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September (Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept. 15-Oct. 15)

Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Childhood
by Elva Trevino

Barefoot Heart is a vividly told autobiographical account of the life of a child growing up in a family of migrant farm workers. Elva Trevino Hart was born in south Texas to Mexican immigrants and spent her childhood moving back and forth between Texas and Minnesota, eventually leaving that world to earn a master's degree in computer science/engineering.

Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia
by Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn S. Spiro

Growing up in the fifties, Carolyn Spiro was always in the shadow of her more intellectually dominant and social outgoing twin, Pamela. But as the twins approached adolescence, Pamela began to succumb to schizophrenia, hearing disembodied voices and eventually suffering many breakdowns and hospitalizations.

Divided Minds is a dual memoir of identical twins, one of whom faces a life sentence of schizophrenia, and the other who becomes a psychiatrist, after entering the spotlight that had for so long been focused on her sister. Told in the alternating voices of the sisters, Divided Minds is a heartbreaking account of the far reaches of madness, as well as the depths of ambivalence and love between twins. It is a true and unusually frank story of identical twins with very different identities and wildly different experiences of the world around them.

Green Grass, Running Water
by Thomas King

Green Grass, Running Water is the story of five Blackfoot Indians in the town of Blossom and its nearby reserve, whose very different lives nevertheless continually cross. Alberta, a university professor who wants a child but not a marriage, is involved with two men who seem to represent opposite possibilities: Charlie, a flashy lawyer, and Lionel, a self-effacing TV salesman. Latisha, Lionel's sister, runs the Dead Dog Cafe, a local hangout and tourist trap. And then there's Eli, who moved to the city and its white man's establishment, never intending to look back to Blossom or the reservation's ancient way of life. All the while, four old Indians, escapees from a mental institution, drift mysteriously and hilariously in and out of time, from the beginnings of the universe to its undecided future. Wildly combining Native American and Western spiritual traditions in the stories they tell, they attempt to recreate and reorder the world. And the trickster Coyote follows along, wreaking havoc as he prowls through the novel. This is a rich tale, weaving subtle, magical humor, revisionist history, muted nostalgia, and sacred humanity into one bright, whole cloth.

In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.

The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies
by Scott E. Page

In this landmark book, Scott Page redefines the way we understand ourselves in relation to one another. The Difference is about how we think in groups--and how our collective wisdom exceeds the sum of its parts. Why can teams of people find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And why are the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the very qualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity--not what we look like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools and abilities.

The Difference reveals that progress and innovation may depend less on lone thinkers with enormous IQs than on diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality. Page shows how groups that display a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yields superior outcomes, and Page proves it using his own cutting-edge research. Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, he explains why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking about citizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory. He examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offers fascinating and surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago "El" to the truth about where we store our ketchup.

Page changes the way we understand diversity--how to harness its untapped potential, how to understand and avoid its traps, and how we can leverage our differences for the benefit of all.

February (Black History Month)

The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Dubois

The first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Du Bois was a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation’s history from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement. In The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, Du Bois argued against the conciliatory position taken by Booker T. Washington, at the time the most influential black leader in America, and called for a more radical form of aggressive protest—a strategy that would anticipate and inspire much of the activism of the 1960s.

Du Bois’s essays were the first to articulate many of Black America’s thoughts and feelings, including the dilemma posed by the black psyche’s “double consciousness,” which Du Bois described as “this twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings . . . in one dark body.” Every essay in The Souls of Black Folk is a jewel of intellectual prowess, eloquent language, and groundbreaking insight. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the struggle for Civil Rights in America.

March (Women's History Month)

By the time she dies at age 106, Esther Gottesfeld, the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, has told the story of that day many times. But her own role remains mysterious: How did she survive? Are the gaps in her story just common mistakes, or has she concealed a secret over the years? As her granddaughter seeks the real story in the present day, a zealous feminist historian bears down on her with her own set of conclusions, and Esther's voice vies with theirs to reveal the full meaning of the tragedy.

