BusinessWeek magazine ranks the 10 best selling hardcover and paperback business books for September 2009 and gives a short summary.

1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. As you’d expect with Gladwell, there are lots of surprises in his explanation of why some people succeed fantastically. Pluck and smarts get less play here than such matters as one’s birth month and access to the right resources at just the right time. There are many points worth pondering in this enjoyable volume.

2. How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins. The author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t has taken a look at the other side of the coin: What happens inside great companies that go bad. Collins found that the seeds of decline and decay are often sown—unnoticed—in companies at the top of their game. In this book, he explains how to spot the signs and stop decline before it goes too far.

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The following is a list of the bestselling paperback business books as ranked by the New York Times on August 24.

1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. How and why certain products and ideas become fads.

2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. A new edition of the author’s principles for solving problems.

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HR practitioner Cheryl Stone reviews Harry Paul and Ross Reck’s book Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard.

Looking for a way to turn around employees overnight that is easy to implement, costs nothing, and where everybody wins?  Check out Instant Turnaround!: Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard by Harry Paul (Ken Blanchard Companies & coauthor of Fish! Tales: Real-Life Stories to Help You Transform Your Workplace and Your Life) and Ross Reck, Ph.D. (management consultant & coauthor with Paul of Revved!: An Incredible Way to Rev Up Your Workplace and Achieve Amazing Results)

In an easy-to-read format, the authors take you through the experiences of a fictitious company that embraces a program called “Destination: Work.”  With conversational dialogue, they tell a story and challenge us to make work a place that employees want to come to on Monday morning, replacing TGIF with TGIM — “thank goodness it’s Monday” and I get to go to work!  While they acknowledge the importance of the immediate supervisor and employee relationship, by the end of the book, they place the responsibility for this program squarely on the shoulders of senior management.

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Amazon.com updates its list of the bestselling books every hour. Here is a snapshot of what is hot right now, this Monday morning, August 17, in the “Management and Leadership” section of the “Business and Investing” category.

1. How Did That Happen?: Holding People Accountable for Results the Positive, Principled Way by Roger Connors and Tom Smith. Experts on workplace accountability and authors of The Oz Principle: Getting Results through Individual and Organizational Accountability tackle the next crucial step everyone can take, whether as a manager, supervisor, CEO, or individual performer: creating greater accountability in all the people on whom you depend.

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The following is a list of the bestselling hardcover business books as ranked by the New York Times on August 10.

1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. hy some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

2. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich. How two Harvard undergraduates created Facebook.

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BusinessWeek magazine ranks the 15 best selling hardcover and paperback business books for August 2009 and  gives a short summary.

1. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. As you’d expect with Gladwell, there are lots of surprises in his explanation of why some people succeed fantastically. Pluck and smarts get less play here than such matters as one’s birth month and access to the right resources at just the right time. There are many points worth pondering in this enjoyable volume.

2. How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins. The author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t has taken a look at the other side of the coin: What happens inside great companies that go bad. Collins found that the seeds of decline and decay are often sown—unnoticed—in companies at the top of their game. In this book, he explains how to spot the signs and stop decline before it goes too far.

read more…