5 Cool Ideas From My Current Reading List

– By Michael Angelo Caruso

As the weather cools, there will be less daylight and more time to read. I'm still reading about 35 books a year. Here are 5 Cool Ideas from my current reading list.

1.  You don't need a title to be a leader.

My friend Mark Sanborn wrote the terrific customer service book, The Fred Factor (#8 on the New York Times Business Best Sellers list). His new book, You Don't Have to Have a Title to Be a Leader, explains that some people don’t recognize themselves as leaders because they haven’t officially been dubbed a "manager" or "supervisor" at work. Mark reminds that we are all leaders in our own way.

2.   People are your greatest resource.

Quincy Jones knows everyone. His autobiography, Q– The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, explains how the musical arranger and producer went from a poor upbringing (his family ate rats) to producing Michael Jackson's Thriller. Hint: Quincy met jazz greats Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie before he was 20 years old.

3.  Humor can take the edge off bad news.

Dennis Miller delivers brilliant, fast-paced diatribes on everything from the space program (“MIR” is Russian for “duct tape”) to complainers (“a person who steps onto a baseball diamond and whines that he’s not playing soccer.”) For the full effect, listen to I Rant, Therefore I Am on audio.

4.  Think like a doctor.

I’ve been doing a lot of speaking for the health care industry, so How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, M.D. caught my eye. The book is a fascinating look at how doctors (and the rest of us) process information. Groopman contends that we'd all do well to achieve states of “productive anxiety” instead of muddy drama and panic.

5.  It's all in the presentation.

Harry Houdini was a dirt- poor immigrant before he figured out how to present himself. By constantly re-creating his image—the touring sleight-of- hand magician, the Handcuff King, the escape artist and finally the man known for exposing fake mediums. Houdini was always in the news. Read all about it in The Secret Life of Houdini–The Making of America's First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman.