Don’t dismiss those “gut feelings” when making decisions, says Gary Klein in his new book Intuition at Work. Klein, author of the much praised Sources of Power, says that 90% of decisions are made based on intuition, rather than a rational, scientific approach.

After 20 years of research with firefighters, U.S. Marines, emergency medical staff and senior executives to find out how they make life and death decisions in a matter of seconds, Klein realized that intuition is not magic or ESP but rather a practical skill that can be learned and used. He defines it as the “natural and direct outgrowth of experience” or how we translate our experiences into action.

Klein gives readers the tools to build intuitive skills that will help them spot potential problems, stay calm in the face of uncertainty, size up situations quickly and avoid getting overloaded with data. To practice making difficult decisions, Klein offers tough, real-world decision games then walks you through a “post-mortem” to analyze how you did. Some of Klein’s most helpful lessons involve showing leaders how to communicate effectively and showing how anyone can coach others (or be coached) in the art of intuition.

Intuition at Work is a thoughtful, rational look at how all levels of business from senior executives and middle managers to new hires can learn how to build intuition skills and apply them in everyday decision-making.

I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This is the perfect guide if you want to find gratifying work but aren’t sure how to get started. Author Julie Jansen, now in her fifth career, gives simple, actionable steps for six situations that are typical of disgruntled workers (i.e., where’s the meaning; bored and plateaued; and yearning to be on your own) in this inexpensive manual. Taking you step-by-step through the process, Jansen urges readers to start by looking inward. “Understanding who you are your values, attitudes, preferences, and personality traits is the key to discovering the kind of work that will bring you personal fulfillment,” says Jansen. Most workers burn out because they work all day on projects that have no personal meaning for them, which is a sure way to sap energy reserves.

Jansen includes lots of quizzes and questions to guide your look inward, but the best part of the book is the explanation of the answers, which helps translate your unique attitudes and values into a meaningful career. The clearer you are about your likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, the easier your job search will be, says Jansen.

Jansen also tackles the nuts and bolts of the job search, stressing the necessity of making a clear action plan and taking small steps. Excuses like “I’ll have to take a decrease in pay” and “I don’t have enough time” won’t cut it with Jansen’s can-do attitude. Her handbook is a smart way to get going in a new direction.

No one seems to have all their financial ducks in a row, not even personal finance expert Janet Bodnar. She writes a weekly column on kids and money for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and The New York Times (she’s known as Dr. Tightwad) but in preparing a finance book geared to women, she realized she hadn’t updated her own will or put her kids on her insurance policy. “I would have sworn I had done that!” she says. Writing her new book, Think $ingle, which addresses specific money issues facing women, opened the eyes of this wife, mother and household manager. “I was the audience for the book as well as the author of the book, so every step along the way I was comparing what I was writing with what I was doing myself. Sometimes I could say, OK, I’m up to speed, and sometimes I wasn’t.” BookPage recently talked to Bodnar about the advantages of “thinking single.” What does “thinking single” mean for women? You always have to be financially independent in your own mind, no matter what your marital status is, no matter what your stage of life is. Even if you have a loving husband who handles the finances, you need to know his bookkeeping system, have enough life insurance to cover you and the kids if something were to happen to him, and have your own retirement plan, even if you don’t have a job. That’s what thinking single means: You always have to ask, what would I do if I were on my own tomorrow? Would I be up to speed on everything? You say that 90% of women will manage their money on their own at some point in life, either because they’re divorced, widowed or never married. Did that surprise you? All women start out on their own when they’re in their 20s, but what really shocked me was when you add in the number of divorces [just under 50%] and [realize] that the average age of widowhood is 58. Some women never marry, but the majority will, and yet of those women, the majority will end up on their own at some point in the future. I found that to be shocking. I think it’s in the back of every woman’s mind, but you think it’s always far in the future, so when you see that statistic, it brings you up short.

Women investors tend to earn better returns than men. What are they doing differently? Men tend to be overconfident with their money. Even when they don’t know diddly about money, they act like they do and bluff their way through. But confidence isn’t the same thing as competence. Women tend to be underconfident and underestimate what they know about money, so they tend to be less aggressive and take fewer risks. Because women go out and do the research, they feel pretty good about what they’re doing when they plunk down their money. Then they leave their money alone and don’t trade all the time.

