apple are flooding the market, this is the one to read.

The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation by Ron Adner, Portfolio, 231 pages, $29.95, Hardcover, March, 2012, ISBN 9781591844600

Of all that’s been written and espoused on innovation over the past several years, it seems a key consideration has often been overlooked, one that Dartmouth College professor Ron Adner has gleaned from years of studying the subject. Adner has now detailed his findings as well as his prescription for greater success at innovation in The Wide Lens, in which cites many examples of companies that failed to check the “innovation blind spot” of their innovation ecosystem and consequently failed with innovations that should have been wild successes.

In the case of Philips Electronics, the invention of HDTV in the mid 1980s was thwarted by a lack of television programing recorded in HD—cameras and even a broadcasting standard were not yet in place. Sony had a similar blind spot when it developed the first e-reader, only to realize that e-books were not yet readily available for purchase. Ditto Johnson Controls, which developed a new generation of electrical switches and sensors to dramatically reduce energy use in buildings. The blind spot in its ecosystem was a lack of architects, electricians and others willing to adjust their routines in order to specify the new money-saving technology.

Adner writes:

Welcome to the world of innovation ecosystems—a world in which the success of a value proposition depends on creating an alignment of partners who must work together in order to transform a winning idea to a market success. A world in which failing to expand your focus to include your entire ecosystem will set you up for failure. Avoidable failure.

Through more than 10 years of study, Adner has developed blueprints and systems to assess a company’s innovation blind spots, its innovation ecosystem, and its odds of success. The most effective way to set a wider lens, according to Adner, is to create what he calls a Value Blueprint, which identifies the players and intermediaries, clarifies the project and identifies risks and ways to assess and move around those risks. Though Adner acknowledges there will be unseen challenges and unknowns, the Value Blueprint will help take the foreseeable challenges out of a project’s execution.

The Wide Lens opens the readers’ eyes to the bigger picture and expands the mind to the possible pitfalls that have come to stand in the way of the success of many innovative products and services, including vehicle tires that can be safely driven on after a blowout, the electric car, and inhalable insulin. Had a wider lens been employed at the time of the creation of these valuable innovations, the world might be a better place. Don’t miss out on your opportunity to see your innovation go from conception to success by engaging a wider lens.

Mrs. Moneypenny, long-time Financial Times columnist, concludes her book, Sharpen Your Heels: Mrs. Moneypenny’s Career Advice for Women, with this:

One more piece of careers advice.

A final word to all the ambitious women who will read this book. When you get to the top — and if you follow my advice, you will do so — remember to turn round and reach back to help the generation of women behind you.

As Madeleine Albright once said, ‘There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.’

At the risk of ‘giving away the ending’ I thought it was critical to highlight this section because Mrs. Moneypenny is doing just that — reaching back, or rather, reaching out — to women who need a hand up or a way through the obstacles that might appear in their career path. While a common refrain in this book is that a woman can’t have it all even if she is doing it all, she is very clear that women can have success. At any age. By any personal definition.

If you are still in school, or university, or halfway through your career, or even retired and wondering if you have left it too late to try for success, read this book and see if it inspires you. There is no specific time in your career when you will need more, or less, help and support–at every age and at every stage women do better when they have the right ideas, the right focus, and the right advice.

In her signature witty and pragmatic style, Mrs. Moneypenny encourages ambitious women to first believe that it is not too late, whether you are making a career change, coming back to work after giving birth, or even in retirement. Then, she advises: build and utilize your network relationships; learn to say no (even if it means choosing a board meeting over your child’s concert); allocate your time and energy wisely by deciding what matters to you most; become financially literate (you need not be an accountant or MBA to work your way up, but you should be able to talk like one); promote yourself; and ask for help.

Perhaps the most intriguing chapter she offers is titled “The Third Dimension” which is “all about doing voluntary work in order to further your career.” She cautions that some “may find that [suggestion] rather mercenary…” but “[f]inding a third dimension that benefits you, your career, your business or your family in some way at the same time as you are able to volunteer your skills creates a virtuous circle from which everyone profits.”

And so it comes full-circle that Mrs. Moneypenny has dedicated herself to helping other women achieve success both as an example of success–in addition to her work as a columnist, she is a “TV personality, owner of a small successful business, wife, and mother to Cost Centers 1, 2, and 3″– and an author of Sharpen Your Heels.

