Albert Einstein once said, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.” And if Einstein himself couldn’t decipher the tax code, where does that leave the rest of us? If you have tax troubles, the first book in the new “just plain smart” Advisor Series from H&andR Block, The Tax Planning Advisor, should clear up some of your problems. It gives taxpayers straightforward, practical guidance on everything from how long to keep tax records (six years) to common audit triggers (big deductions for charitable contributions and home office expenses).

H&andR Block will help you cultivate a year-round tax mind-set so you can identify ways to save January through December. Admittedly, talking taxes can be dry, but The Tax Planning Advisorspices things up with scenarios from real-life tax situations and quick tidbits in sections such as “Fast Facts,” “Smart Steps” and “Plain Talk.” The H&andR Block expertise is key in deciphering deductions, because 2.2 million people overpay each year by claiming the standard deduction rather than itemizing. Wouldn’t you like to have an extra $438 (the average overpayment) rather than giving it to Uncle Sam?

Ken and Daria Dolan, the creators of the most popular syndicated financial radio talk show in America, cover every aspect of family finance in Don’t Mess With My Money: The Dolans’ No-Nonsense Lifetime Money Plan. The Dolans, who have been married for more than 30 years, offer smart, easy-to-follow wisdom on 200 topics and they don’t hold back their opinions. ("We hate the word ”budget.’" and "We HATE model-portfolio percentages.") The authors reserve special scorn for debit cards: "They should be used only by people who are so undisciplined they can’t possibly handle credit cards." Even if you don’t agree, the candid advice is refreshing. The Dolans show families how to create a saving "success plan" (the concept formerly known as budgeting) and say both spouses should know and understand their investments. Monthly "board meetings" allow couples to talk about where the money is going and vote on major purchases under consideration. The Dolans have more good tips on bringing up money-savvy kids. They suggest teaching activities and weekly allowances based on age ($3 for ages 6-8 and $30 for 16-19) and cover how to choose and set up tax-deferred college plans.

Authors Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and Robert Allen, author of bestsellers such as Nothing Down, want to create a million millionaires. Every 60 seconds, someone becomes a millionaire, and their goal is to help people one minute at a time. Their first tool is The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth (Harmony, $19.95, 416 pages, ISBN 0609609491), a unique book that uses both fiction and nonfiction to explain their ideas. Left-hand pages provide summaries of their nuts and bolts information in short lessons called Millionaire Minutes, which cover topics like leverage, real estate and marketing. Right-hand pages tell the fictional story of Michelle, a waitress and mother of two who has just 100 days to come up with $1 million dollars to save her family.

With ethics in business in seemingly short supply, Hansen and Allen’s goal of finding win/win solutions is refreshing. Their motto: Do no harm, do much good and operate out of stewardship. Both men contribute 10 percent of their earnings to their communities and want to inspire the same spirit in future millionaires. “Enlightened millionaires” not only build wealth but also make the world a better place.

If you want specific, concrete steps to lead you to your first million, Hansen and Allen’s plan for earning fast cash might be disappointing. Their road to riches takes you up a “millionaire mountain” and into the stock market, real estate or the Internet. But their advice is often generalities like “tap into your genius” and “you are your wealth” that don’t yield practical, money in your pocket results.

More valuable are their insights into our own sabotaging behavior. They describe the voice in all of us that wreaks havoc by “leaving landmines, setting ambushes, [or] blowing up your own bridges” and give advice on building congruence between your beliefs, your desires and your self-esteem. When those three elements are working toward the same goals, nothing can hold you back, the authors say. Leverage relationships with mentors, teams and networks are also important because “the person with the largest network of Rolodexes wins.” They suggest you start building that network by taking a millionaire to lunch each month and asking how they found success.

When the markets crash, your nest egg goes splash and you wish you had cash, that’s a bear market. Sadly, most investors spent the summer watching portfolios shrink and blue chips sink as money retreated from Wall Street. That, my friends, is the downside of investing.

If you’re in the market for the long term, here’s what to do seek the advice of people, like the authors below, who’ve weathered the storms. Most will recommend that you diversify, diversify, diversify. Then, hold tight, remembering that a diversified portfolio will share in the gains when the bulls return to Wall Street and in the meantime, your money will be far less likely to smash, crash or splash.

Common sense reigns I know these first guys well. From their days as the hip" investment advisors on AOL to their current monopoly on common sense in the financial world, the Gardner brothers preach a sensible, stable approach to personal finance and investing. So I wasn’t surprised to find that The Motley Fool’s What to Do With Your Money Now: Ten Steps to Staying Up in a Down Market by David and Tom Gardner (Simon ∧ Schuster, $23, 212 pages, ISBN 0743233786) mimics the no-nonsense advice they dispense daily on their Web site, on TV and radio and in their news column. What’s new in this book is the Gardners’ self-deprecating ability to use their own flops as examples of what’s wrong with investing" right now. They admit to financial and business-building mistakes, offering personal examples designed to keep you from taking the wrong turns in your own portfolios. This is sage advice from Fools.