Are women too averse to risk? I think they are because of the underconfidence thing. They worry about the future, and in the back of their mind is the bag lady fear “I’m not going to have any money” so they tend to be conservative with their money, probably too conservative, at least when they’re younger. Women need to be a little more aggressive, especially if they’re looking at long-term goals.

After reading the book, what’s a good first step for women who want to start tackling their finances? I would take stock of where I am. Don’t try to do everything at once because you can get overwhelmed with all this financial stuff. I would sit down and say, what is my number one worry? That can be a lot of different things for different people, and hopefully, they’ll find material in the book to speak to any of those issues, whether it’s dealing with your spouse, budgeting or saving for retirement. Once you get a handle on that, you can move on down your list. You need a feeling of accomplishment.

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve found four books that focus on creating lasting improvement by helping readers find and build their business strengths.

You’ve got it, so flaunt it

Barbara Corcoran became the Queen of New York Real Estate by following the simple yet savvy lessons she learned from her mother. Her new book, Use What You’ve Got: And Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom (Portfolio, $24.95, 288 pages, ISBN 1591840023), tells how Corcoran applied Mom’s advice ("If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails" and "Jumping out the window will either make you an ass or a hero.") to build a brokerage firm that now does $2 billion in annual revenue. Corcoran’s mother identified special qualities in each of her 10 children, and at an early age, her daughter became an entertainer with a gift for gab. The up-and-coming real estate tycoon relied on those skills when she faced challenges or setbacks. Written with technical writer Bruce Littlefield, Corcoran’s book chronicles her highs and lows (her boyfriend/business partner married her secretary), and her candid self-revelations give readers a real sense of her high energy and relentless persona. Women cultivating their own unique strengths will be inspired by Corcoran’s dynamic story and common-sense advice.

Do I do that?

It’s too bad the Christmas holidays are over because The Achievement Paradox: Test Your Personality ∧ Choose Your Behavior for Success at Work (New American Library, $14.95, 192 pages, ISBN 1577312287) would be a perfect gift for the annoying chatterbox in the next cube. Most Americans now spend more of their waking hours with coworkers than with friends or family, and who wouldn’t love to give a few of them a personality adjustment? But it’s not too late to give this book to yourself. Let author Ron Warren show you how your personality impacts your behavior, your success and your satisfaction at work. Warren says everyone has several success traits, along with some counterproductive ones (like Need for Approval, Controlling, Tense) that interfere with our achievement, and he explains how to create an Action Plan that will build up your strong areas. Achievement Paradox is an enlightening book for understanding yourself and others. When you’re done, you can pass it on to a "friend."

Baring all

Good PR folks are not just cheerleaders or spin-meisters who issue a press release every time the CEO sneezes. Richard Laermer, the founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations, shows how anyone can create that mysterious thing called buzz with Full Frontal PR (Bloomberg, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1576600998). Remember the water cooler conversations about The Blair Witch Project and Survivor? Without a fancy PR firm, you can spark the best marketing tool of all old fashioned word of mouth. The advice here is comprehensive and competent. Tie your idea to a trend, work a celebratory/commemorative/charity event (the alternate three Cs), or find a local angle to your story. Laermer reveals the nitty gritty details of forming long-term relationships with journalists, stressing honesty, access and reliability. Armed with Laermer’s public relations know-how, you can start promoting like a pro.

Winning at sales

Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers shatters several sales myths, including the lie that anyone can sell with enough effort and training. Authors Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano along with The Gallup Organization interviewed 250,000 top salespeople and found three keys to becoming a sales superstar: discover your strengths, find the right fit and work for the right manager. If you don’t have a clue what your strengths are, a Web survey is included to help identify your talents. Eschewing specific sales techniques and corny inspirational stories, Smith and Rutigliano have created a truly helpful guide to finding a job and career that suits what you already do well.

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve found four books that focus on creating lasting improvement by helping readers find and build their business strengths.

You’ve got it, so flaunt it

Barbara Corcoran became the Queen of New York Real Estate by following the simple yet savvy lessons she learned from her mother. Her new book, Use What You’ve Got: And Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom (Portfolio, $24.95, 288 pages, ISBN 1591840023), tells how Corcoran applied Mom’s advice ("If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails" and "Jumping out the window will either make you an ass or a hero.") to build a brokerage firm that now does $2 billion in annual revenue. Corcoran’s mother identified special qualities in each of her 10 children, and at an early age, her daughter became an entertainer with a gift for gab. The up-and-coming real estate tycoon relied on those skills when she faced challenges or setbacks. Written with technical writer Bruce Littlefield, Corcoran’s book chronicles her highs and lows (her boyfriend/business partner married her secretary), and her candid self-revelations give readers a real sense of her high energy and relentless persona. Women cultivating their own unique strengths will be inspired by Corcoran’s dynamic story and common-sense advice.

