One of the great treats of the summer is when I open my e-mail to find the list of best-selling books from the SHRM store at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference.

It’s not because I love book lists or what they’re selling at the SHRM store. No, I love the annual SHRM store conference book list because it gives me an opportunity to see yet again how the people at SHRM who put out this list can continue to water down what was once a useful comparative tool and muck it up by not ranking the annual best-sellers and by also throwing in stuff like top-selling software and videos. (Videos? Did they miss the move to DVD?)

My guess is that they do it because they don’t like lists that allow readers to compare and contrast what people are reading from one year to the next, and perhaps make a few assumptions and draw some conclusions.

That’s probably why SHRM has watered down the summer list of best-sellers from the annual conference, although this year they’ve removed the caveat from last summer (these are “just some of the top-selling books, software, videos and accessories at this year’s Annual Conference”) and now simply say that they are listing “the top-selling books, software, videos and accessories from this year’s Annual Conference SHRMStore in New Orleans, LA.”

So, I present here again this year, without further comment, the best-sellers at the SHRM bookstore from the recent conference. And, as I always say, you can tell a lot by the books a person buys. If you agree, what does this list of the top-selling books purchased at last month’s SHRM New Orleans tell you about the HR profession during the summer of the Great Recession?

• Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success—and Won’t Let You Fail, by Keith Ferrazzi
• 101 Tough Conversations to Have With Employees: A Manager’s Guide to Addressing Performance, Conduct and Discipline Challenges, by Paul Falcone
• Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate, by Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro
• Employee Engagement: Tools for Analysis, Practice, and Competitive Advantage, by William H. Macey, Benjamin Schneider, Karen M. Barbera and Scott A. Young
• Never Eat Alone, and Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time, by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz
• 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems, by Paul Falcone
• Management Courage: Having the Heart of a Lion, by Margaret Morford
• The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness, by Dave Ramsey
• The Essential Guide to Workplace Investigations: How to Handle Employee Complaints & Problems, by Lisa Guerin
• New Employee Orientation Training, by Karen Lawson
• Booher’s Rules of Business Grammar: 101 Fast and Easy Ways to Correct the Most Common Errors, by Dianna Booher
• How to Deal With Annoying People: What to Do When You Can’t Avoid Them, by Bob Phillips and Kimberly Alyn
• Please Sue Me: The Guide to Safe Hiring and Firing Practices for the Frontline Manager With a Short Attention Span, by Hunter Lott
• State-by-State Guide to Human Resources Law 2009, by John F. Buckley
• Linkage Inc.’s Best Practices in Succession Planning, by Linkage Inc.
• Auditing Your Human Resources Department, by John H. McConnell
• Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability), by David Marcum and Steven Smith
• The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, and Performance, by Brian E. Becker, Mark A. Huselid, and Dave Ulrich
• Leave the Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro Shows You How to Do More in Less Time … and Feel Great About It, by Laura Stack
• Loyalty Unplugged: How to Get, Keep & Grow All Four Generations, by Adwoa K. Buahene and Giselle Kovary
• 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews: Ready-to-Use Words and Phrases That Really Get Results, by Paul Falcone
• The Personal Credibility Factor: How to Get It, Keep It, and Get It Back (If You’ve Lost It), by Sandy Allgeier
• What If? Short Stories to Spark Diversity Dialogue, by Steve L. Robbins

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With summer here, it’s time to get a fix on those books you really want to read this summer. As I said when I served up my first summer reading list back in 2007, if you want to multitask and combine your reading with an opportunity to glean some great management wisdom, here are five books on my summer reading list you might want to add to yours:

• The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, by Alain de Botton. You might not believe it based on this blog, but I have a soft spot in my heart for anything that is philosophical in nature. That’s why I’m intrigued by the premise of this new book by Alain De Bottom: that despite the fact that we spend most of our waking lives at work—in occupations that we often chose at a young age without a great deal of thought—we rarely spend much time asking what our occupations really mean to us. “With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom,“ says the description on Amazon.com, “Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art—in search of what make jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying.” Given our current economic condition, this is a great time to reflect on the nature of work and career, and this seems like a good book to help do that with.
• Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve heard Gladwell speak several times, and I really enjoyed his earlier books like The Tipping Point and Blink. That’s why I want to make some time to finally get to his latest book with a very strong workforce component to it: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? That’s certainly a question I want to get the answer to, and Gladwell’s notion about the myth of the “self-made man” and his premise that superstars “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot” is one that ANYONE who manages people should think about.
• The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It, by Christine Pearson and Christine Porath. I must say, this looks like a worthy follow-up to Bob Sutton’s The No-Asshole Rule (another book you need to read if you haven’t already). The two Christines examine the toll that bad behavior can have on otherwise well-functioning companies, and they reveal strategies that successful organizations are using to stop incivility before it takes hold. I’m not sure if they have all the answers to this eternal problem, but I’m going to take a read and see what they say.
• Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City, by Michael A. Lerner I’m fascinated by Prohibition, mainly because it is an object lesson in how an overzealous minority can push through a law that no one really wants and just about everyone tries to ignore. There are some good workplace issues that come out of that, and how New York coped with Prohibition has got to be fascinating. This is a book that’s been one my nightstand for a year. This summer, I vow to get to it.
• The Last Editor, by Jim Bellows. It’s not often you get to read a book about or by someone you worked closely with, and that’s my connection to this autobiography by Jim Bellows. He hired me and was my first editor back at the late, great Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. I learned a lot about life and journalism from watching Jim, and I’m sorry I missed his funeral this spring when he passed away at age 86. A consummate street fighter who loved the challenge of being at the No. 2 operation in town, Bellows developed superstar journalists like Tom Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin as well as generations of guys like me. Plus, Jim was a great editor and sharp businessman who knew how to battle a bigger and better-funded competitor to a standstill—lessons we could all use today.

Got a good workforce book worth reading this summer? Let me know what it is—I’ll list the best suggestions I receive here in a future blog post.

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