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Books: Subjects: Economics
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of Moreby Chris Anderson List Price: $24.95 Available from Amazon $14.97 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Wired editor Anderson declares the death of "common culture"—and insists that it's for the best. Why don't we all watch the same TV shows, like we used to? Because not long ago, "we had fewer alternatives to compete for our screen attention," he writes. Smash hits have existed largely because of scarcity: with a finite number of bookstore shelves and theaters and Wal-Mart CD racks, "it's only sensible to fill them with the titles that will sell best." Today, Web sites and online retailers offer seemingly infinite inventory, and the result is the "shattering of the mainstream into a zillion different cultural shards." These "countless niches" are market opportunities for those who cast a wide net and de-emphasize the search for blockbusters. It's a provocative analysis and almost certainly on target—though Anderson's assurances that these principles are equally applicable outside the media and entertainment industries are not entirely convincing. The book overuses its examples from Google, Rhapsody, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and eBay, and it doesn't help that most of the charts of "Long Tail" curves look the same. But Anderson manages to explain a murky trend in clear language, giving entrepreneurs and the rest of us plenty to think about. (July) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google "Anderson’s insights with the Long Tail continue to influence Google’s strategic thinking in a profound way." |
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everythingby Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner List Price: $25.95 Available from Amazon $15.57 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. Levitt has a knack for making that principle relevant to our daily lives, which could make this book a hit. Malcolm Gladwell blurbs that Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America," an invitation Gladwell's own substantial fan base will find hard to resist. 50-city radio campaign. (May 1) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th EditionList Price: $36.95 Available from Amazon $22.17 On 7-19-2006
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Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane Worldby James J. Cramer List Price: $26.00 Available from Amazon $15.60 On 7-19-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly After telling the story of his own trading days in Confessions of a Street Addict, Cramer appeases fans hoping for advice on how to duplicate his success with their own investment portfolios. But not without some strong caveats: his approach requires devoting at least an hour a week to educating yourself about each stock you own. But since most pros are "rank amateurs themselves," anyone willing to do the work should consider getting in. Cramer breaks down the fundamentals of his investment approach, built on the twin principles of diversification and speculation: while most of your portfolio should contain reliables like oil, financials and blue-chip companies, 20% percent of your money should go toward a slightly riskier bet on a company's future ("owning a stock is a bet on the future, not the past"). He also explains techniques for figuring out when to buy rock bottom stocks and sell the ones that have hit their peaks. Cramer drills his main points over and over, which can get repetitive on the anecdotal level but reinforces the simplicity of his message: investing is for anybody willing to put the time into learning how to do it right. His enthusiasm should prove inspiring, and even investors on the wrong side of Wall Street's recent shakeups may find the courage to get back in the game. Either way, Cramer's radio, TV and print platforms are sure to make this one another hit. Agent, Suzanne Gluck at William Morris. (Apr. 5) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Cramer, cofounder of TheStreet.com, the daily financial news Web site, and cohost of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer, is a successful trader and former hedge-fund manager. His autobiography, Confessions of a Street Addict (2002), was an honest portrayal of his sometimes-brutal rise to the top; it was not a trading manual. Here Cramer reveals how he made his money and distills his methods so that the average reader can understand them. Rather than catering to the Wall Street party line of "buy and hold" investing, he is an advocate of "buy and homework." He recommends starting with just four stocks in safe, diverse sectors and devoting a minimum of one hour per week of study to each company. Although others condemn speculation as pure gambling, Cramer insists that the fifth part of your portfolio should be devoted to a purely speculative play to take advantage of potential "home runs"; although much of his advice is for serious students of the market, there is a special trial offer for ActionAlertsPLUS.com, a Web site where Cramer openly reveals all of his trades before he makes them, giving his subscribers the opportunity to get in before he does. David Siegfried Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