Do I do that?

It’s too bad the Christmas holidays are over because The Achievement Paradox: Test Your Personality ∧ Choose Your Behavior for Success at Work would be a perfect gift for the annoying chatterbox in the next cube. Most Americans now spend more of their waking hours with coworkers than with friends or family, and who wouldn’t love to give a few of them a personality adjustment? But it’s not too late to give this book to yourself. Let author Ron Warren show you how your personality impacts your behavior, your success and your satisfaction at work. Warren says everyone has several success traits, along with some counterproductive ones (like Need for Approval, Controlling, Tense) that interfere with our achievement, and he explains how to create an Action Plan that will build up your strong areas. Achievement Paradox is an enlightening book for understanding yourself and others. When you’re done, you can pass it on to a "friend." Baring all Good PR folks are not just cheerleaders or spin-meisters who issue a press release every time the CEO sneezes. Richard Laermer, the founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations, shows how anyone can create that mysterious thing called buzz with Full Frontal PR (Bloomberg, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1576600998). Remember the water cooler conversations about The Blair Witch Project and Survivor? Without a fancy PR firm, you can spark the best marketing tool of all old fashioned word of mouth. The advice here is comprehensive and competent. Tie your idea to a trend, work a celebratory/commemorative/charity event (the alternate three Cs), or find a local angle to your story. Laermer reveals the nitty gritty details of forming long-term relationships with journalists, stressing honesty, access and reliability. Armed with Laermer’s public relations know-how, you can start promoting like a pro.

Winning at sales

Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers (Warner, $26.95, 256 pages, ISBN 0446530476) shatters several sales myths, including the lie that anyone can sell with enough effort and training. Authors Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano along with The Gallup Organization interviewed 250,000 top salespeople and found three keys to becoming a sales superstar: discover your strengths, find the right fit and work for the right manager. If you don’t have a clue what your strengths are, a Web survey is included to help identify your talents. Eschewing specific sales techniques and corny inspirational stories, Smith and Rutigliano have created a truly helpful guide to finding a job and career that suits what you already do well.

A new business book guaranteeing to make you a millionaire or the world’s greatest manager is born every minute. Like diet books, these cure-alls claim to fix every flaw standing in the way of fame and fortune. But forget the lessons from the super CEOs (who may be in jail now anyway); this month we’ve found four books that focus on creating lasting improvement by helping readers find and build their business strengths.

You’ve got it, so flaunt it Barbara Corcoran became the Queen of New York Real Estate by following the simple yet savvy lessons she learned from her mother. Her new book, Use What You’ve Got: And Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom, tells how Corcoran applied Mom’s advice (“If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails” and “Jumping out the window will either make you an ass or a hero.”) to build a brokerage firm that now does $2 billion in annual revenue. Corcoran’s mother identified special qualities in each of her 10 children, and at an early age, her daughter became an entertainer with a gift for gab. The up-and-coming real estate tycoon relied on those skills when she faced challenges or setbacks. Written with technical writer Bruce Littlefield, Corcoran’s book chronicles her highs and lows (her boyfriend/business partner married her secretary), and her candid self-revelations give readers a real sense of her high energy and relentless persona. Women cultivating their own unique strengths will be inspired by Corcoran’s dynamic story and common-sense advice.

