When it’s time to leave the comfy confines of home and school, a few words of wisdom about the real world can save new graduates a lot of time, money and aggravation. We’ve found four new books all great gift ideas that will help grads ace the transition. (And for those of you who have been out there for a while but could still use a few clues, these books are definitely worth reading.)

Stepping out Your old life is behind you and what lies ahead is a great big grown-up world. How do you get a job, an apartment, a car, a life? How do you clean from top to bottom, or cook a chocolate cherry cake? Two new books that are informative on their own and even more comprehensive together will help you through. No one likes to be lectured about this stuff, but the authors present their information as a trusted big sister might with humor, knowledge and care all of which makes for an enlightening and entertaining read. Rebecca Knight, author of A Car, Some Cash, and a Place to Crash: The Only Post-College Survival Guide You’ll Ever Need (Rodale, $17.95, 334 pages, ISBN 1579546269), offers smart insights into navigating and negotiating your way in the real world. Drawing on her own experiences and those of many recent graduates, as well as directing the reader to helpful books and websites, she covers the basics of jobs, apartments and cars as well as insurance and investing, food and friendships. In Real Life, Here I Come: A Survival Guide to the World After Graduation, author Autumn McAlpin starts with surviving college, then progresses to finding your first home away from home and thriving financially, physically and socially. Witty, three-question quizzes begin each chapter and help you assess your understanding of the topic to follow, but no matter what your score, there is good, sound information to be learned about life.

On the right road When it comes to choosing a career, "to thine own self be true" is the focus of Roadtrip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your Path in Life (Ballantine, $13.95, 248 pages, ISBN 0345460138). Authors Nathan Gebhard and Mike Marriner, with Joanne Gordon, believe that if you have a broad understanding of what’s out there, you can better determine how to realize your dreams and passions. Gebhard and Marriner, not knowing what to do after college, set out in an RV and took a cross-country road trip to meet with successful people and learn how they found their paths in life. More than a hundred people were interviewed during the authors’ travels and a couple dozen of the more captivating interviews are in the book, including Arianne Phillips, stylist for Madonna and Lenny Kravitz; Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks and owner of the Seattle Supersonics; scientist and human genome decoder Craig Venter; and Manny, a lobsterman in Maine. The book urges readers to go on their own road trips and gives guidance on whom to meet (answer: anyone you want), how to get the meeting and what to do and say during the conversation. Hit the road you can only regret the roadtrip not taken.

On-the-job nightmares You might just make it in the workplace after all, and with The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Work (Chronicle, $14.95, 176 pages, ISBN 0811835758) you’ll be that much more savvy and have that much more fun. In the latest book in the The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook series by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, you’ll learn such skills as covering mistakes and covering tattoos, making yourself seem more important and making yourself invisible. Presented in a deadpan, businesslike style laced with humor, the book’s step-by-step instructions tell you how to get a job you’re not qualified for, stay awake during a meeting or restore a mistakenly shredded document. Ellen Marsden is a writer in Jackson, Tennessee.

When it’s time to leave the comfy confines of home and school, a few words of wisdom about the real world can save new graduates a lot of time, money and aggravation. We’ve found four new books all great gift ideas that will help grads ace the transition. (And for those of you who have been out there for a while but could still use a few clues, these books are definitely worth reading.) Stepping out Your old life is behind you and what lies ahead is a great big grown-up world. How do you get a job, an apartment, a car, a life? How do you clean from top to bottom, or cook a chocolate cherry cake? Two new books that are informative on their own and even more comprehensive together will help you through. No one likes to be lectured about this stuff, but the authors present their information as a trusted big sister might with humor, knowledge and care all of which makes for an enlightening and entertaining read. Rebecca Knight, author of A Car, Some Cash, and a Place to Crash: The Only Post-College Survival Guide You’ll Ever Need, offers smart insights into navigating and negotiating your way in the real world. Drawing on her own experiences and those of many recent graduates, as well as directing the reader to helpful books and websites, she covers the basics of jobs, apartments and cars as well as insurance and investing, food and friendships. In Real Life, Here I Come: A Survival Guide to the World After Graduation (Adams, $12.95, 304 pages, ISBN 1580628419), author Autumn McAlpin starts with surviving college, then progresses to finding your first home away from home and thriving financially, physically and socially. Witty, three-question quizzes begin each chapter and help you assess your understanding of the topic to follow, but no matter what your score, there is good, sound information to be learned about life. On the right road When it comes to choosing a career, “to thine own self be true” is the focus of Roadtrip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your Path in Life (Ballantine, $13.95, 248 pages, ISBN 0345460138). Authors Nathan Gebhard and Mike Marriner, with Joanne Gordon, believe that if you have a broad understanding of what’s out there, you can better determine how to realize your dreams and passions. Gebhard and Marriner, not knowing what to do after college, set out in an RV and took a cross-country road trip to meet with successful people and learn how they found their paths in life. More than a hundred people were interviewed during the authors’ travels and a couple dozen of the more captivating interviews are in the book, including Arianne Phillips, stylist for Madonna and Lenny Kravitz; Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks and owner of the Seattle Supersonics; scientist and human genome decoder Craig Venter; and Manny, a lobsterman in Maine. The book urges readers to go on their own road trips and gives guidance on whom to meet (answer: anyone you want), how to get the meeting and what to do and say during the conversation. Hit the road you can only regret the roadtrip not taken.