Time to learn Safer Investing in Volatile Markets: Twelve Proven Strategies to Increase Your Income and Financial Security by Carolann Doherty-Brown (Dearborn, $18.95, 288 pages, ISBN 0793151481) is a straightforward guide to understanding the strategy and timing issues most financial advisors and stock brokers use to advise their clients. Knowing how long you will hold and then sell a stock is as important as understanding a company’s P/E ratio or its audit practices. Knowing what your broker knows, and how he should react to market trends, is insurance for you and your portfolio. In the long run, the smart investor survives by being educated about all the issues at work in the markets. As Brown says, my 12 strategies will not work all the time for all people, but history has shown they do work most of the time." Follow her lead for long-term growth and an escape from the roller coaster markets.

Is it a stock or a bond? Most people don’t know the difference between stocks and bonds. Over the years, I’ve encountered many investors who just think bonds pay less" than stocks. So I’m delighted to report there’s finally a book that shows how this integral part of a portfolio works. The Money-Making Guide to Bonds: Straightforward Strategies for Picking the Right Bonds and Bond Funds by Hildy and Stan Richelson delivers a wealth of information on what bonds are, how to pick bonds and how to plan bond investing. Bonds should not be trendy additions to portfolios in bad times, the authors argue, but a well-thought out portion of any serious investment or retirement plan. Get off the bubble Bubbleology: The New Science of Stock Market Winners and Losers by Kevin Hassett (Crown Business, $18.95, 128 pages, ISBN 0609609297) offers an interesting and timely look at why stock market prices rise and fall and how group psychology intersects with finance. Recent market reactions would make any investor wonder are we all a group of untrained lemmings rushing toward the cliff? Hassett, an economist and frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, argues that traditional ways of assessing a stock’s inherent risk (equating it with volatility) are flawed. He offers a set of simple principles to explain why investors panic when they see a bubble" or steep rise in the markets and what you can do to profit from the market’s overreactions to bubblespotting." A timely book, yes, but one that teaches long-term approaches to investing and offers interesting insight into the mind of the market.

When the markets crash, your nest egg goes splash and you wish you had cash, that’s a bear market. Sadly, most investors spent the summer watching portfolios shrink and blue chips sink as money retreated from Wall Street. That, my friends, is the downside of investing.

If you’re in the market for the long term, here’s what to do seek the advice of people, like the authors below, who’ve weathered the storms. Most will recommend that you diversify, diversify, diversify. Then, hold tight, remembering that a diversified portfolio will share in the gains when the bulls return to Wall Street and in the meantime, your money will be far less likely to smash, crash or splash.

Common sense reigns I know these first guys well. From their days as the hip" investment advisors on AOL to their current monopoly on common sense in the financial world, the Gardner brothers preach a sensible, stable approach to personal finance and investing. So I wasn’t surprised to find that The Motley Fool’s What to Do With Your Money Now: Ten Steps to Staying Up in a Down Market by David and Tom Gardner mimics the no-nonsense advice they dispense daily on their Web site, on TV and radio and in their news column. What’s new in this book is the Gardners’ self-deprecating ability to use their own flops as examples of what’s wrong with investing" right now. They admit to financial and business-building mistakes, offering personal examples designed to keep you from taking the wrong turns in your own portfolios. This is sage advice from Fools.

Time to learn Safer Investing in Volatile Markets: Twelve Proven Strategies to Increase Your Income and Financial Security by Carolann Doherty-Brown (Dearborn, $18.95, 288 pages, ISBN 0793151481) is a straightforward guide to understanding the strategy and timing issues most financial advisors and stock brokers use to advise their clients. Knowing how long you will hold and then sell a stock is as important as understanding a company’s P/E ratio or its audit practices. Knowing what your broker knows, and how he should react to market trends, is insurance for you and your portfolio. In the long run, the smart investor survives by being educated about all the issues at work in the markets. As Brown says, my 12 strategies will not work all the time for all people, but history has shown they do work most of the time." Follow her lead for long-term growth and an escape from the roller coaster markets.