Do I do that? It’s too bad the Christmas holidays are over because The Achievement Paradox: Test Your Personality &and Choose Your Behavior for Success at Work (New American Library, $14.95, 192 pages, ISBN 1577312287) would be a perfect gift for the annoying chatterbox in the next cube. Most Americans now spend more of their waking hours with coworkers than with friends or family, and who wouldn’t love to give a few of them a personality adjustment? But it’s not too late to give this book to yourself. Let author Ron Warren show you how your personality impacts your behavior, your success and your satisfaction at work. Warren says everyone has several success traits, along with some counterproductive ones (like Need for Approval, Controlling, Tense) that interfere with our achievement, and he explains how to create an Action Plan that will build up your strong areas. Achievement Paradox is an enlightening book for understanding yourself and others. When you’re done, you can pass it on to a “friend.” Baring all Good PR folks are not just cheerleaders or spin-meisters who issue a press release every time the CEO sneezes. Richard Laermer, the founder and CEO of RLM Public Relations, shows how anyone can create that mysterious thing called buzz with Full Frontal PR (Bloomberg, $24.95, 256 pages, ISBN 1576600998). Remember the water cooler conversations about The Blair Witch Project and Survivor? Without a fancy PR firm, you can spark the best marketing tool of all old fashioned word of mouth. The advice here is comprehensive and competent. Tie your idea to a trend, work a celebratory/commemorative/charity event (the alternate three Cs), or find a local angle to your story. Laermer reveals the nitty gritty details of forming long-term relationships with journalists, stressing honesty, access and reliability. Armed with Laermer’s public relations know-how, you can start promoting like a pro.

Winning at sales Discover Your Sales Strengths: How the World’s Greatest Salespeople Develop Winning Careers (Warner, $26.95, 256 pages, ISBN 0446530476) shatters several sales myths, including the lie that anyone can sell with enough effort and training. Authors Benson Smith and Tony Rutigliano along with The Gallup Organization interviewed 250,000 top salespeople and found three keys to becoming a sales superstar: discover your strengths, find the right fit and work for the right manager. If you don’t have a clue what your strengths are, a Web survey is included to help identify your talents. Eschewing specific sales techniques and corny inspirational stories, Smith and Rutigliano have created a truly helpful guide to finding a job and career that suits what you already do well.

A regular on National Public Radio’s Marketplace Morning Report, Jordan Goodman wants you to know that it’s OK to dream big for retirement. In fact, stop reading and take a minute to visualize your best-case scenario. Think golf, grandkids and great vacations. Now ask yourself two questions: When do you want to retire? How long do you expect to live? Those are two big pieces of the retirement puzzle, and Goodman’s Everyone’s Money Book on Retirement Planning is a good place to start finding the answers. Whether your want to save for your children’s college fund, understand real estate investing or create a great financial plan, the six titles in Goodman’s Everyone’s Money Books series cover a multitude of financial topics in a concise, readable format. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the different options for your money, but Goodman devotes each book to explaining a single topic and never sends the reader into information overload. He compiles a great list of resources worksheets, Web sites, newsletters, consumer groups and government agencies to help you put the advice to immediate use.

Do you still have that dream of retiring at 50 and moving to Tahiti? Good, because you’ll need it to recover from the shock of calculating how much moolah it will take to finance those golden years. Wisely predicting that most Americans come up short in the saving department, Goodman gives tips for playing catch-up in Retirement Planning. Whether you’re self-employed, contributing to a 401(k) (“the greatest thing since sliced bread”) or hoping for a pension, you need to understand your choices and responsibilities. If you want to retire in style, dream big and start planning today.

Author Deborah McNaughton shares her own personal experience with debt in The Get Out of Debt Kit . She owed $300,000, and soon after canceling her family’s medical insurance, her daughter needed emergency brain surgery. After much stress and worry, she triumphed over the bills by negotiating with creditors and is now eminently qualified to share common sense advice on what to do when you feel overwhelmed by debt.

The Get Out of Debt Kit deals mainly with credit card debt, because Americans owe about $700 billion on their charge cards. The book includes worksheets for recording expenses, budgeting and keeping track of credit card balances. McNaughton advises paying off low-balance cards first and explains how to deal with harassing creditors. McNaughton isn’t anti-credit. In fact, she strongly recommends having two or three open accounts in your own name, even if you are married. Just don’t use them if you can’t pay off the balance when the bill comes. “Remember the ideal is to have credit without debt,” she says. An important concept that’s easy to forget.

Admit it, ladies: When it comes to cosmetics, one brand of lipstick is much like the next pigment in a waxy carrier, some slight variation on pink or red, priced at a huge mark-up over the modest cost of production.

But it’s a rare woman who is brutally realistic about makeup. After all, the whole point of putting it on is to create a fantasy self. In a psychological sense, changing your face is changing your life.

