Soul of the Firm, by William Pollard. Total Quality Management (TQM) meets Christian leadership values in Pollard's account of the financial and spiritual success of the ServiceMaster Company, a firm that trades under major brand names like Terminix and TruGreenChemlawn.

Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, by James John Carlin. After being released from prison and winning South Africa's first free election, Nelson Mandela had a plan to use the national rugby team to embody and engage a new South Africa. The string of wins that followed defied the odds and capped Mandela's miraculous effort to bring South Africans together in a hardwon, enduring bond.

Stones into Schools, by Greg Mortenson. In this dramatic firstperson narrative, Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan.

The Kabul Beauty School, by Deborah Rodriguez. Experience a few figurative highlights as you enter a makeshift Afghan salon to chat about “Kabul Beauty School,” a true account by American Deborah Rodriguez, who ran a beauty school for women in the wartorn and maledominated city.

The Cancer Survivor's Guide, by Neal Barnyard & Jennifer K. Reilly. The Cancer Survivor's Guide explains how foods influence the hormones that fuel cancer and how a dietary change to a lowfat, plantbased diet can be beneficial to anyone diagnosed with cancer.

Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni. An astutely written fictional tale to unambiguously but painlessly deliver some hard truths about critical business procedures, Lencioni targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables.

Playing With the Enemy, by Gary Moore. Gene Moore was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1940. After Pearl Harbor, the Dodgers arranged for him to be a member of a U.S. Navy baseball team. Eventually, the team was assigned stateside to guard a select group of German prisoners with the U505 submarine. The story of the relationship that developed between the prisoners and their guards is fascinating, as is the profile of this member of the Greatest Generation.

The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel. The surge in Iraq was an ordeal of hard fighting and trauma for the American soldiers on the ground, according to this riveting war report. Finkel chronicles the 15 month deployment of the 216 Infantry Battalion in Baghdad during 200708, when the chaos in Iraq subsided to a manageable uproar.

America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story, by Bruce Feiler. Feiler argues the story of the life of Moses as told in the book of Exodus has been the dominant metanarrative employed by political and social leaders in shaping America's identity, from the Pilgrims escaping religious persecution to the civil rights movement with its vision of a Promised Land.

This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel Levitin. Levitin's fascination with the mystery of music and the study of why it affects us so deeply is at the heart of this book. In a real sense, the author is a rock 'n' roll doctor, and in that guise dissects our relationship with music.

Churchill, by Paul Johnson. In this firstrate biography, veteran British historian Johnson (Modern Times) asserts that Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was the 20th century's most valuable figure: No man did more to preserve freedom and democracy

Catch 22, by Joseph Heller. There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Forty years later, the novel's undiminished strength is its lookingglass logic. Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense.

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, by ZZ Packer. These short stories deal with black men and women, mostly young and urban. Packer’s carefully engineered narratives treat listeners to the richness of highly developed characters and lead them to some intriguing scenarios.

Blind Side, by Michael Lewis. This book works on three levels. First as a shrewd analysis of the NFL; second, as an expose of the insanity of bigtime college football recruiting; and, third, as a moving portrait of the positive effect that love, family, and education can have in reversing the path of a life that was destined to be lived unhappily and, most likely, end badly.

Teaching With Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids Brains and What Schools Can Do About It, by Eric Jensen. An unflinching look at how poverty hurts children, families, and communities across the U.S. and demonstrates how schools can improve the academic achievement and life readiness of economically disadvantaged students.