On-the-job nightmares You might just make it in the workplace after all, and with The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Work (Chronicle, $14.95, 176 pages, ISBN 0811835758) you’ll be that much more savvy and have that much more fun. In the latest book in the The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook series by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, you’ll learn such skills as covering mistakes and covering tattoos, making yourself seem more important and making yourself invisible. Presented in a deadpan, businesslike style laced with humor, the book’s step-by-step instructions tell you how to get a job you’re not qualified for, stay awake during a meeting or restore a mistakenly shredded document. Ellen Marsden is a writer in Jackson, Tennessee.

Businesswomen everywhere ask Gail Evans, the author of the best-selling Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, the same question: do I have to play golf? Her answer is a resounding no. “So what if you play golf,” she says, “they’re making the deal in the locker room and you’re never going to get in there.” Evans says it’s time to stop acting like “junior men” and start playing on the women’s team. By supporting each other, women can pave the way for success. BookPage recently spoke to the (now retired) first female executive vice president at CNN about her new book, She Wins, You Win, and the girl’s game that can make women more powerful in business.

Why do women think they have to play golf to be successful? The trouble we have had as women is that somebody told us back in the ’70s and ’80s that the way to get ahead was to become junior men. The truth is, most very successful women are very feminine. I don’t mean they wear frilly dresses, but you know their female side. They use their brains and the compassion they have as women to be successful.

How do I win when another woman wins? When a woman fails at a big job, everyone knows it was a woman. It’s not the chairman of that company that failed; it’s the woman chairman of that company that failed. And there’s almost always a female component. She didn’t fail because she couldn’t balance the budget. She failed because women aren’t into finance. That reflects on every other woman. The next time they get ready to hire somebody for that position, the guys think, Well, we gave a woman the chance at that and she didn’t do very well.’ So ultimately that hurts you. But when she’s terrific and successful, they don’t say it’s because she’s a woman. When woman are shining, the issue of “woman” is diminished. It’s just who does the best job.

And to become more powerful women need to form teams? My solution to this is that we need to help each other. I think of these teams as the idea that we’re connected. The idea that I care about your success, that your success matters to me, that I understand the connection between your success and mine. Women are natural relationship builders, so why don’t we have the old girl’s network figured out? We’ve made it artificial. We know how to do this personally so well. I know women who couldn’t walk into an office comfortably, but they can network with 43 people to find the best pediatrician. It’s like we lose all those skills the minute we come to work.

And the one that kills me the most: “I’m looking for a mentor. Will you be my mentor?” Being a mentor is not about a formal job. These are natural things! To get into the system that the guys have, we’re setting up these artificial structures when we know how to do it very well. We’re trying to reinvent all these things and make them complicated. Why is that? Women think we have to make it on our own, that there’s no integrity in getting help. I say it’s not even good business to refuse to get help. If you’ve got connections, you’re supposed to use them. I’m saying we have to start doing it together because one is not enough. One doesn’t get you any power. It’s when six move ahead that we have power, and then we can help each other when we’re stuck.

You tell women to keep their mouths shut about other women at work. Why? When you talk to a man you work with about another woman, the power of your words is five times that of another man. When you say something bad about her, be clear you’re putting the nail in her coffin. And if you put the nail in her coffin, think of who’s going to put the nail in yours. Watch your words carefully, and don’t get caught in the romance of being the one he trusts. If she’s not good, they’re going to get rid of her. They don’t need you to justify it. I’m not telling anyone to be dishonest; I’m just telling people that this is a trap you need to be very careful about.

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.