Is it a stock or a bond? Most people don’t know the difference between stocks and bonds. Over the years, I’ve encountered many investors who just think bonds pay less" than stocks. So I’m delighted to report there’s finally a book that shows how this integral part of a portfolio works. The Money-Making Guide to Bonds: Straightforward Strategies for Picking the Right Bonds and Bond Funds by Hildy and Stan Richelson (Bloomberg, $26.95, 304 pages, ISBN 1576601226) delivers a wealth of information on what bonds are, how to pick bonds and how to plan bond investing. Bonds should not be trendy additions to portfolios in bad times, the authors argue, but a well-thought out portion of any serious investment or retirement plan. Get off the bubble Bubbleology: The New Science of Stock Market Winners and Losers by Kevin Hassett (Crown Business, $18.95, 128 pages, ISBN 0609609297) offers an interesting and timely look at why stock market prices rise and fall and how group psychology intersects with finance. Recent market reactions would make any investor wonder are we all a group of untrained lemmings rushing toward the cliff? Hassett, an economist and frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, argues that traditional ways of assessing a stock’s inherent risk (equating it with volatility) are flawed. He offers a set of simple principles to explain why investors panic when they see a bubble" or steep rise in the markets and what you can do to profit from the market’s overreactions to bubblespotting." A timely book, yes, but one that teaches long-term approaches to investing and offers interesting insight into the mind of the market.

Let’s face it: not all college grads are ready to enter the workforce. Sure, getting a job and working 9 to 5 is an almost inevitable part of growing up. But many graduates aren’t ready for the daunting task of finding employment, settling down and working their 20s away. Luckily for those adventure-seekers, recent Yale graduate and world traveler Colleen Kinder has some fabulous, if unconventional, advice in her book, Delaying the Real World: A Twentysomething’s Guide to Seeking Adventure. From leading a teen group through the Rocky Mountains to teaching English in Korea to working on an organic farm, Kinder gives grads the ideas, resources and more than anything, the confidence they need to “think outside the box.” A must-read for students with a non-traditional career path in mind and parents who need some reassurance, Delaying the Real World is practical, refreshing and inspiring. Abby Plesser will graduate from Vanderbilt University this month.

You’ve probably wondered how some people become so successful. Entrepreneur and author Peter Han wondered that as well, and sought to find out by interviewing 100 well-known high-achievers to learn how they made the choices that got them where they are today. In Nobodies to Somebodies: How 100 Great Careers Got Their Start, he culls wisdom from the experiences of his 100 subjects to help anyone, especially those just starting out, find a satisfying career. Han interviewed business and government leaders, writers, artists and entertainers, Nobel Prize winners and nonprofit/organizational leaders. Some of the leaders’ traits are what you’d expect strong work ethic, positive attitude and outgoing personality but other characteristics common to many of these leaders are more surprising. Of these, Han determined strong self-knowledge understanding and playing to one’s strengths and following gut instincts to be most important, while at the same time being attuned to the real world and being flexible to change are also crucial to success. These career stories can provide the catalyst for your own career development.

Interviewing is like dating: if you don’t make a good first impression, you don’t get another chance. Michael Farr’s latest career book, Next-Day Job Interview: Prepare Tonight and Get the Job Tomorrow is a logical, thorough and easy read that will quickly give you the skills and the confidence to ace any interview. Farr tells you how to identify your skills, find job openings, research companies, give well thought-out answers to interview questions even the difficult, tricky and sensitive ones follow-up after the interview and negotiate your salary. Whether you’re new at interviewing or are an interviewing veteran, following Farr’s advice can increase your chances of getting the right job.

An approach to having fun on the job is offered by Mike Veeck, son of late Hall of Fame baseball club owner Bill Veeck, and president and part-owner of six successful minor league baseball teams. “I want to love my entire life and I want my employees to feel the same way,” Veeck says. Along with co-author Pete Williams, he presents the whys and hows of having fun at work in Fun Is Good: How to Create Joy ∧ Passion In Your Workplace ∧ Career.

“Fun is good” means more than spending time at work laughing and joking. Veeck shows how to create the fun, irreverence, creativity and passion that help build positive relationships and create community with co-workers and teammates. That “fun” results in better customer service and makes good business sense. The book is peppered with vignettes from accomplished business leaders who have found that Veeck’s philosophy works. Maybe you can make it work for you, too.

Dennis W. Bakke, co-founder and CEO emeritus of the AES Corporation, a worldwide energy company with 40,000 employees in 31 countries, leads his company with radical business values and practices that work. Bakke details his unorthodox philosophies and their implementation in Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job.

Bakke believes a values-driven, decentralized workplace where all workers feel important will be a joyful workplace. When employees are encouraged to make meaningful decisions and take responsibility for their actions, they can experience true joy at work. Bakke argues that the best decision-making occurs when leaders see their role as serving other employees and delegate most of their decision-making power to the lowest practicable level. And since each person is unique, fairness means treating everyone differently. Additionally, Bakke believes that the purpose of business is not to maximize the bottom line, but to steward resources in an economically responsible way. He offers candid, profound and thought-provoking ideas on life, management and corporate culture in this important read for anyone who can see potential in moving away from business as usual.

