Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice
Bill Browder
Simon & Schuster, $21.00

A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world. It’s also the story of how, without intending to, he found meaning in his life.

Bill Browder started out his adult life as the Wall Street maverick whose instincts led him to Russia just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, where he made his fortune. Along the way, he exposed corruption and, when he did, barely escaped with his life. His Russian lawyer wasn’t so lucky: he ended up in jail, tortured to death. That changed Browder forever. He saw the murderous heart of the Putin regime and has spent the last half-decade on a campaign to expose it. Because of that, he became Putin’s No. 1 enemy, especially after Browder succeeded in having a law passed in the U.S. that punishes a list of Russians implicated in the lawyer’s murder. Putin famously retaliated with a law that bans Americans from adopting Russian orphans.

Why Save the Bankers? And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis
Thomas Piketty, Seth Ackerman (translator)
Houghton Mifflin, April 5, 2016, $36.50

Why Save the Bankers?—by the author of the best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century—is an incisive commentary on the financial meltdown and its aftermath.

Thomas Piketty’s work has proved that, without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever-smaller number of hands. Unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. But how can democratic societies fend off a new aristocracy? For years, Piketty has wrestled with this issue in the pages of Libération, one of France’s leading newspapers. His monthly column pierces the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath.

Why Save the Bankers? brings together selections from eight years of these columns, now translated and annotated, beginning with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the title essay’s provocative challenge. Along the way, Piketty weighs successes and failures of the Obama presidency, charts a course out of the EU’s debt crisis, questions whether or not debts must be paid, and asks what Steve Jobs career can teach us about economic inequality.

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth is Unattainable and the Global Economy is in Peril
Satyajit Das
Prometheus Books, $26.50

Satyajit Das challenges the assumption that growth can be perpetual and questions the ability of political leaders to enact the tough structural changes needed. He is particularly critical of the “easy money” approach to dealing with the Great Recession, citing the dangers of excessive debt and deep-seated fundamental imbalances. The fallout of these poor policies, he argues, will affect not only the business sector but also the lifestyles and prosperity of average citizens and future generations.

My Electrician Drives a Porsche? Investing in the Rise of the New Spending Class
Gianni Kovacevic
Greenleaf Book Group Press, $23.95

A weekend service call changes the life of Doc Anderson forever. Johnny, the surprisingly wealthy energy whiz kid, introduces Doc to a compelling new investment theme: following the rise of a new spending class. As they set course on a fact-filled adventure, Doc’s eyes are opened to the impact that billions of new consumers will have on our environment and how their increased participation in our fast-changing world will figure into the economy of the future. Through this journey, he, too, becomes a hyperaware participant in the boundless opportunities for responsible wealth creation with his newfound knowledge base in what makes realistic environmentalism possible. Through skilled storytelling and finely illustrated analysis, Gianni Kovacevic will inspire readers to become enlightened participants in the global shifts that will be changing our world for decades to come.

Dealstorming: The Secret Weapon That Can Solve Your Toughest Sales Challenges
Tim Sanders
Portfolio, $36.00

Dealstorming is Tim Sanders’ term for a structured, scalable, repeatable process that can break through any sales deadlock. He calls it “a Swiss Army knife for today’s toughest sales challenges.” It fixes the broken parts of the brainstorming process and reinvigorates account management for today’s increasingly complicated sales environment.

The book drives sales innovation by combining the wisdom and creativity of everyone who has a stake in the sale. You may think you’re applying teamwork to your challenges, but don’t be so sure. There’s a good chance you’re operating inside a sales silo, not building a truly collaborative team across your whole company. The more disciplines you bring into the process, the more unlikely (but effective!) solutions you can come up with.

The Rise of the Female Executive: How Women’s Leadership Is Accelerating Cultural Change
Peninah Thomson, Clare Laurent, and Tom Lloyd
Palgrave Macmillan, $52.00

The Rise of the Female Executive is a timely and expert review of the goal to improve the gender balance of boards, paying particular attention to the recruitment of executive as well as non-executive women directors. Through interviews with mentors and mentees, it illustrates how mentoring can play a part in helping women stay engaged in their careers. This book includes international comparisons and an examination of the U.K. and EU political environments.

What’s Wrong With Money? The Biggest Bubble of All
Michael Ashton
Wiley, March 7, 2016, $35.95

What’s Wrong With Money? explores how and why money is valued and the warning signs that point to its eventual collapse. Michael Ashton is widely regarded as a premier expert on inflation, and in this book he illustrates how the erosion of trust in central banks is putting us at high risk of both near- and long-term inflation—and a potentially serious disruption. It’s not about a conspiracy surrounding inflation reporting; it’s about the tentative agreement we all carry that lends money its value. This value isn’t necessarily inherent; while some currencies are backed by stored value, others are not. This book walks you through the history of currency and details the ways in which it can fall apart.

An economic system without money is incredibly inefficient, but our shared agreement in monetary value has historically never been enough. What’s Wrong With Money? shows you the lessons from the past and the reality of the present and helps you make plans for the future of money.

The Leadership Contract: The Fine Print to Becoming an Accountable Leader 2nd edition
Vince Molinaro
Wiley, $30.00

The Leadership Contract is the modern leader’s handbook for organizational renewal. Leaders are no longer rulers, nor are they accidental. In today’s business climate, leadership is both a trait and a specific set of skills. It’s about trust, commitment, communication, and drive. This book shows you how to become the leader your organization needs. You’ll go beyond adopting the habits and practices of an effective leader and actually put them in writing to establish a leadership contract that ensures the success of your company. This revised and updated edition includes new coverage of accountability, ideas for creating personal and organizational levels of the leadership contract, new Gut Check summary questions after each chapter, and additional opening and closing remarks to provide key insight into what the leadership role entails.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Cal Newport
Grand Central Publishing, $34.00

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. Yet most people have lost the ability to go deep—spending their days instead in a frantic blur of email and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.

Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing that distraction is bad, he celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that, in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four rules, for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories and no-nonsense advice.

The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 2nd Edition
John Perkins
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $24.95

The previous edition of this now-classic book revealed the existence and subversive manipulations of economic hit men (EHM). John Perkins wrote that they “are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder.” In Perkins’ case, the tool was debt—convincing strategically important countries to borrow huge amounts of money for enormous “development” projects that served the very rich while driving the country deeper into poverty and debt. And once indebted, these countries could be controlled.

In this latest edition, Perkins provides revealing new details about how he and others did their work. More importantly, in an explosive new section, he describes how EHM tools are being used around the world more widely than ever—even in the U.S. itself.

Fear and debt drive the EHM system. We are hammered with messages that terrify us into believing that we must pay any price, assume any debt to stop the enemies who, we’re told, lurk at our doorsteps. The EHM system—employing false economics, bribes, surveillance, deception, debt, coups, assassinations, unbridled military power—has become the dominant system of economics, government, and society today. It has created what Perkins calls a Death Economy. But Perkins offers hope: he concludes with dozens of specific, concrete suggestions for actions all of us can take to wrest control of our world away from the EHM and help give birth to a Life Economy.