A brilliant chronicle of the event that stood for ninety years as New York's most violent disaster, Triangle forces us to consider how we tell our stories, how we hear them, and how history is forged from unverifiable truths.

April

What Is the What
by Dave Eggers

In a heartrending and astonishing novel, Eggers illuminates the history of the civil war in Sudan through the eyes of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee now living in the United States. We follow his life as he's driven from his home as a boy and walks, with thousands of orphans, to Ethiopia, where he finds safety — for a time. Valentino's travels, truly Biblical in scope, bring him in contact with government soldiers, janjaweed-like militias, liberation rebels, hyenas and lions, disease and starvation — and a string of unexpected romances. Ultimately, Valentino finds safety in Kenya and, just after the millennium, is finally resettled in the United States, from where this novel is narrated. In this book, written with expansive humanity and surprising humor, we come to understand the nature of the conflicts in Sudan, the refugee experience in America, the dreams of the Dinka people, and the challenge one indomitable man faces in a world collapsing around him.

May (Asian Pacific American Heritage Month)

Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.

In the Eye of the Storm: Swept into the Center by God
by Gene Robinson

Gene Robinson is bishop of the tiny, rural Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, but he's at the center of a storm of controversy raging in the Episcopal Church and throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion involving homosexuality, the priesthood, and the future of the Communion. This book offers an honest, thoughtful portrait of Robinson, the faith that has informed his life, and the controversy that continues to rock his Church.

Infidel
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Infidel is the eagerly awaited story of the coming of age of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an elegant, distinguished -- and sometimes reviled -- political superstar and champion of free speech. With a gimlet eye and measured, often ironic, voice, Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will, and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely ruled by despots. In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat -- demonized by reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from her family and clan -- she refuses to be silenced.

Casey Han's four years at Princeton gave her many things, "But no job and a number of bad habits." Casey's parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold on to their culture and their identity. Their daughter, on the other hand, has entered into rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As she navigates Manhattan, we see her life and the lives around her, culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots. Free Food for Millionaires offers up a fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves.

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September

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, 9th Edition
by Burton G. Malkiel

How to Invest $50 – $5,000: The Small Investor’s Step-by-Step Plan for Low-Risk, High-Value Investing
by Nancy Dunnan

How to Invest $50 – $5,000 has been a trusted adviser to investors for twenty years. This ninth edition has been completely revised and updated to cover the full range of small investing—from selecting a bank to saving for college and retirement to making sense of financial pages. Step-by-step instructions guide even the most inexperienced investor through the maze of stocks, bonds, treasuries, mutual funds, and more, with new sections on how to recognize a swindle or scam; what to do when fired; ten sources of instant cash; and the top 25 online financial Web sites. These low-risk, high-value tips are perfect for every investor.

The American Dream vs. the Gospel of Wealth: The Fight for a Productive Middle-Class Economy
by Norton Garfinkle

Norton Garfinkle paints a disquieting picture of America today: a nation increasingly divided between economic winners and losers, a nation in which the middle-class American Dream seems more and more elusive. Recent government policies reflect a commitment to a new supply-side winner-take-all Gospel of Wealth. Garfinkle warns that this supply-side economic vision favors the privileged few over the majority of American citizens striving to better their economic condition.

Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Woman Make With Money
by Lois P Frankel

Do you have outstanding balances on your credit cards? Are you afraid to change jobs? Will you retire with nothing? If you answered yes to any of these questions, behaviors that you learned as a girl may be denying your prosperity. Now, with the same frank advice and empowering information that made Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office a bestseller, Lois P Frankel, Ph.D. tackles the 75 money mistakes that stand between women and the wealth they deserve.

Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy Is Transforming America and the World
by Mira Kamdar

India is everywhere: on magazine covers and cinema marquees, at the gym and in the kitchen, in corporate boardrooms and on Capitol Hill. Through incisive reportage and illuminating analysis, Mira Kamdar explores India's astonishing transformation from a developing country into a global powerhouse. She takes us inside India, reporting on the people, companies, and policies defining the new India and revealing how it will profoundly affect our future — financially, culturally, politically.

