The 2008 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards - New Perspectives Category

The books on our 2008 shortlist for the New Perspectives Category are:

• Creating A World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
  by Muhammad Yunus with Karl Weber (PublicAffairs, January 2008)
  
  Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work in creating the Grameen Bank and evangelizing the use of micro-credit lending to alleviate poverty. He believes the next wave of possibility is social business: organizations whose purposes shift from generating profits to solving the problems of those in poverty.


• The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
  by Leonard Mlodinow (Pantheon, May 2008)
  
  The Drunkard's Walk is a wonderful addition to a growing category that Amazon recently called "Why We Act This Way." Mlodinow provides vivid stories to explain how our decision-making becomes hampered by our insistence on finding patterns and causes where randomness is the only phenomenon at work. Read this book to gain thoughtful insights into human psychology and find a new way of looking at the world.


• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
  by Dan Ariely (Harper, Feb 2008)
  
  For the most part, we behave rationally, right? Wrong, says Dan Ariely. From overpaying to procrastinating, we not only behave irrationally--but we behave in predictably irrational ways over and over again. Ariely helps us understand these behaviors and suggests ways to break habits and develop patterns of thought that will help us make better decisions. He believes that "recognizing where we depart from the ideal is an important part of the quest to truly understand ourselves, and one that promises many practical benefits."


• The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream
  by John Zogby (Random House, August 2008)
  
  Zobgy's reputation as a remarkably accurate political pollster lends strong credibility to release of his first book. In The Way We'll Be, Zogby attempts to makes sense of where the United States is headed as a whole based on the attitudes of his polling respondents. He reports, "What gives me heart is that we are heading toward all the complications that lie ahead with so many of our best value intact."