Edgar M. Bronfman’s The Third Act: Reinventing Yourself After Retirement is a funny, fast-paced book about how to face retirement with eagerness, confidence and pleasure. Bronfman, who retired as CEO of Seagram’s at age 65, fills the book with inspiring stories from the country’s most distinguished retired leaders, including Walter Cronkite, Jimmy Carter and Katharine Graham. From suggestions on volunteering to finding new challenges, the book offers practical and interesting ways to make retirement the most rewarding time of one’s life.

This column doesn’t usually come with a warning label, but this month be prepared for rough language, intergenerational squabbling, insulting work habits and advice on how to finance your sex life. If you are bold, daring and ready for the randy, slightly naughty (but also completely serious) business books we’ve uncovered this month, then read on.

Watch your language Let’s get the bad language out of the way first. F’d Companies: Spectacular Dot-Com Flameouts (Simon &and Schuster, $18, 224 pages, ISBN 0743228626) by Philip J. Kaplan is a compilation of some of the most idiotic web businesses ever invented. Written by the founder of one of the web’s most popular sites (we can’t print the name of the site here, but you should be able to figure it out!), this book transports the web meltdown into hindsight with 20/20 hilarity. It highlights some of the web’s most hare-brained schemes and the silly investors who sank billions to finance them. One of my favorites is Flooz.com. “Flooz was an alternative currency,” Kaplan says. “The idea was that people would buy Flooz and then use Flooz to buy stuff rather than using credit cards or cash . . . why trust the U.S. Treasury to back your money when there’s Flooz?” Flooz filed for bankruptcy protection on August 31, 2001. Another great one: Wwwrrr.com. Kaplan says, “Okay, the first issue we have to discuss here is the issue of their name. Wwwrrr.com. Pronounced “whir.” Stands for Ôreading, Ôriting and ‘rithmetic. That’s just wrong. On so many levels.” Tell it to the investors who put up $15 million for this venture that failed early last year. Hundreds of other equally funny examples explain with biting accuracy why so many dot-com wannabes fuddled their way into ignominy.

The generation gap When Generations Collide (HarperBusiness, $25.95, 240 pages, ISBN 0066621062) by Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman is a completely serious but creatively written treatise on understanding and coming to terms with age-related conflicts in the workplace. Lancaster and Stillman, a Boomer and a GenXer respectively, recognized that much of workplace conflict wasn’t about your Meyers-Briggs type or the “color” of your personality, but actually resulted from intergenerational differences. Our age defines how and what we think about, both for the workplace and ourselves. GenXers seem to think the workplace should be fun. Traditionalists and Boomers view the office with a little more reverence. Conflict is bound to result when new hires think they can wear cutoffs in a place where older employees previously wore ties and suits. Whether you’re a Boomer, a Traditionalist or one of those Preppy In-betweens, this is a must-read book for understanding the stuffy old boss or the flippant youngster.

They want me to do what? Work 2.0: Rewriting the Contract by Bill Jensen is the new guide to working with a younger generation. Jensen says work is changing. Employees choose a workplace and a career and then get on board to work hard and long. But these same employees expect their loyalty, time and talent to be repaid. This is a hard-edged, get-with-the-program book that says today’s talent doesn’t just want work-life balance; they will have it or will find new employers. Work 2.0 faces the crucial fact that September 11 re-emphasized what most Americans already believed their time is only on loan, not for sale, to an employer.

And in the city . . . How do those beautiful women in HBO’s Sex and the City afford the wine, the clubs, the shoes? Well, Juliette Fairley, author of Cash in the City: Affording Manolos, Martinis, and Manicures on a Working Girl’s Salary can tell you how. In this funny and surprisingly practical book, Fairley lays out the financial rules for 20 and 30-something women of the city. Far from focusing on the martini side of her title, Farley details the pitfalls of debt, erases some common money myths and just plain brings girls of a certain age back to their senses about their love affair with the almighty dollar. Sharon Secor is a business writer in Minnesota.

You’ve worked like dog for the last three months. You’ve put in late hours, skipped weekends and added extra business trips to your schedule. You’ve taken a dying division and added snap, crackle and pop to its bottom line. But when it came to bonus time, you were overlooked and your division under-rated. What’s that all about? Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman, co-authors of Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success, say it’s all about career politics some people know how to play them and some people (maybe you?) don’t. Ever had an idea stolen by someone brash enough to present it as his or her own idea at a VP meeting? If so, you really, really need this book. Brandon and Seldman offer serious research to substantiate this all-too-prevalent work problem and outline the many ways the politically inept can develop the savvy political instincts we all need to feel valued at our work.