Insurance for Dummies
by Jack Hungelmann

Insurance For Dummies introduces readers to the basics — as well as the more complicated issues — of every kind of insurance. Packed with expert advice and step-by-step guidance, it shows you how to find the right amount of protection at the best possible price, for your life, health, car, home, and anything else you can think of.

April

The 250 Estate Planning Questions Everyone Should Ask
by Lita Epstein

How can you provide a financially sound future for your loved ones while avoiding estate planning or even making a will, unsure about how to effectively plan for the disposition of your assets? Estate planning is essential-no matter how much money or property you intend to leave to your heirs. In this handy Q&A guide, you'll find answers to all your questions about taxes, gifts, wills, will substitutes, and much more.

May

Rich Woman
by Kim Kiyosaki

Written by Kim Kiyosaki, the wife of bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Woman is for women who insist on being financially independent — without depending on a man, family, company, or government to take care of them. In her book, Kiyosaki applies the same moneymaking strategies that have made Rich Dad, Poor Dad one of the great publishing success stories of all time — but in a voice that is aimed directly at women. No matter what your financial background is or your current job situation, Rich Woman provides the essential road map for any woman who aspires to be financially free.

June

Home Rich: Increasing the Value of the Biggest Investment of Your Life
by Gerri Wills

Your home is the single most valuable thing you can own, yet making it pay can intimidate and confuse even the savviest investor. Now, in an indispensable new book, finance expert Gerri Willis leads you step-by-step through the entire experience of buying, maintaining, and selling a home, and shows you how to come out ahead–maybe even way ahead. 

July

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
by Alan Greenspan

The former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan shares the story of his life first simply with an eye toward doing justice to the extraordinary amount of history he has experienced and shaped. But his other goal is to draw readers along the same learning curve he followed, so they accrue a grasp of his own understanding of the underlying dynamics that drive world events. In the second half of the book, having brought us to the present and armed us with the conceptual tools to follow him forward, Greenspan embarks on a magnificent tour de horizon of the global economy. He reveals the universals of economic growth, delves into the specific facts on the ground in each of the major countries and regions of the world, and explains what the trend-lines of globalization are from here. The distillation of a life's worth of wisdom and insight into an elegant expression of a coherent worldview, The Age of Turbulence will stand as Alan Greenspan's personal and intellectual legacy.

“Don’t Worry About a Thing, Dear”– Why Women Need Financial Intimacy
by Helga Hayse

This book examines the myths and cultural 'truths' about marriage and money. It helps women make their marriage financially transparent so they understand their marital finances. Women need this because once they say "I Do", they become one-half of a legal and financial partnership. Whatever a woman's husband is doing financially, she is doing it too, whether she knows about it or not! The book redefines intimacy, showing it as the opposite of romance. It is a step by step guide for how a woman can protect herself against the financial consequences of divorce or widowhood. The information is based on the author's own story of being widowed without warning, yet prepared for what she needed to know and do to regain control of her life. The book contains a separate chapter For Husbands Only — a direct and no nonsense letter to husbands everywhere.

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September

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
by Robert D. Putnam

Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified and describes in this brilliant volume, Bowling Alone.

Drawing on vast new data from the Roper Social and Political Trends and the DDB Needham Life Style -- surveys that report in detail on Americans' changing behavior over the past twenty-five years -- Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether the PTA, church, recreation clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. Our shrinking access to the "social capital" that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing is a serious threat to our civic and personal health.

Not Guilty! The Good News for Working Mothers
by Betty Holcomb

In this provocative work, Betty Holcomb offers a fresh and thoughtful analysis of the real costs and benefits of women working outside the home. Puncturing popular myths, she takes a hard look at decades of research and shows that working mothers suffer stress, fatigue, and guilt, not as a natural outgrowth of juggling a job and family, but because of stereotypes, hostile workplaces, and policies that have yet to catch up with real life. With the right support, she argues, the revolution of the working mother could lead to richer and more satisfying lives for women and children — and men — alike.

