Amazon keeps a continual tab of what it deems the best books of the year so far in several categories. Here are the online giant’s best business and investing books so far in 2011.
1. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul
by Howard Schultz. The president and chairman of Starbucks shares the remarkable story of his return and the company’s ongoing transformation under his leadership, revealing how, during one of the most tumultuous economic times in history, Starbucks again achieved profitability and sustainability without sacrificing humanity.
2. Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions
by Guy Kawasaki. The author of The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions.
3. Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
by David Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright. Shows leaders how to assess, identify, and upgrade their tribes’ cultures, one stage at a time.
4. In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
by Steven Levy. Wired magazine writer Levy recaps Google’s groundbreaking search engine and fabulously profitable online ad–brokering business, and elucidates the cutting-edge research and hard-nosed cost-efficiencies underlying them.
5. Poke the Box
by Seth Godin. A manifesto about producing something that’s scarce, and thus valuable.
6. Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity
by Josh Linkner. A 5-step process for creating profitable new ideas, empowering all your employees to be creative, and sustaining your competitive advantage over the long term.
7. We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World
by Simon Mainwaring. How to make your brand leverage social media to earn consumer goodwill, loyalty and profit, while creating a third pillar of sustainable social change through conscious contributions from customer purchases.
8. The Thank You Economy
by Gary Vaynerchuk. Tips on using social media tools to connect to customers.
9. Beyond Wealth: The Road Map to a Rich Life
by Alexander Green. Commentary on the most important aspects of our lives: love, work, honor, trust, freedom, death, fear, truth, beauty and other timeless issues.
10. Endgame: The End of the Debt SuperCycle and How It Changes Everything
by John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper. How the “debt supercycle” is adversely affecting developing countries around the world, including the United States.