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Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson, Kenneth H. Blanchard (Foreword) List Price: $19.95 Available from Amazon $12.97 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives. Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice--nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are "littlepeople," mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It's not just sustenance to them; it's their self-image. Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they've found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods--our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in--although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out. Dr. Johnson, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and many other books, presents this parable to business, church groups, schools, military organizations--anyplace where you find people who may fear or resist change. And although more analytical and skeptical readers may find the tale a little too simplistic, its beauty is that it sums up all natural history in just 94 pages: Things change. They always have changed and always will change. And while there's no single way to deal with change, the consequence of pretending change won't happen is always the same: The cheese runs out. --Lou Schuler
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Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketingby Bryan Eisenberg, et al List Price: $19.99 Available from Amazon $12.99 On 7-19-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly The Eisenberg brothers (Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results) dub the guiding principles behind their marketing consultancy "Persuasion Architecture," but their methods have more in common with Hollywood screenwriting. Observing that one message no longer fits every audience, they create "personas" representing broad consumer patterns, based on the types identified in the Keirsey personality tests, renamed here as "methodical," "spontaneous," "humanistic" and "competitive" shoppers. Then the authors "storyboard" marketing scenarios guiding each type to the point of sale. Although 20th-century advertising was based on the Pavlovian model of instilling a desired reaction to stimuli, like the dog that expected dinner whenever a bell rang, the Eisenbergs say that increasing media fragmentation prevents advertisers from creating that sort of conditioned response. Anyway, they add, people have always been more like cats, occasionally distractable but for the most part independent-minded. Their solution—developing interactive relationships—is fairly standard in contemporary marketing circles, but by keeping the message simple, with short chapters low on jargon and high on real-world examples, the Eisenbergs just may push themselves to the front of the crowd. (June 13) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Book Description Good marketers know that customer-centered marketing is mandatory. However, we are not the customer. What the customer perceives as relevant is the thing successful marketers must anticipate, plan, and deliver on. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing offers Persuasion Architecture, a proven Persona-based methodology. Persuasion Architecture enables marketers to anticipate different angles from which customers frame their questions and then coordinate messaging across multiple channels so that marketers can create predictive models of customer behavior. Don't miss out on learning about this six-sigma marketing approach that can skyrocket the effectiveness of your interactive marketing. "There's some big thinking going on here-thinking you will need if you want to take your work to the next level. 'Typical, not average' is just one of the ideas inside that will change the way you think about marketing."-Seth Godin, Author, All Marketers Are Liars "Are your clients coming to you armed with more product information than you or your sales team know? You need to read Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? to learn how people are buying in the post-Internet age so you can learn how to sell to them."-Tom Hopkins, Master sales Trainer and Author, How to Master the art of Selling "These guys really 'get it.' In a world of know-it-all marketing hypesters, these guys realize that it takes work to persuade people who aren't listening. They've connected a lot of the pieces that we all already know-plus a lot that we don't. It's a rare approach that recognizes that the customer is in charge and must be encouraged and engaged on his/her own terms, not the sellers. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? takes apart the persuasion process, breaks down the steps and gives practical ways to tailor your approaches to your varying real customers in the real world. This book is at a high level that marketers better hope their competitors will be too lazy to implement."-George Silverman, Author, The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth "We often hear that the current marketing model is broken-meaning the changes in customers, media, distribution, and even the flatness of the world make current practices no longer relevant. Yet few have offered a solution. This book recognizes the new reality in which we operate and provides a path for moving forward. The authors do an outstanding job of using metaphors to help make Persuasion Architecture clear and real-life examples to make it come alive. Finally, someone has offered direction for how to market in this new era where the customer is in control."