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

Mustang Sallies

Success Secrets of Women Who Refuse to Run with the Herd

by Fawn Germer

Perigree Books, 225 pp, 2004, trade paper, $10.17

What do Sen. Hillary Clinton, activist Erin Brockovich, author Mary Higgins Clark, former EPA chief Christine Whitman and FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley have in common? They are all extraordinary women who refused to "go along to get along" -- and achieved extraordinary success in the process.

Journalist, consultant and NEW Summit speaker Fawn Germer is a self-described "mustang sally" herself. In this remarkable volume she recounts the journeys of more than fifty iconoclastic women, from CEOs to athletes, generals to entertainers, and describes how you can chart your own course through life and business.

Mustangs can't help not running with the herd. Hillary Clinton is a typical example, Germer writes. Opponents have attacked her hair, her makeup, her politics, and her personal life. Clinton admits she brought some of it on herself. But she is now poised to win a second term as senator from New York and is a leading candidate for president.

"Mustang Sallies" includes a test to determine how you score on the Germer's iconoclast scale, then offers more lessons on how to "compromise without selling out." The lessons are interspersed with profiles of more than fifty iconoclastic women who have succeeded on their own terms.

"Life is so sweet when you take your power and use it for yourself," Germer writes. "Don't listen to your tormentors and don't torment yourself." Let loose and run your own race!

Alternate Selections

Touch America: The Shopper Connection

The Research Study of In-Store Marketing

by Mass Connections, Inc.

Mass Connections, 140 pp, 2006, hardcover, $30

Touch America: The Shopper Connection opens with an intimate and in-depth look at a typical middle-class family, exploring how they shop, where they shop, and why. The detailed report then reveals the results of three nationwide surveys examining the state of food marketing in the United States. The exhaustive report is full of fascinating facts. For example, while two-thirds of Americans across the board still prefer traditional grocery stores to other food outlets, Wal-Mart is now the nation's largest food seller, claiming 25 cents of every food dollar spent in the U.S. This number could rise to 35 cents by 2012.

The report is based on surveys of thousands of respondents in different geographic, socioeconomic, ethnic and age groups conducted last October. It explores why people shop where they shop, what motivates impulse decisions, and how in-store signage and merchandising affect "shoppability." Touch America: The Shopper Connection is not a standard research report full of dry charts and hard-to-read tables. Designed like a coffee table book, the book reports the salient facts in a concise and entertaining way. It's a great shopping experience itself.

Order now from Mass Connections

The Bear Necessities of Business

Building a Company with Heart

by Maxine Clark with Amy Joyner

John Wiley & Sons, 326 pp, 2006, hardcover, $15.72

Maxine Clark started Build-A-Bear Workshop with less than ten years ago. Today, the company is one of the most successful concepts in retailing with more than two hundred stores around the world. This book recounts that story and lessons from her 30-year career in business. Clark reveals how you can achieve stunning business success in seven steps, which are easy-to-understand if not always easy to achieve.

Clark's book is full of warm and practical advice on how to create a company that connects with customers and values its stakeholders. Her executive offices, for example, are covered with photographs of the store's guests so decision-makers never lose sight of who they're working for. Another Clark maxim: Reward mistakes, because employees who make mistakes are learning, and that's the most valuable thing they can do.

Smart Women, Smart Moves

by Vanessa Weaver and Jan Hill

Amacom, 167 pp, 1994, paper, $15.95*

Vanessa Weaver and Jan Hill -- two presenters at the upcoming September 2006 NEW Leadership Summit -- discuss what to do when the brass ring loses its shine. In Smart Women, Smart Moves the two former corporate executives examine why women become disenchanted at work and what they can do about it. The book helps you understand your expectations, explore your values, assess your real position at your company, and make an informed decision to stay put or move on. The authors use personal relationships -- Just Dating, Girlfriend, Mistress, Fiancé and Spouse -- as metaphors for understanding work relationships. These relationship stages are explored through self-assessments, case histories, and relationship- and confidence-building exercises that will help career women make smart moves in their careers.

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