Jack Covert Selects All Aaron Schleicher Dylan Schleicher Jack Covert Selects Narrative & Biography Publishing Industry Sally Haldorson The Company RSS

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni, Jossey-Bass, 220 pages, $27. 95, Hardcover, March 2012, ISBN 9780470941522 This is a book many people may have been waiting for. Although Patrick Lencioni has established himself as an elite business book writer, he writes parables, and for some, fictional stories just don’t get to the point quickly enough or clearly detail the important steps, data, and analysis of a situation in order to change and improve it.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner, The Penguin Press, 432 pages, $29. 95, Hardcover, March 2012, ISBN 9781594203282 One of the most important institutions of the 20th century was Bell Labs, created by AT&T and Western Electric in 1925 to design and research equipment for Bell Telephone. The Idea Factory is the story of that unique organization and its creation of some of the most important inventions of the past century—such as lasers, transistors, and telephone switching systems—patented by engineers who went on the win seven Nobel Prizes.