I picked up The 100 Best Business Books of All Time with a gift card I had for Borders.  It delivers what it promises: executive summaries and why-buys for top business, leadership, sales, and management books.  The information is presented in a choose-your-own adventure sort of way, where you can jump to different book summaries based on the topics presented.

100-best-business-books-of-all-timeI’m sure someone has posted a list of the 100 books so you can see how many you’ve read or see if your favorites made the cut.  I’d read a few, but the real value of the book for me was finding a number of new titles to put on my reading list.  The summaries were interesting enough for me to want to learn more, so I made a note of those I wanted to read next.

That said, I didn’t fall in love with The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.  I think that’s because for all the big-picture ideas and theories it discusses, the summary-format doesn’t allow space to provide the case studies and examples that really let the ideas take hold.  It’s one thing to say, “do this,” and another thing entirely to say, “do this because it worked here, here, and here.”

My recommendation is to save your money and do a little digging online into the authors’ selections.  You’ll be able to find the Top 100 with summaries and reviews on Amazon or elsewhere with a little time and effort.  But if you don’t have that kind of time, Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten’s book is perfect for you.