Our economic lives could literally stop on a dime. All it would take is an agreement redefining what a dime is, or is worth, backed by or tied to. It’s happened before, and The Economist‘s “Buttonwood” columnist Philip Coggan believes it will inevitably happen again as the great international play of creditors and debtors enters its next act.

Coggan, in his new book Paper Promises: Debt, Money, and the New World Order (released today by PublicAffairs), identifies turning points in the history of economies, nations and international affairs by examining the relationships between creditors and debtors. And to do this, it is important for him to identify exactly what money is and has been, something that has changed throughout history as economies rise and fall. This makes for a fascinating story that clears the cobwebs of the past and brings us up to the present day. As he writes: “Given that mankind has been using money for thousands of years, it is perhaps surprising that money is still such a nebulous concept. … Over time, money has been everything from precious metals through paper to entries on a computer screen. One writer defined it quite neatly: ‘Money is the belief that someone will pay you back.’”

What constitutes money and how it is exchanged coincides neatly with the rise and fall of powers. Quoting John Kenneth Galbraith, the author notes that “If the history of commercial banking belongs to the Italians and of central banking to the British, that of paper money issued by a government belongs indubitably to the Americans.” But regardless of what form money takes, it is when that “belief that someone will pay you back” is challenged that matters become especially delicate between debtors and their creditors, and the rules get rewritten. And it is a situation that looks increasingly likely today.

Throughout history, the most popular political reactions to unmanageable debt have been deflation and default—diluting the purity of coinage and devaluing currency to lessen the burden of debt, or simply refusing to pay it back. One great example of the former is Henry VIII, “known as ‘old copper nose’ because of his habit of adulterating silver coins, the base metal underneath showing through the wear.” Similar tactics diluted the silver content of Roman coinage by “96 percent over the course of two centuries.” But repaying debts in debased currency is probably preferable to the outright defaults of some monarchs, such as Philip IV of France:

Philip IV, who ruled from 1285 to 1314, borrowed heavily but forced his bankers into exile rather than repay them. Just to put icing on the gâteau, he then decreed that the principal on all other debts must be repaid to the crown. The result was the ruin of his main creditor, the Order of the Knights Templar.

Of course, exiling your bankers is not an option when debt becomes international. Resolving debt is now a political issue dependent on international agreements. The gold standard was one such (and as the author explains, accidental) agreement, and worked quite well until it was abandoned in the attrition of the First World War. The Bretton Woods system—an agreement in the wake of World War II under which currencies were tied to the dollar and, because the US held 60 percent of the world’s gold bullion, to gold through the dollar—was another. That system was the norm until 1971, when facing a crisis of confidence in the dollar the United States abandoned that agreement and decoupled the value of the dollar from gold.

Since then, currency exchange rates have “floated” on the foreign exchange market. This has increased capital flow, and the financial sector has exploded in size and wealth since. It has also allowed governments to run greater deficits because they can manipulate their currencies more easily. This is the story told in the second half of the book, a story of easy credit and asset bubbles. It is the story of modern finance and the brink of disaster it brought us to that’s been covered so well in so many books of late, here told through the lens of the entire history of money and debt documented in the book’s first half. It is a perspective that makes our current crisis look less unique, even as the author references research done in another recent book entitled This Time Is Different:

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff recount that sovereign default has occurred in a number of waves, starting with the Napoleonic Wars. In the 1840s cycle, nearly half the countries in the developed world were in default. There was a 1870s to 1890s wave, associated with falling commodity prices, and a 1930s to 1950s wave, linked to the Great Depression and the war.

Between the Second World War and the current crisis, sovereign debt was almost always associated with the developing world, and the debate largely focused on how much of that debt should be forgiven for historical reasons or on humanitarian grounds. Today it is the developing world, largely China and the resource-rich nations of the Middle East, that acts as the creditor to developed, debtor nations—the United States the largest among them. But, as we’re seeing in the news everyday now, it is Europe where the real worry is. (Just yesterday the Prime Minister of Romania resigned amidst growing protests over austerity measures there, and his was but the latest government to fall across Europe since the debt crisis began.) Essentially, the current relationship ultimately relies on faith in governments, which is wearing thin across the Western World.

