Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sheryl Sandberg, Nell Scovell
Knopf Doubleday Publishing, $28.95

In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg examines why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root causes, and offers compelling, common-sense solutions that can empower women to achieve their full potential. Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and is ranked on Fortune’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2010, she gave an electrifying TED Talk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which became a phenomenon and has been viewed more than two million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto.

How Remarkable Women Lead: The Breakthrough Model for Work and Life
Joanna Barsh, Susie Cranston, and Geoffrey Lewis
Crown Publishing Group, $17.00

Based on five years of proprietary research, How Remarkable Women Lead speaks to you as no other book has, with its hopeful outlook and unique ideas about success. It’s the new “right stuff” of leadership, raising provocative issues such as whether feminine leadership traits (both for women and for men) are better suited for our fast-changing, hyper-competitive, and increasingly complex world. The authors, McKinsey & Company consultants Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston, establish the links between joy, happiness, and distinctive performance with the groundbreaking model of “centred leadership.”

Stiletto Network: Inside the Women’s Power Circles That Are Changing the Face of Business
Pamela Ryckman
Amacom, $26.95

More women are running major companies than ever before. While still far too few in number, these female heads of industry are the forerunners of a radical shift in power now underway. During the past few years, women’s groups have been coalescing in every major American city. Formidable ladies across professions are convening at unprecedented rates, forming salons, dinner groups, and networking circles—and collaborating to achieve clout and success. A new girls’ network is alive and set to hyperdrive. Stiletto Network is about those groups: the “Power Bitches,” “Brazen Hussies,” and “S.L.U.T.S.: Successful Ladies Under Tremendous Stress.” It’s about what happens when bright, extraordinary women—from captains of industry to aspiring entrepreneurs—come together to celebrate and unwind, debate and compare notes.

Work With Me: The 8 Blind Spots Between Men and Women in Business
Barbara Annis, John Gray
Palgrave Macmillan, $31.00

Work With Me is the timely collaboration of two of the world’s foremost authorities on gender relations. Barbara Annis, world-renowned expert on gender issues in the workplace, and John Gray, author of the number one relationship book of all time, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, team up to resolve the most stressful and confusing challenges facing men and women at work. Annis and Gray reveal, for the first time, survey results of over 100,000 in-depth interviews of men and women executives in over 60 “Fortune 500” companies. Readers will discover the “eight gender blind spots”—the false assumptions and opinions men and women have of each other, and in many ways, believe of themselves.

The XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a Far Less Equal World
Alison Wolf
Allen Lane Canada, $34.00

For most of history, being female defined the limits of a woman’s achievements. But now women can be successful careerists who are the equal of men. In Norway, women legally must constitute a third of all boards. In the U.S.A., women have gone from being three percent of practising lawyers in 1970 to 40 percent today, and over half of all current law students are female. More than seventy million educated women throughout the world work alongside men. Many delay marriage and children, and some forego them entirely. Yet professional women remain a minority.

These changes are revolutionary but not universal—the “sisterhood” of working women is deeply divided. Young, educated, full-time professional women, who have put children on hold, are making enormous strides in the workplace. But for a second group of women, this is unattainable. Instead, they work part-time, earn less, are concentrated in heavily feminized occupations such as cleaning, and gain income and self-worth from having children at a young age.

On the Edge: The Art of High-Impact Leadership
Alison Levine
Grand Central Publishing, $30.00

On the Edge is an engaging leadership manual that provides concrete insights garnered from various extreme environments, ranging from Mount Everest to the South Pole. By reflecting on the lessons learned from her various expeditions, author Alison Levine makes the case that the leadership principles that apply in extreme adventure sport also apply in today’s extreme business environments. Both settings require you to be able to make crucial decisions on the spot when the conditions around you are far from perfect. Your survival—and the survival of your team—depend on it.