A book that takes a contrarian approach to business, Rework, arrives on the new USA Today best seller list at #49.

It has been rising on Amazon as well, reaching as high as #4 last week. The authors, miffed that Karl Rove’s book shot above theirs, retaliated with this video (via Gawker):

They might also have noted that while Rove’s book is reviewed in places like The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, theirs is reviewed by PC Pro and Inc.com.

Rove’s book is currently at #11 on Amazon. Rework is at #12.

Rework Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson Retail Price: $22.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Crown Business – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 0307463745 / 9780307463746

RH Audio; UNABR; 9780307704511; $24
ebook and audio available from OverDrive

After dozens of high-profile best selling titles about various aspects of the financial crisis, the most anticipated title, and the one the may be the most accessible to the broadest audience is…

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Michael Lewis Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-03-15) ISBN / EAN: 0393072231 / 9780393072235

It arrives with much fanfare; an excerpt in Vanity Fair, appearances on Sixty Minutes (Sunday), the Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Jon Stewart, among others on Monday, followed by Fresh Air and Charlie Rose on Tuesday.

Holds in libraries are surprisingly light; all the publicity could change that.

It’s amazing to realize that there was a time before consulting firms and endless talk about business strategy. The former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review writes about how we got here in Lords of Strategy. It’s currently rising on Amazon (now at #308), even though the listing indicates it won’t be published for three more weeks (the publisher listing, however, shows a 3/3/10 pub date).

It was just reviewed in the The Wall Street Journal, “Big Think In the Boardroom“;

…a clear, deft and cogent portrait of what the author calls the most powerful business idea of the past half-century: the realization that corporate leaders needed to abandon their go-it-alone focus on their company’s fortunes and instead pursue policies based on a detailed study of the competitive environment and of broader business trends.

The author was interviewed earlier in Business Week; “Lords of Strategy: A Talk with Walter Kiechel.”

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World Walter Kiechel Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Harvard Business School Press – (2010-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 1591397820 / 9781591397823

Check your holdings; it wasn’t review prepub and the libraries we checked have not ordered it yet.

Harry Markopolos, a Boston deratives analyst, was asked by his boss to look into a very successful hedge fund and try to figure out why it was doing so well. He instantly realized that it was a fraud and tried many times to blow the whistle on it. He wasn’t subtle; in 2000, he sent a memo to the SEC  titled “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud.” Fittingly, his book about the experience is titled No One Would Listen.

That fund was, of course, Bernie Madoff’s. In an interview with Jon Stewart on Monday night, Markopolos was clear about his distain for the SEC, causing Stewart to burst out, “You are an angry dude; you’re just rippin‘ these guys.”

The book rose to #18 on Amazon (it’s now at #21) and has heavy holds in libraries.

———-

No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller Harry Markopolos Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Wiley – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0470553731 / 9780470553732

ebook available from OverDrive

Next week’s most-anticipated nonfiction book is bestselling business guru Seth Godin‘s guide to mastering the new economy, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?  Three of the four libraries we checked had it, with holds of close to 2:1 on orders of 8-15 copies

Though the reserves aren’t huge, they appear to be a positive effect of Godin’s gamble on Internet-only publicity campaign, in which he bypassed the traditional media, giving away books at his own expense to the first 3,000 readers who agreed to make a minium $30 donation to the Acumen Fund.

So far, Godin has a page of positive blog reviews and tweets to show for his efforts, and the Acumen Fund has raised more than $100,000.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Seth Godin Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 1591843162 / 9781591843160

Audio available from Random House on 2/09/10:

• CD: $15; ISBN 9780307704078

Other Major Titles Going on Sale Next Week:

Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging by Greg Critser (Harmony) is a journalist’s irreverent look at the anti-aging industry. Kirkus found it “a delightful, politically incorrect view of the life-extension movement, accompanied by the disappointing news that aging is reversible but not in the near future.”

I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne (Grand Central) is the legendary rocker and reality show star’s memoir, which Kirkus deemed “as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.”

Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour by Gayle Haggard (Tyndale) is a memoir by the wife of evangelical Christian leader Tim Haggard who had liaisons with a male prostitute.

Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies Table, Our Journey Through the Middle East by Ted Dekker and Middle East expert Carl Medearis  (Doubleday Religion) is an account of the Christian novelist’s effort to love his enemies.

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner is at it again – writing a review that immediately compels you to pick up a book you might not have given a second glance, based on his confident comparisons to similar titles, his sensitivity to good writing, and his own seductive storytelling flair.

This time it is I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, a look at the roots of the global financial crisis by English novelist John Lancaster (The Debt to Pleasure), who began by researching a novel but found the facts so compelling he chose to write a work of nonfiction. It’s already up to #94 on Amazon.

Forty-six libraries have this book, according to World Cat. Those we checked show reserve ratios of five to one on modest orders.

Here are a few of Garner’s most compelling endorsements of the book:

“Few if any [similar] books will be as pleasurable — and by that I mean as literate or as wickedly funny — as John Lanchester’s.”

“If you don’t know how derivatives or credit default swaps work, or what securitization is, or why futures are riskier than options, this is a book for you.”

“Mr. Lanchester’s history lesson is peppered with dead-on references to everything, including ‘Annie Hall,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘The Wire,’ Hemingway and Jacques Derrida. He is effortlessly epigrammatical.”

I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay John Lanchester Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-01-05) ISBN / EAN: 1439169845 / 9781439169841

None of the titles on Time magazine’s list of the five best business books of the year will be a surprise.

More useful from a library standpoint is 1-800-CEO-READ’s Best Business Book Awards of 2009, because it includes books on practical subjects people are looking for these days, like how to run a small business, management and salesmanship (here’s a title that speaks to our times — How to Sell When Nobody’s Buying).

800-CEO-READ was founded as the corporate sales division of  the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee. The retail stores were closed March 31, but CEO-READ continues to operate. They  run a monthly list of their top sellers and published The 100 Best Business Book of All Time this year.

Andy Sorkin’s book about Lehman Brothers has been on the NYT Nonfiction Best Seller list for six weeks. Some libraries are showing holds ratios as high as 20:1. Holds are also heavy on the audio, where it is owned.

Expect them to rise even higher after Sorkin appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Wednesday.

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves Andrew Ross Sorkin Retail Price: $32.95 Hardcover: 624 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2009-10-20) ISBN / EAN: 0670021253 / 9780670021253

Penguin Audio; Unabridged; 9780143144991; #39.95

Blackstone Audio; Unabridged:

• Cassette; 9781433297762; $72.95
• MP3CD; 9781433297809; $29.95
• CD; 9781433297779; $105

Book and audio downloadable from OverDrive