Coggan brings us to this present moment in history with great skill and scholarship, and a steady, masterful hand. He explores the various aspects, implications and possible outcomes of this new paradigm, and believes that “the debt is unlikely to be repaid in real terms.” “The Unholy Trinity” he sees coming down the road is inflation, stagnation, and default, with some sovereign defaults incredibly likely in the Eurozone, and countries that still control their own currencies like America and Britain “partially defaulting” in the sense that they depreciate the value of their currency to make their debts more manageable.

The ultimate solution, however, is where the “New World Order” in the book’s subtitle comes in. This is “where the buck stops,” or at least where it stops floating as it has since 1971. He believes the current arrangement of “floating exchange rates in the developed world and managed rates in the developing world” will come to an end. He sees the most likely outcome being a new agreement between China and the United Stated—the world’s largest creditor and its largest debtor—in which the West agrees to a new system of capital controls as China allows it’s currency to appreciate and America reigns in its national debt.

Nassim Nicholas Talb, the well-known author of The Black Swan, is quoted on the cover saying “This book stands way above anything written on the present economic crisis.” I think there’s a whole library’s worth of brilliant books on the present crisis, and I wouldn’t want to judge a peopled narrative like Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail against a history of currency and debt like Coggan’s, or put up what I read as a character study (of both people and nations) like Michael Lewis’s Boomerang against a modern financial history like Bethany Mclean and Joe Nocera’s All the Devils Are Here. Coming from a company with a bookseller background, I have a firm belief in matching up the right reader with the right book, and would recommend different books to different people for different reasons. (And if you like this book, I would recommend picking up Menzie Chinn and Jeffry Frieden’s Lost Decades, James Rickards’ Currency Wars and Keith Roberts’ Origins of Business, Money, and Markets to go along with it.)

All that said, I think Paper Promises is not only a great book, it is a great accomplishment—a brilliant work of financial history, an clear examination of the present moment, and a journalistic masterpiece all wrapped into one.

“Reading leads to more reading. It leaves you hungry and leads you to the ideas, information and inspiration to try something new. As the book of the year, Great By Choice begins: “We cannot predict the future. But we can create it.” – In the Books, 2011

800-CEO-READ has spent the past 28 years helping lead people to ideas that can change the way they think about business. Join us on February 14, 2012 at a very special Translator Lab as we facilitate a conversation about each of the winning books from the 2011 Business Book Awards. You’ll hear lessons and insights from the work of experts in Leadership, Management, Marketing & Sales, Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Personal Development, Innovation & Creativity, Finance and Economics, and General Business, plus have an opportunity to share your own experiences.

Each attendee will also receive a copy of In the Books – an annual guide to help lead you to the most quality business information, and a copy of the Best Business Book of 2011: Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen’s, Great By Choice.

Registration is FREE, but click here to reserve a seat, and info on time and location. Hope to see you there!

It used to be that there were entrepreneurs, and then the rest of us who were happy to help others achieve their goals and somehow find our own in the process. That’s changed. Many people are pursuing their own business ideas, and catching up on ideas and knowledge to help them run that business. For those that work for others, they too sense that stability is not what it used to be, and might be mentally preparing for the next step – whether they decide to take it, or it’s decided for them.

Here’s a book that can help people on either side of the fence. Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha’s The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. It begins with the premise that there actually are not two sides of the fence, that all humans are entrepreneurs. Each of us have the will to create and survive.

Why the start up of you? When you start a company, you make decisions in an information-poor, time-compressed, resource-constrained environment. There are no guarantees or safety nets, so you take on a certain amount of risk. The competition is changing; the market is changing. The conditions in which entrepreneurs start and grow companies are the conditions we all now live in when fashioning a career. Whether you’re working toward a promotion or simply trying to hold on to your job – you never know what’s going to happen next. Information is limited. Resources are tight. Competition is fierce. The world is changing. This means you need to be adapting all the time. And if you fail to adapt, no one – not your employer, not the government – is going to catch you when you fall.

Some will recognize co-author Reid Hoffman as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network for professionals to share their work histories, skills, education, and career goals. It’s clear that Hoffman knows of the world he speaks of, and understands the changes that have occurred as people try to position themselves and their skills within an increasingly competitive pool of opportunities.

