Visit the NEW Book Club each month for best-selling business books of special interest to executive women. You’ll get great insights and great savings—and a portion of each sale will support NEW’s education and networking programs.

Main Selection

Career Bliss

Secrets from 100 Women Who Love Their Work

by Joann Gordon

Ballantine Books, 334 pp, 2005, tradepaper, $15.63*

“There are no happy jobs,” business reporter Joann Gordon writes in the introduction to Career Bliss. “There are only happy workers.”

In this volume of one hundred personal stories, Gordon examines the common threads that have enabled women from scores of diverse occupations to achieve job satisfaction. There are executives, yes. There are also a massage therapist, a flight attendant, a judge, and a greeting card designer.

What all these women have in common is taking “great pleasure in the day-to-day activities their job requires, whether that means selling, managing, writing, designing, driving a truck, building a team, analyzing data or running a company.”

Another essential to job satisfaction for women is values. The job performed must be in synch with a woman’s core values for it be satisfactory. And last, but not least, satisfied career women likes, or at least respects, those she works with.

The one hundred women in this book saw opportunities where others found none, networked and saved or returned to school, and turned dead-ends into choices. They are not a perky bunch “hardwired for happiness,” just a hard-working group of women who “took chances though they were scared to death.”

Alternate Selections

Martha

On Trial, in Jail and on a Comeback

by Robert Slater

Pearson/Prentiss Hall, 268 pp, Dec 2005, hardcover, $15.63*

No one has had more ups and downs than Martha Stewart. In this book, business author Robert Slater examines the “personal matter” that got Martha in trouble with the Feds, her headline-making trial, the five months she spent in the Alderson Federal Women’s Prison, and her remarkable comeback as one of America’s leading entrepreneurs and media personalities. The story is told in fascinating, page-turning detail. The cast features Peter Bacanovic, Martha’s broker and co-defendant; star witness Douglas Faneuil; Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, and Federal prosecutor Karen Seymour. Most of all there is Martha herself: The demanding perfectionist who is defiant, humbled, shrewd and triumphant again.

Finding Your Own North Star

Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live

by Martha Beck

Three Rivers Press, 400 pp, 2002, paper, $10.17*

In this book Harvard-trained sociologist Martha Beck shows how to use your “gut feelings” to point to hidden truths long hidden to find your own way in life. Discarding old boundaries and discovering new awareness can be painful as well as exhilarating. But the payoff is nothing short of falling in love with life. Beck takes readers through exercises designed to evaluate the plusses and minuses of their current lifestyle. She tells how to listen to the body for cues, and explains how to heal old wounds that still fester beneath the surface. This warm-hearted book offers a refreshing guide to bringing personal goals into agreement with family, career and social responsibilities. Beck shows the way with practical exercises that help eliminate negative influences and build self-esteem. It is recommended reading for anyone who wants to discover her own “North Star.”

Time Management Secrets for Working Women

Getting Organized to Get the Most Out of Each Day

by Ruth Klein

Sourcebooks Inc., 256 pp, December 2005, paper, $10.17*

Women are leaving corporate life at twice the rate of men – and not just to raise families. The reason, according to author Ruth Klein’s new book, is that their unique time management needs are not being addressed by corporate America. It’s a failure that’s causing many women to leave corporate life to before they reach their full potential.

This practical guide shows women how to make the most effective use of their time so that they can succeed in the workplace and “get organized beyond their dreams.” The secret is not just working hard, but working smart. The three most important words according to this practical guide: Prioritize, prioritize and prioritize.

Suggest a selection for the NEW Book Club. Email NetworkNews at editor@newnewsletter.org

© Copyright 2009 by the Network of Executive Women. All rights reserved.