The New Recruit: What Your Association Needs to Know About X, Y, and Z
by Sarah L. Sladek

The Baby Boomer generation has sustained membership associations for quite some time. As that era nears an end, it's time to start thinking about X, Y, and Z -- the next generation of association executives, board members, and volunteers. The New Recruit brings to light the challenges that Boomer-centric membership associations are experiencing and viable solutions that association executives can implement to successfully recruit and retain younger generations. The only succession plan a membership association has is the continuation of its membership. The New Recruit will teach you how to survive the post-Boomer era and create an association for the next generation.

Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
by John Kotter, Holger Rathgeber, Spenser Johnson, and Peter Mueller (Illustrator)

Our Iceberg Is Melting is a simple fable about doing well in an ever-changing world. Based on the award-winning work of Harvard's John Kotter, it is a story that has been used to help thousands of people and organizations.

The characters in the story, Fred, Alice, Louis, Buddy, the Professor, and NoNo, are like people we recognize — even ourselves. Their tale is one of resistance to change and heroic action, seemingly intractable obstacles and the most clever tactics for dealing with those obstacles. It's a story that is occurring in different forms all around us today — but the penguins handle the very real challenges a great deal better than most of us.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization present the remarkable findings of their massive in-depth study of great managers. In today's tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But no matter how generous its pay, or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer.

Buckingham and Coffman explain how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience; how they set expectations', how they motivate people by building on each person's unique strengths; and, finally, how great managers find the right fit for each person, not the next rung on the ladder.

Leading Change
by John P. Kotter

Geared toward managers and business students, this leadership guide identifies an eight-step process that companies must go through to achieve their goals. It also details change issues, the force behind successful change and future trends for organizations. To help illustrate principles, the author provides interesting stories and examples.

You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Positive Difference
by Mark Sanborn

In his inspiring new book, You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader, Mark Sanborn, the author of the national bestseller The Fred Factor, shows how each of us can be a leader in our daily lives and make a positive difference, whatever our title or position. Through the stories of a number of unsung heroes, Sanborn reveals the keys each one of us can use to improve our organizations and enhance our careers.

A Survival Guide to the Stress of Organization Change
by Price Pritchett and Ron Pound

Make sure your people know how to manage their own stress! Teach your employees and managers to cope successfully with today's accelerating rate of change and assume much more personal responsibility for their own emotional well-being. This handbook will show you how to cut healthcare costs, overcome the "victim" mentality in employees, reduce resistance to change, improve morale and quality of work-life, and protect productivity and profitability.

Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds (Leadership for the Common Good)
by Howard Gardner

Drawing on his innovative thinking on multiple intelligences (e.g, Frame of Mind) and his own experience, the Harvard psychologist presents a new framework for analyzing "levers" that trigger/thwart changes of mind exemplified by historic and current change agents in diverse fields.

Strategic Organizational Change: A Practitioner’s Guide for Managers and Consultants
by Michael Beitler

Strategic Organizational Change is written by a practitioner for practitioners. Much has been written about organizational change. Unfortunately, little guidance is provided for practitioners who are responsible for designing and implementing change — until now! In this book, Beitler begins by providing a systematic approach for diagnosing organizational problems. Then he offers his step-by-step approach for designing and implementing organizational change interventions. Everything is written in a practical, easy-to-follow style, with an abundance of checklists and practice tools.

The New Breed: Understanding and Equipping the 21st Century Volunteer
by Jonathan McKee and Thomas W. McKee

More than ever, today’s volunteers work online, need flexible hours, and want to play a role in defining their jobs. They also want to feel a sense of responsibility for your organization’s overall mission. Harness this passion and potential — with results that uplift your goals and enable your volunteers.

Running Meetings: Expert Solutions to Everyday Challenges
by Harvard Business School Press

Meetings are unavoidable but they don’t have to be unproductive. This tool-packed guide will help readers transform meetings from time-sinks to springboards for effective action by learning how to set smart agendas, keep meetings on track, handle problem behaviors and time-wasters, and motivate participants to take action.