And some might say that this has always been the case. It’s always been challenging to get a job, to stand out in the crowd, to have one’s unique and individual talent be seen as valuable. As true as that is, what this book clearly points out is what has changed, is the movement away from labor, the movement back toward ourselves as creative beings and survivors. When one focuses on these attributes, on themselves, they develop their skills and unique talents in a stronger way, rather than looking at which opportunities are available, and attempting to fit themselves within that. The result is more control over one’s destiny, and the ability to discover opportunities based on their strengths and interests as opposed to taking the best option available.

This is a great book to help anyone on this path, currently employed, or not. It’s filled with information on creating competitive advantage, strengthening your network, generating opportunities, better understanding risk, and becoming more successful on your own terms.

In a serendipitous turn of events, a copy of Have a Nice Conflict landed on my desk the same day that I happened to watch a current episode of Sesame Street with my son that features Mother Goose and her struggle to write a new rhyme because she had run out of conflicts to inspire her. As with all Sesame Street skits, there is a lesson to be learned. Conflict happens, and while the drama of a good conflict can be sensational (or rhyme-spirational), it’s important to learn how to work through them to maintain good relationships between friends.

It struck me that day that while we are taught from an early age how to deal with conflict–everything from a friend breaking a toy to handling the playground bully–it’s not an easy thing to master. Whether we are 6 or 46. So it is that we still very much need books like Have a Nice Conflict. Few people are really good at dealing with conflict. Possibly because conflict comes in all shapes and sizes. And even if you are someone who handles conflict well, you may be dealing with a friend or coworker who does not. Because conflict is, at it’s roots, emotional, and as with most things, emotions often get in the way of logical resolution.

In Have a Nice Conflict, the authors, Tim Scudder, Michael Patterson, and Kent Mitchell of Personal Strengths USA, tell the story of John Doyle, a sales manager who was going places until his interpersonal style–described in the book as abrasive, which worked well in making sales deals but not so well internally–begins to work against him. When his team starts to abandon ship, and he is turned down for a promotion, Doyle is encouraged to see a “conflict doctor” named Mac.

As you may have guessed from the above description Have a Nice Conflict is a business fable. “Although this tale is pure fiction, the situations were inspired by our real-world experiences in personal and organizational development–and life in general.” Underlying Doyle’s story are “the practical ideas of relationship awareness theory” with the goal of not only resolving workplace conflict, but also enabling people to “reduce the amount of conflict you experience in your life.”

The story begins with John Doyle having a very bad day. Not only is he passed over for promotion, but his top sales representative has surprisingly resigned. John had already had one of his top performers leave several months earlier, and on that same very bad day, he found out that he, John Doyle, was the prime reason that person had left. He learns from a respected customer that “the lifeblood of any organization is people. Our lives in general are all about people. You got conflict in your life? You’re choking off your blood supply.” That same customer also hands John a business card that reads, “Have a Nice Conflict” and includes a phone number.

Enter Dr. Mac who will act as guru to John Doyle as he learns a lot about improving his people skills.

What happens next is best left between the covers of this book, a book that not only tells a fast-paced and genial story, but also includes such unique additions as John’s Notebook, Dr. Mac’s Statement of Philosophy, and the Character Assessment Results (lots of helpful graphs and graphics) that explain the Strength Deployment Inventory assessment that the authors know so well.

If conflict has you tied in knots, Have a Good Conflict is certain to help you understand the motives, behaviors and perceptions of the people involved and how they change when conflict rears its head. Perhaps it won’t be resolved as quickly as those in nursery rhymes, but certainly this book will lead you closer to a happy ending.

In a time when unemployment is high, energy prices are on the rise, and quality food grows scarce, it’s very nice to read a book like Abundance: Why the Future Will Be Much Better Than You Think. In some ways, this new book by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler seems too good to be true. But upon opening the cover, it’s clear that there are ideas within that aren’t just intended to raise hype (and false hope).

There are four forces the authors identify that are closing the gap on high privilege and, well, the rest of us: Exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion. These forces, the author’s say, will solve our biggest problems – problems we have faced since the dawn of humanity.

“…for the first time in history, our capabilites have begun to catch up to our ambitions. Humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation in which technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standards of living for every man, woman, and child on the planet.”

From water, education, rights, and more, the authors explain how technology and the work developing it will expand not only how our economy and business will change, but how we as individuals will within this new system.