-David J. Reibstein, William Stewart Woodside Professor, Wharton business School of the University of Pennsylvania and former Executive Director, marketing Science Institute "If you want to learn persistence, get a cat. If you want to learn marketing, get this book. It's purrfect."-Jeffrey Gitomer, Author, The Little Red Book of Selling "In 1999, the Wachowski brothers revolutionized moviemaking with stunning new angles and special effects revealed in The Matrix. Now the 'Eisenbrothers' have done the same for business in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Stunning new angles! Techniques that will be copied for decades. Cat is sure to be remembered as the genesis of an important new direction in marketing."-Roy H. Williams, New York Times Best-Selling Author, The Wizard of Ads Trilogy "The Web is a democratizing force as the world's largest global brain. It educates everyone on the pros and cons of every product, service, and even person. An educated person doesn't react well to the traditional 'art of manipulation' that most marketers attempt to employ in their campaigns. As a matter of fact, it makes them angry and defensive-like a cat backed into a corner. No one understands this new world of marketing better than the Eisenbergs. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? is the marketing manifesto of our generation. Read it, weep, and then go do something about it." -Brett Hurt, Founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice, Founder of Coremetrics, and Shop.org Board Director "It is easy to buy traffic but persuading that traffic to buy, subscribe, or otherwise take a profitable action is essential. Persuasion Architecture provides a framework for companies to better understand and reach customers with more relevant messages that increase the probability of acquiring and serving customers. Traffic cost inflation is a real problem, and this book not only tells you how to allow customers to buy the way they want to buy but makes the entire process accountable. I'll be encouraging the companies I invest in to read it." -Tod Francis, Managing Partner, Shasta Ventures "Who's buying? How are they buying? And why do they buy from you? Consumers have been turning away from old media channels and even most methods of advertising to embrace new media. The Eisenbergs have developed a proven methodology for selling in this new environment where the old marketing rules no longer apply. This book will change how you think about marketing. It may even change how you think."-Rebecca Lieb, Executive Editor, The ClickZ Network "This book lays out a powerful and fresh way of thinking about personas, persuasion, and marketing in today's increasingly fragmented media environment. If you want a practical guidebook for successfully marketing to today's consumer, then this is a must-read."-Mark Kingdon, CEO, Organic, Inc. "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? systematically covers every aspect of critical thinking about customers and prospects a marketer could need in today's complex business world. This is a book you'll reach for every time you begin your strategic planning."-Susan Bratton, CEO, Cendara, Inc., and Executive Chair ad:tech Conferences "With Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?, the Eisenbergs have shown us the power of persuasion for marketing. They back up their positions with compelling case studies and great firsthand experience that is priceless. This is a must-read for all marketing professionals and is on my desk."-Rand Schulman, Chief Active marketing Officer, WebSideStory "The Brothers Eisenberg usher us out of the 20th-century age of media and into the 21st-century age of optimization. They show us step-by-step how to leave behind the diminished returns and false expectations of quantity, and how to replace them instead with the more universal appeal and profitability of quality."-Jeff Einstein, Media Pioneer and Social Critic "The Eisenberg brothers have done it again! Hot on the heels of their best-selling Call to Action, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? is a guide to the use of personas and Persuasion Architecture that will force readers to reconsider all of their marketing efforts. Chock full of 'big picture' thinking and great strategic advice, the chapters 'Choosing Personas' and 'Bringing Personas to Life' are must-reads for anyone serious about marketing. Jeffrey and Bryan force us to rehumanize our audience in a way that drives measurement and forces accountability."-Eric Peterson, Author, Web Analytics Demystified and Web Site Measurement Hacks "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? is a tremendous read. It has fresh ideas and practical solutions for persuading customers to act. I highly recommend this book."-Ivan R. Misner, PhD, New York Times Best-Selling Author and Founder of BNI
