In the bestselling The Long Tail, author Chris Anderson posited that companies can make money by selling a wide variety of low-volume items rather than selling only a few high-demand products. In Free, he argues that smart businesses are already making money off of free products--think of Google--or by offering free services that users can upgrade for a fee (the free photo sharing site Flickr, with its upgrade FlickrPro, is one example). Despite the recent revelation of Anderson's apparently accidental plagiarism of Wikipedia in Free, we're betting that this thought-provoking book has bestseller written all over it.

Talk about busted. Not long after journalist Edmund Andrews' new book was featured in The New York Times, reports appeared that put his story of his victimization at the hands of mortgage lenders in entirely new (and unflattering) light. While Busted focuses on the easy mortgage that like so many Americans Andrews and his wife walked into, and which he claims led them to the precipice of bankruptcy, it turns out that he neglected to mention that his wife had already filed bankruptcy not once but twice in the past 11 years, despite an annual income that usually exceeded $100,000. While it's true that his book offers solid reporting on the housing bubble and on unscrupulous lending practices, you should follow up this read with some digging of your own--start with Megan McCurdle's articles in The Atlantic Magazine.

Here's something a little different. Rather than a how-to on getting a job, keeping a job, or doing a good job, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work ponders the meaning and significance of work and the elements of a job that make it pleasurable, onerous, or downright awful. As in life, the work portrayed here includes office (accounting) and factory (biscuit-making) settings, as well as creative work (painting) and out-of-the-ordinary roles (rocket scientists and the Maldives' minister of fish). More than just descriptions of career options, this combination of solid reporting and philosophy "expands beyond the workplace to investigate the broader meaning of life" (Publishers Weekly). Pair it with Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft for a closer look at the value of skilled labor.

Using the latest research in brain science to support his arguments, business consultant Charles S. Jacobs contends that feedback--whether punishment or praise--isn't the best way to get employees to do their best. Instead, rather than forcing people to do certain things using either the carrot or the stick, Jacobs suggests that encouragement, especially when it comes to incorporating change, is the most effective way to enhance performance. Though "well-argued and substantiated" (Publishers Weekly), this book is also likely to arouse disagreement. Nevertheless, it's a thought-provoking book for leaders at all levels.

Called the Match King because he cornered the safety-match market in return for loaning money to governments, Ivar Kreuger was a hugely successful Wall Streeter in the 1920s whose suicide exposed highly fraudulent business practices. Having charmed investors (who included heads of state) and provided real profits from a few successful businesses, he then hid losses and booked false gains in order to continue paying out high dividends; his company's collapse bankrupted millions of investors. After his death, regulations were put in place to prevent similar crashes; these were relaxed in the 1990s, allowing Bernie Madoff (and others) to follow in Kreuger's footsteps. If you followed the Madoff trial, you won't want to miss this timely history.

Trying to understand how the world got into the financial state it's in, but don't know where to start? Or maybe you're looking for some deep analysis of the current situation and what we can learn from it? Either way, you might want to pick up prolific author Richard Posner's latest, A Failure of Capitalism. In addition to examining the causes of the financial crisis, Posner looks at its consequences as well as how the U.S. government has responded. While not everyone will agree with all of his theses--among them that markets can't prevent depressions--The New York Times calls A Failure of Capitalism an "indispensable" starting point.

As the world continues to dig itself out of financial drama, this timely history of money, banking, and credit might help you to understand what happened. As both a historian and an author of several books on money-related topics, Niall Ferguson is an excellent guide to financial history from Mesopotamia's clay tablets to the bursting of bubbles. If you're looking for the logic behind financial institutions, want to better understand why credit was necessary for civilization to prosper, or are curious what Scottish widows have to do with insurance theory, you'll want to check out The Ascent of Money. For a view of financial history that only extends back to the 1960s and 70s, try Robert Samuelson's The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath.

Using an exclusive--and subsidized--golf resort in Oregon as just one of many examples, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Johnston details how deregulation has led to greater benefits for corporations and the wealthy while lower-income workers, retirees, and other ordinary citizens suffer under less protection--and foot the bill. Each of the 26 chapters features a case study (such as tax breaks that help big businesses at the expense of individual citizens or the collapse of Enron) that illustrates the inequalities of the relationship between the government and the private sector. While Free Lunch is sure to provoke discussion, it's one worth having.

Whether you're bringing home the bacon, spending dough, or counting your moolah, sometimes it's just all about the Benjamins. And if you want to learn the history behind the almighty U.S. dollar, this book will take you through the history of the American currency itself as well as through the life cycle of a dollar bill (only two years long!). In addition to examining the reasons why the American currency has become so widely accepted, Wall Street Journal reporter Craig Karmin also analyzes its role in international finance and trade, its impact on globalization, and its future. This informative, entertaining introduction to the dollar is complete with trivia on a variety of dollar-related topics.

Although author Roger Lowenstein warns that pensions are underfunded across both the private and public sectors in the U.S., he focuses on three particular failures, all of which suffered from underfunding, too much borrowing, unsustainable promises, and over-reliance on stock market gains. This analysis of the fiascos faced by General Motors, the city of San Diego, and the subway system in New York City may help others to avoid similar situations, but as Lowenstein argues, fixing pensions may be more difficult to do than agreeing on national healthcare. Though the way forward may be unclear, this is a great place to start if you want to understand the problem.

Though first published in 2006, this sobering critique is still timely in its examination of the practice of using corporate layoffs as a business strategy in the U.S. In addition, New York Times reporter Louis Uchitelle also delves into the repercussions of such a strategy on the individuals laid off and on the nation as a whole, and uses the profiles of several laid-off workers to illustrate his points. If you're interested in the government's role in corporate culture, or are concerned about what layoffs really mean for the economy and its workers, you'll want to read The Disposable American.