In her entertaining, intelligent new book Color Stories: Behind the Scenes of America’s Billion-Dollar Beauty Industry, Mary Lisa Gavenas deglamourizes the glamour business without forgetting that what ultimately matters is how the consumer feels about herself. A “color story” is beauty industry jargon for a company’s seasonal collection of lipstick, nail polish and eye shadow, along with the advertising slogans that tie them together: “Go Tropical,” “Winter Beach,” “A Moment in Tuscany.” But Gavenas shows that “stories” are also the very essence of the $29 billion industry, from the way a pioneering entrepreneur like Helena Rubenstein or Mary Kay created her persona to the way mall department stores sell their wares through “makeovers.” Gavenas is herself a beauty industry vet, both as a magazine journalist and as an employee of companies as different as Avon and Yves Rocher. She’s able to provide a comprehensive overview of the business in a relatively short book by leading readers month by month through the development of a spring seasonal collection.

Her lively behind-the-scenes accounts of fashion shows and magazine photo shoots broaden into informative discussions of industry trends. And while Gavenas’ tone is light, she doesn’t avoid the less attractive side of the beauty world, such as the industry’s stubborn and largely successful fight against safety regulations.

The book is particularly interesting as it tells of the smart, hard-working women who became millionaires with their paints and powders. The Big Three were the long-gone Rubenstein, Elizabeth Arden and Estee Lauder, but it’s a career still open to female talent, as the success of Bobbi Brown demonstrates. However, Gavenas also points out that men head all but one of the biggest mass market companies. Appropriately enough, Color Stories begins and ends at a Bellevue, Washington, mall, where the purchases made by ordinary women illustrate the truth that makes this industry near recession-proof. They may not be able to afford designer dresses or trips to Tahiti, but women can always find optimism at the cosmetics counter. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in South Florida.

After 10 years as a newspaper journalist, Philip Delves Broughton was tired of his colleagues’ cynicism and anxious about what seemed to be his industry’s inexorable decline. He left his job with the London Daily Telegraph to go to Harvard Business School, seeking more control over his own destiny. It still seems to be an open question whether Delves Broughton will find fulfillment in the world of commerce. But luckily for readers, he has used his writing skills to produce an accessible memoir of his two years at HBS that also serves as a good primer on business.

Delves Broughton, an Englishman with an outsider’s perspective, demystifies the school that has produced such varied graduates as George W. Bush, Michael Bloomberg and infamous Enron felon Jeff Skilling. Perhaps surprisingly, the student body has a high proportion of the "three M’s": Mormons, military and McKinsey – people who either have worked or want to work at the McKinsey consulting firm on their way to even more lucrative jobs. But the HBS population is also increasingly multinational, and Delves Broughton points out interesting differences between American and non-American attitudes.

There are no true horror stories in Ahead of the Curve. As at any other school, some professors are worse than others, and some students are less than collegial. But overall, HBS comes across as an institution that takes seriously its responsibility to produce ethical, well-balanced leaders. Its "case study" system of teaching – dissecting business situations based on real-life models – provides students an effective way of thinking through problems.

But Delves Broughton raises troubling questions. Most graduates gravitate to well-paid finance and consulting jobs, not to entrepreneurial risks or manufacturing. Many think more about numbers than the people affected by their decisions. Their personal lives suffer as they spend obscene amounts of time at the office. And no one in the class of 2006 seems to anticipate the coming credit crisis – though one 1965 alumnus notes that the exceptionally high percentage of current graduates choosing financial services careers was likely a sign that the markets were about to crash.

Think back to the last time you made a decision based solely on cold, hard logic. Having trouble? Much as we’d like to be rational, the truth is we’re often ruled by our emotions. We go back to the store that feels comfortable, we buy the dress that makes us feel sexy, we eat at the restaurant that makes us feel at home. Here’s the lesson all marketers and managers should heed: It’s time to get in touch with your emotions, and three new business books can show you how to achieve this elusive goal.

Going out of your mind Jack Zufelt is a top professional speaker, a successful trainer and a highly acclaimed consultant and entrepreneur. Not exactly the guy you’d expect to dismiss goal-setting, self-help books and even motivational speakers in his new book The DNA of Success: Know What You Want to Get What You Want (HarperCollins, $26.00, 224 pages, ISBN 0060006587). Success is “an inside job,” says Zufelt, one that defies the rational baggage of “shoulds” and “ought-tos.” Instead, he says it’s time to get out of your head and tap into your emotions to find out what your heart truly yearns for. Those “core desires” in turn ignite the powerful “conquering forces” that motivate you to overcome all obstacles.

