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Summer Reading for the Career-Minded
A book is among the world’s great bargains.
You get years of a brilliant person’s
expertise distilled and available to you 24/7 for
the price of a pizza.
Here’s my list of recommended summer
reading for the career-minded.
John Adams by David McCullough.
Biographies of great people have given me
inspiration and ideas on how to enhance my career.
This tour de force by a Pulitzer Prize winner
profiles the ultimate career: president of the
United States. And it’s a profile of a
president who more than held his own against the
more vaunted presidents that bracketed him:
Washington and Jefferson. More than a career
profile and wonderful history lesson, it is an
intimate story of relationships professional (for
example, with Jefferson) and personal (with his
remarkable wife, Abigail Adams.)
Some might ask, “Why go back that far? Why
not recommend Bill Clinton’s autobiography. I
decided not to even read it, deterred by the New
York Times review, which called it,
“sloppy, self-indulgent and often
eye-crossingly dull,” and the Associated
Press, which said that reading it was like
“being locked in a small room with a very
gregarious man who insists on reading his entire
appointment book, day by day, beginning in
1946.”
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
Today’s conventional wisdom says that to
succeed, it takes a village--individualism is
passé; teamwork is the way. Most successful
people I know laugh at that, and so does this book.
It’s the story of an architect who felt that
collective effort usually requires compromise and
therefore results in a mediocre product. The book
will inspire anyone who aspires to individual
excellence but wavers because of the media’s
nonstop deification of teamwork and community.
Gray Matters: The Workplace Survival
Guide by Bob Rosner, et al. This book mainly
made my list because it lacks competition. It would
seem that everyone should have a workplace survival
guide on their desk, but this book, only decent, is
the only one I’ve seen --and I did an amazon
search to confirm. The book offers useful but not
surprising reminders (for example, you have to know
when to suck up), and its sugarcoated style and
chapter summaries make the read quick and
quasi-pleasurable.
Monster Careers by Jeff Taylor with Doug
Hardy. Monster.com asked me to write the book but
changed its mind. Frankly, now I’m glad. They
did a better job than I probably could have,
distilling monster.com’s massive content into
the definitive book on how to land a job. Unlike
typical job search books, which are written by
counselor types, most of this book’s
information comes from a better source: people who
hire.
Diary of a Job Search by Tim Johnston. So
many people apply for a job or two each week and
think they’ll land a job before retirement
age. This book describes the much more common
reality. It’s a compelling read with a
surprise ending: the job seeker networked his butt
off for eight months and in the end, got his job by
answering an ad. As I’ve been saying in this
column, networking just isn’t working as well
as it used to.
Blue Blood by Edward Conlon. Written by
the author of the New Yorker’s Cop Diary
series, this may be the best book ever on what
it’s like to be a policeman. His being
long-time New York City cop gives him the
experience and being a Harvard graduate, he has the
mind to richly describe that experience. Well worth
reading even if you have no desire to be a cop.
Now What?: 90 Days to a New Life
Direction: by Laura Berman Fortgang. I normally
hate books written by career coaches. Too much
psychobabble (“Get in touch with the your
inner voice and follow your passion.” That
rarely works). Or too simplistic (“Set goals
and take baby steps”.) This book offers sound
advice on both the psychological and practical
fronts. I also like its 90-day plan concept. Too
often, people spend years figuring out their career
goal. This book limits the process to an
appropriate length.
Cool
Careers for Dummies (2nd edition) by
lil’ ol’ me. Yes, I’m touting my own
book, but it is unique in offering insider
descriptions of 500+ interesting careers including
low-risk/high-payoff self-employment ideas, plus
The One-Week Job Search and 47 cures for
procrastination. The Los Angeles Times called the
book “full of smart advice.”
What Color is Your Parachute, 2005
edition by Richard Bolles. (to be published in
September) This is the classic job search book.
Previous editions have included a wealth of ideas
to help you choose a career and land a job. Bolles,
one of the field’s best minds and writers,
says that this September’s edition will be a
major revision.
© 2007, Marty
Nemko
* * *
Marty
Nemko holds a PhD from the University of
California, Berkeley, and subsequently taught in
Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. He is
the worklife columnist in the Sunday San Francisco
Chronicle and is the producer and host of Work With
Marty Nemko, heard Sundays at 11 on 91.7 FM in
(NPR, San Francisco), and worldwide on
www.martynemko.com
 .
400+ of his published writings are available free
on that website and is a co-editor of
Cool
Careers for Dummies.
and author of The All-in-One College Guide.
E-Mail.
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