Part technology, part business, and part politics, this is a book that might inspire entrepreneurs to focus on specific positive trends, and make us all stop and think about how we might contribute with our own business.  It will be interesting to watch the conversations that come out of this book, and of course, to see some of the actual steps toward making abundance a reality.

And as the authors describe in detail early in the book, the first step toward understanding how to make it possible is to understand that it actually is possible.

From the authors of Where Does the Money Go?: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis and Who Turned Out the Lights?: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, comes a new book about an issue of grave national importance that has touched most of our lives recently, and will be central to the political debate this election year.

In Where Did the Jobs Go—And How Do We Get Them Back?: Your Guided Tour to America’s Employment Crisis, being released tomorrow by William Morrow & Company, Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson have provided a thoroughly researched, easy-to-read analysis of the jobs situation in America—minus the hyperbole, political posturing, and invective that’s been thrown around the public debates and airwaves recently and is certain to increase in the coming months. As the authors explain in the book’s preface, they wrote this book as “a guide for citizens, not offering advice for investors, entrepreneurs, or job hunters.” In that sense it’s not a proper business book per se, but it can help each of us see the overall jobs picture and business environment more clearly.

The situation is difficult in both its human cost and economic complexity, but Bittle and Johnson try to keep the mood light, cleverly peppering in anecdotes from popular culture sources such as TV shows Friends and Seinfeld, the 1950s movie Dragnet, the musical career of Elvis, and more to explain the economic theories and principles their book needs to address the jobs issue thoroughly. And so the book is able to tackle frightening statistics and daunting questions without losing the lay reader or terrifying the nightly news watcher. They’re also able to look at these issues without becoming embroiled in the partisan debate that so often dominates the discussion on the cable news networks, though they don’t shy away from the more complicated and complex issues. It is because the issues are complex and complicated and so rarely conform to either a conservative or liberal narrative that they’re able to do so. The fundamental and hotly debated issue of whether the employment crisis is cyclical or structural, for instance, in which the business and political implications are so huge, isn’t clear—or if it is, it’s clearly not one-sided.

Chapters 5 through 11, the section of the book entitled “Inquiring Minds Want to Know,” tackles the most contentious debate going—that of austerity versus stimulus. The authors rightly point out that stimulus has become unpopular, partly because most Americans tend to equate the word stimulus with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or TARP) that bailed out the big banks and the auto companies. (TARP was not, in fact, part of the stimulus, but an emergency measure to recapitalize the banks in an effort to keep the crisis on Wall Street from spilling over into the larger, “real” economy. The stimulus actually included measures that are overwhelmingly popular—tax breaks, aid to state and local governments, and help for the unemployed. Conversely, cutting the deficit, or austerity, is more popular in theory but the measures it calls for—raising taxes and cutting popular programs like Social Security and Medicare—are wildly unpopular.)

The comments in parentheses above are my own. The authors don’t delve too deeply into political opinion, but stick instead to Dragnet Joe Friday’s “just the fact ma’am” approach. In the “Inquiring Minds Want to Know Section,” they ask seven questions: Would Balancing the Budget Create Jobs?; Would Cutting Taxes Help Create Jobs?; Would Cutting Bureaucracy Help Create Jobs?; Would Reviving Manufacturing Help Create Jobs?; Would Improving Education Help Create Jobs?; Would a Major Infrastructure Project Help Create Jobs? and; Would Closing the Gap Between Rich and Poor Help Create Jobs? You may think you know the “facts ma’am” answers to most of these questions. I know I did, and I know I was surprised by some of them and conclusions I came to afterward.

The book then moves on to the larger and longer-term effects of globalization, technology, immigration, and the aging of the baby-boomers. And sticking to it’s nonpartisan approach, the “Fourteen Big Ideas for Creating More and Better Jobs” at the end of the book are all over the partisan map, including everything from rolling back environmental regulations to keep energy costs low to supporting the union movement and getting business out of the health insurance business.

There was a really great book by Nicholas Wapshott put out late last year by W.W. Norton & Company entitled Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics (I plan on reviewing it here soon). In it, Wapshott details how the economic debate between intervention and unfettered markets that has become so rancorous in this country and around the Western world began. Where Did the Jobs Go—And How Do We Get Them Back?: Your Guided Tour to America’s Employment Crisis details how the various sides of that debate could conceivably find a compromise, at least in the near term and with regards to the single issue of job creation.