Last week, I listed the top-selling books at the Society for Human Resource Management annual conference in Las Vegas. I asked, “What does this list of the top-selling books purchased at last month’s Society for Human Resource Management annual conference in Las Vegas tell you about the HR professional in the 21st century? Let me know if you can figure it out.” Here’s what some readers had to say:

From Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel Institute in Philadelphia—”SHRM’s typical member is the HR person for a 100-person or fewer organization, so this likely represents people who haven’t thought *if* they should be doing things like performance evaluations, just *how* to get people to do them with the least amount of pain. My wish list reading list for HR professionals would include The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) and A Whole New Mind (Dan Pink, who spoke at the conference and I think sold fairly well).”

From Michael Mercer, author, business psychologist, and president of Mercer Systems in Barrington, Illinois—”Probably the main reason those books sold best at SHRM conference is very simple: The authors of many or most of those books delivered presentations at the SHRM conference. I am the author of five books. I consistently find that when I speak at a conference, more of my books are sold than when I do not speak at that conference.”

From a training and development professional in eastern Tennessee—”If I had to derive a single message from the list, it appears to be around managing the upcoming generations from Generation X forward. It’s all about retention and effective management.”