The Hedgehog's Bookstore

In Affiliation With Barnes And Noble

In addition to the business top 10, we've provided a selection of books in 16 separate categories of investing (or investing strategy). We will soon be adding selections in a number of additional categories, so keep checking in as we add more books, more descriptions, and more book reviews. Click on the choices that interest you for more info. Also, check out our book review writing contest. Where possible, we've selected paperbacks to list, if you'd prefer a hardback, search on the title to see if one is available. Almost all the books we've listed can be at your door within two or three days.

Business & Economics

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The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams, $20.00 US - In the past, according to Adams, corporate workers were promoted in accordance with the Peter Principle; you were promoted until you found your level of incompetence. In other words, you kept getting promoted until you found your way to a job you were no longer good at, and there you stayed. The Dilbert Principle eliminates all this fuss, now the incompetent people are promoted straight to management where they will do the least harm. Of course, the true purpose of Dilbert is to mock management and it certainly succeeds. This book mixes Adams' popular cartoons with true workplace tales and Adams' own theories on how the workplace works. We're currently having performance reviews where I work so I especially liked the discussion on how to write yourself a great review.

The comic strips are uniformly great. Unfortunately, the written pieces are more mixed. Some of them are hilarious, but some tend to be repetitive and predictable. All in all, if you like Dilbert or if you work in the corporate world, you'll like this book.

The Dogbert Book Of Management by Scott Adams, $16.00 US - Lately, my employer has given me a number of management books to read - this isn't one of them. Told from the point of view of Dilbert's cynical little dog, Dogbert the purpose of this book isn't to help managers but to make fun of them. Anybody who works in a corporate bureaucracy is likely to recognize at least some of these managerial traits, scheduling too many meetings, traveling all the time, and a total inability to make a decision. There are many more. As with the Dilbert Principle, the cartoons are better than the written pieces, but even these benefit from being told in from the point of view of Dogbert. This book's also shorter. The especially daring employee may want to give his boss a copy (Christmas is coming).

Influence Without Authority by Allan R. Cohen and David L. Bradford, $19.95 US - The concept behind this book is that the key to success in the corporate bureaucracy of today is to be able to negotiate 'exchanges' with peers and superiors to obtain the things you need to be effective. The book illustrates ways to go about making these exchanges and suggests possible 'currencies' you might have at your command to use to influence others. These currencies could include offering the opportunity to do interesting work, providing information, and assisting the other person with their own work. The book also goes through ways of evaluating your potential ally's world to better understand what you might be able to offer them in return for what you want.

You'll gain some useful new perspectives and some worthwhile strategies from this book. As with most books of this sort though, the authors tend to oversell a bit. Some of the negotiation strategies they take the reader through would take the skill of a Henry Kissinger to pull off. The rest of us could wind up looking foolish or corrupt in trying to make some of these exchanges. Nevertheless, I recommend this book for any middle manager type in a corporate bureaucracy.

More Wealth Without Risk by Charles Givens (review by Gil B.) - This is a book packed from cover to cover with both money saving and investing ideas. Givens has a common sense approach to wealth building that involves saving money on insurance, taxes, loans, and education, and using those savings to make intelligent investment decisions.

High Points Include:

Reviewing your car insurance: After reading this I changed my coverage, and reduced my premiums by $100 a month.
Tax reducing strategies: Some great ways to reduce your income taxes, even though this was written before the recent tax law changes.
The ten biggest investment mistakes: I have made six of the ten.
My favorite quote: Stocks and Bonds are both great investments, but not at the same time.

Low point

Most of the advise and guidance in this book is timeless, but some of the information on taxes needs updating.

I bought this book at Books a Million for $16 (we sell it for under $13) and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in saving money.

Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment by William C. Byham with Jeff Cox, $11.00 US - Empowerment is all the rage in Corporate America these days and there is certainly much to be said for it. This little book gives some solid common sense advice for improving employee performance, but does it in a rather annoying and simplified manner. The book tells the story of the Normal Corp. One of its employees invents a device that allows managers to view their employees as they really feel. Most of the employees are walking zombies whose energy is being Sapped by ogre like supervisors. Using the principles of Zapp! though to empower employees, soon everything at the Normal Corp. is just swell. Most of these principles are common sense: listen to your employees, compliment them, let them solve problems, and of course, form self directed teams (more meetings, just what we all need). I'm a little skeptical of this book's value. Good managers will do most of this out of hand; bad managers are going to need a lot more than one little book. If you can get your boss to use some of this stuff, it's worth the cost of the book. Otherwise, here's another fad for Dilbert to make fun of.

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