To be honest, it is work digging down to those core desires, but the process can be revelatory and even fun when done with a partner. The reward is in finally figuring out what you truly desire and discovering the passion to go out and achieve it.

Zufelt simplifies the complex ideas with his positive, can-do approach and includes plenty of personal stories. He moves beyond business applications to show how your core desires relate to creating family relationships, growing spiritually and improving self-image. The road to riches The team that created the blockbuster First, Break All the Rules is back with new revelations in Follow This Path (Warner, $26.95, 256 pages, ISBN 0446530506). Most companies are hoping to find the road to riches by tweaking price or by slapping “new ∧ improved!” everywhere, but that’s a dead end, say Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina. Customers base their loyalty on the way your company makes them feel, and it’s your employees that make or break that connection.

The commonsense ideas are based on a study by the Gallup Organization that questioned more than 10 million customers, three million employees and 200,000 managers. The findings concluded that what customers buy and keep buying is based on how they feel, and the best way to connect with a customer’s emotion is not through brands, slogans or jingles, but another human being. It’s a wake-up call for companies who are ignoring the untapped resources of their work force. The ideas seem simple develop employees’ strengths instead of fixing weaknesses; don’t treat everyone the same way but finding a company that recognizes the emotion-driven economy is rare.

Follow This Path creates an easy-to-follow road map for managers who want to engage and inspire their employees. The authors outline 34 different talent areas, describe the kind of work environment employees want and show managers how to achieve it. The 12 conditions of a great workplace (“There is someone at work who encourages my development” and “I have a best friend at work”) might sound like utopia for workers, but today’s great companies are finding a way to make it a reality.

The pursuit of pleasure Melinda Davis’ The New Culture of Desire is a challenging look at what motivates us in today’s hyper-connected world (Free Press, $26, 288 pages, ISBN 074320459X). The goal of Davis’ company, The Next Group, is to get inside the minds of today’s consumers, and during the past six years they have probed the shift in human desires. According to Davis, the old motivators sex, money and power have taken a back seat to the new driving force in human behavior: the pursuit of pleasure.

Davis begins by laying out the complicated assertion that the physical world is dead, and we’ve moved into what she calls “imaginational reality.” With pervasive technology and media coming at us from every direction, we have abandoned concrete reality and now live our lives in our heads. It’s a thought-provoking idea that has the scary ring of truth.

Now that we’ve transitioned into a new reality, we’ve developed a new survival instinct, says Davis. Instead of worrying about physical attacks, we’re now protecting our brains from assault. We’ve all become “imaginational age mental patients” looking for a product or service to be our healer.

If Davis still sounds like the crazy one, think about the $15 billion we spend each year on antidepressants. And that doesn’t include the tab on bubble baths, chocolate, alcohol and all the other guilty pleasures we use to self-medicate. Whether you agree with Davis’ ideas or not, The New Culture of Desire is fascinating reading that leaves you thinking about the changed reality in which we live.

Busting the Boom-Boom Room Nick Cuneo was the ultimate macho boss. The Smith Barney branch manager was notoriously creative with the F-word, kept a gun in his desk and instituted an infamous basement party room dubbed the Boom-Boom Room where happy hour started as early as 10 a.m. The Garden City, New York, branch and its boss were consistently top performers for the financial services firm, but the good times didn’t make up for the consistent abuse and intimidation directed toward female employees. Fed up with the groping and discrimination, women Cuneo had labeled with such nicknames as the Stepford Wife and the Playboy Bunny fought back with a class action lawsuit.

Journalist Susan Antilla tells the riveting story in Tales from the Boom-Boom Room: Women vs. Wall Street. Antilla followed the case from its beginnings, and the result is an intriguing cross between Liar’s Poker and A Civil Action. Readers get a fascinating look at the appalling behavior Wall Street chose to ignore and a guide through the machinations of a landmark case.

Led by outspoken broker Pamela Martens, women from Smith Barney branches across the country came together to expose the sexual hazing and unequal pay practices that damaged their careers. Most of the women involved in the suit are now forbidden to talk about the case because of settlement agreements, but Antilla vividly re-creates the characters and events. This story doesn’t come with a happy ending; many of the women quit their jobs or left the industry altogether and some dropped their complaints rather than face the daunting legal process with no sure reward. But Wall Street fears bad publicity even more than litigation, and this riveting human and legal drama will ensure that the stories told by these courageous women won’t be forgotten.