10 Must-Read Fall Books for Career Development

By Dennis McCafferty | Posted 2015-09-17

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10 Must-Read Fall Books for Career Development

Our book list includes business and technology titles that discuss topics such as Internet history, agile strategies, social entrepreneurship and office culture.
Beyond Requirements: Analysis With an Agile Mindset

By Kent McDonald. Pearson/Addison-Wesley Professional. Available in September. By applying analysis techniques and agile thinking, IT teams migrate from gathering and documenting requirements to sharing understandings of business-driving intelligence. Discover how to generate value by understanding how analytics can flow throughout a project's lifecycle.
Leading Across New Borders: How to Succeed as the Center Shifts

By Ernest Gundling. Wiley. Available in September. An organization's center of gravity quickly shifts as new economic realities suddenly emerge. By closely listening to customers and attentively watching market changes, capable global leaders can navigate challenges in an increasingly interdependent environment.
What to Do When You're New: How to Be Comfortable, Confident and Successful in New Situations

By Keith Rollag. Amacom. Available in September. Let's face it: Starting a new job is challenging. This book explains why we are so uneasy in new situations—and how to become a more confident new guy or gal.
Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both

By Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer. Crown Business. Available in October. "Keep your friends close," Michael Corleone famously said in the second Godfather film, "but your enemies closer." Translated: It's critical to know when—and how—to interact with both office friends and adversaries to maximize positive outcomes.
How the Internet Became Commercial: Innovation, Privatization, and the Birth of a New Network

By Shane Greenstein. Princeton University Press. Available in October. Author Greenstein takes readers from the Internet's earliest days—when risk-taking iconoclasts outside the mainstream drove its innovation—to its highly commercialized present.
Rocket: Eight Lessons to Secure Infinite Growth

By Michael Silverstein. McGraw-Hill. Available in October. From the Boston Consulting Group come lessons from 16 celebrated business leaders on how to build brands that transform customers into apostles.
The Leadership Capital Index: Realizing the Market Value of Leadership

By Dave Ulrich. Berrett-Koehler. Available in October. The Leadership Capital Index introduces the first "leadership capital index," a Standard & Poor-styled rating for predicting the impact leaders have on intangible value creation and evaluating the readiness of a firm's leadership to meet business challenges.
Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works

By Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg. Available in October. Call them disrupters, visionaries or change-makers, social entrepreneurs develop and scale solutions in ways that inspire revolutionary change. Find out about the four key stages of this explosive phenomenon.
Contagious Culture: Show Up, Set the Tone, and Intentionally Create an Organization That Thrives

By Anese Cavanaugh. McGraw-Hill. Available in November. Culture drives success. This step-by-step guide illustrates how to set the right tone, engage team members and foster a dynamic, innovative working environment.
Why Should Anyone Work Here?: What it Takes to Create an Authentic Organization

By Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones. Available in November. If you could invent the best company on earth from the employees' perspective, what would it look like? The authors depict how leaders must transform their organizations to attract and retain the best people.
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When the air starts getting crisp and the leaves turn golden, it's time to hit the books again. But don't worry, we're not suggesting that you go back to college. We're just introducing our fall books list. Once again, we've collected an eclectic range of business and technology titles. One book explains how to boost value in your IT projects through analytics techniques and agile strategies. Another takes readers on an epic journey: a tale of the Internet from its earliest days to the present. A third title examines the disruptive and visionary universe of social entrepreneurship. Other books can help get you through the day-to-day challenges of the working world—from being the new guy or gal in the office to understanding how to work well with your closest friends and your toughest foes. We've also included a couple of books that focus on the need to create an office culture that encourages innovation and engagement. Happy reading! (As always, publication dates are subject to change, so please check with the publisher for updates.)

Dennis McCafferty is a freelance writer for Baseline Magazine.