Summer Grab Bag Book Giveaway

The public health instruction that everyone who could work from home should work from home wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t get behind my desk over the past 16 months. You see, we were still in the midst of sorting through and organizing the many books we’d received over the course of 2019—over 600 submissions to our annual business book awards alone—when the pandemic hit and Wisconsin’s safer-at-home order was issued. Stacks of books waiting to be shelved in the library and donated to literacy and small business programs were… well, maybe not everywhere, but in many places, and scattered across our offices. It looked like a book bomb had gone off before we left the place. It nagged on me that those who still had to make their way into the office to get books out the door also had to make their way around and through those books, so I eventually went in after hours and moved them all behind my desk—and then kept adding to them as I picked up and dropped off the review copies that came over the course of 2020. By the time I was able to get vaccinated and get back into the office for a full eight hours at a time during normal business hours, I very literally could no longer get behind my desk, as there were books, and boxes of books, stacked up past my waist on every square inch of my usual work space. (I didn't think to stop and take a picture, but imagine the one here—taken during our awards judging season in 2017—and imagine the books pushed together, stacked higher, and everywhere.)

I’ve excavated the area, but the books are all still around, and we need to find a new home for them. Which is where you come in. This week, we are giving away one book—hand-selected by us based on your preferred topic—to 40 people. Just tell us what kind of book you’re looking for or what problem you’re hoping to solve at work in the second address line of the submission form, and we will find a favorite of ours from the past two years on that topic.