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The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctorby Andy Kessler List Price: $24.95 Available from Amazon $14.97 On 7-19-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Kessler, bestselling author of Running Money, made his fortune speculating on Silicon Valley. Now he turns his nose for new technology to medicine. Will the same advances that revolutionized computers ripple through hospitals, changing how health care works? Kessler interviews doctors, technicians, radiologists and the businessmen behind technology in medicine. Advances in radiology—which encompasses all the ways we peek inside our bodies, from X-rays to MRIs—are beginning to make our hospitals look like Star Trek. New scanners can provide a high-resolution, three-dimensional image of the heart and allow doctors to spot blockages. Computer-aided diagnostic software is slowly replacing radiologists in looking for cancer in mammograms. But HMOs, lawsuits and patients' desire for personal care may prevent these new techniques from ever being used. As Kessler asks, "What if the future was here with no one to pay for it?" Kessler has a raconteur's ability to entertain, and his outsider's view of medicine is far from typical in a book on health care. However, his narrative is fractured by too many entertaining anecdotes, preventing his story from moving forward. The hors d'oeuvres are delicious, but in this meal, there's not enough room left over for the meat. (July) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Book Description You get sick; you go to your doctor. Too bad. Because medicine isn't an industry, it's practically witchcraft. Despite the growth of big pharma, HMOs, and hospital chains, medicine remains the isolated work of individual doctors -- and the system is going broke fast. So why is Andy Kessler -- the man who told you outrageous stories of Wall Street analysts gone bad in Wall Street Meat and tales from inside a hedge fund in Running Money -- poking around medicine for the next big wave of technology? It's because he smells change coming. Heart attacks, strokes, and cancer are a huge chunk of medical spending, yet there's surprisingly little effort to detect disease before it's life threatening. How lame is that -- especially since the technology exists today to create computer-generated maps of your heart and colon? Because it's too expensive -- for now. But Silicon Valley has turned computing, telecom, finance, music, and media upside down by taking expensive new technologies and making them ridiculously cheap. So why not the $1.8 trillion health care business, where the easiest way to save money is to stop folks from getting sick in the first place? Join Kessler's bizarre search for the next big breakthrough as he tries to keep from passing out while following cardiologists around, cracks jokes while reading mammograms, and watches twitching mice get injected with radioactive probes. Looking for a breakthrough, Kessler even selflessly pokes, scans, and prods himself. CT scans of your heart will identify problems before you have a heart attack or stroke; a nanochip will search your blood for cancer cells--five years before they grow uncontrollably and kill you; and baby boomers can breathe a little easier because it's all starting to happen now. Your doctor can't be certain what's going on inside your body, but technology will. Embedding the knowledge of doctors in silicon will bring a breakout technology to health care, and we will soon see an end of medicine as we know it. |
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealthby T. Harv Eker List Price: $19.95 Available from Amazon $12.97 On 7-19-2006
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Eker's claim to fame is that he took a $2,000 credit card loan, opened "one of the first fitness stores in North America," turned it into a chain of 10 within two and a half years and sold it in 1987 for a cool (but somewhat modest-seeming) $1.6 million. Now the Vancouver-based entrepreneur traverses the continent with his "Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar," on which this debut motivational business manual is based. What sets it apart is Eker's focus on the way people think and feel about money and his canny, class-based analyses of broad differences among groups. In rat-a-tat, "Let me explain" seminar-speak, Eker asks readers to think back to their childhoods and pick apart the lessons they passively absorbed from parents and others about money. With such psychological nuggets as "Rich people focus on opportunities/ Poor people focus on obstacles," Eker puts a positive spin on stereotypes, arguing that poverty begins, or rather, is allowed to continue, in one's imagination first, with actual material life becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. To that end, Eker counsels for admiration and against resentment, for positivity, self-promotion and thinking big and against wallowing, self-abnegation and small-mindedness. While much of the advice is self-evident, Eker's contribution is permission to think of one's financial foibles as a kind of mental illness—one, he says, that has a ready set of cures. Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From AudioFile A witty pep talk for wealth-seekers is delivered by someone who's still amazed he's a millionaire. T. Harv Eker's audiobook should shake even the most entrenched negative thinkers out of their easy chairs. Eker is bursting with energy and the need to teach you, and you, and yes, you, how to increase your wealth and quality of life by emulating his methods, which, oddly enough, are similar in many ways to methods taught for centuries about self-improvement. The good news is this stuff is worth repeating as we tend to forget to maintain our momentum. Eker also imbues his lessons with easy-to-remember self-motivating techniques as you make your way to your abundant bliss. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition. |
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