Resources

 

Here is a list of books and websites that we recommend for guiding you in career change, career mastery, business start-up, and personal development.  We hope that you enjoy them!

Career Change

• The Pathfinder by Nicholas Lore. A practical guide for finding more fulfilling and engaging work.

• I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher.  Provides valuable insights to help you create a vision for your future career.

• The Purpose of Your Life: Finding Your Place In The World Using Synchronicity, Intuition, And Uncommon Sense by Carol Adrienne and James Redfield. An inspiring and valuable guide for discovering your purpose in life.

• What Color Is Your Parachute 2006: A Practical Manual for Job-hunters And Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles and Mark Bolles.  A guide that addresses the nuts-and-bolts of changing jobs and careers.

• www.wetfeet.com. A great website for investigating potential careers.

• www.careers.org.  Provides resources on alternative work.

• www.thefutureofwork.net.  Provides valuable insights about how globalization, technology, and other trends are changing the nature of work.

 

Career Success and Mastery (General)

• The 4 Realities Of Success During And After College: For College Students, Recent Grads And Young Adults by Bob Roth. The title says it all—the most comprehensive and practical book there is for helping college students and other young adults achieve academic, career and life success. We invite you to visit Bob’s website http://the4realities.com/The4RealitiesHomePage.htm for more information and additional resources for college students and other young adults.

• Too Young to Retire: An Off-The Road Map to the Rest of Your Life by Marika and Howard Stone. A truly extraordinary book with brilliant insights to assist anyone who is thinking about a career and life after retirement. strong> We invite you to visit the Stone’s website, http://www.2young2retire.com, for an abundance of resources.

• The Inner Game of Work: Focus, Learning, Pleasure, and Mobility in the Workplace by W. Timothy Gallwey.  Provides a refreshingly new way to think about your work and career and improve your performance.

• Overcoming Your Strengths: 8 Reasons Why Successful People Derail and How to Remain on Track by Lois P. Frankel. A unique approach for keeping your career on track.  Provides great advice on how to be successful in your current job and develop the skills for your next job.

• First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.  What every manager and leader should know about keeping employees engaged in their work.

• www.thefutureofwork.net.  Provides valuable insights about how globalization, technology, and other trends are changing the nature of work.

 

Career Success and Mastery (Specific Careers)

• Manage I.T.: A Step by Step Guide to Help New and Aspiring IT Managers Make the Right Career Choices and Gain the Skills Necessary by Joe Santana and Jim Donovan.  A practical guide to support new IT Managers make the transition from technical professional to effective manager.

• Million Dollar Consulting, New and Updated Edition: The Professional's Guide to Growing a Practice by Alan Weiss.  Provides valuable insights for both beginning and experienced consultants into building a successful consultancy.

 

Entrepreneurship and Business

• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber.  Provides key distinctions and strategies that will help you make the transition from employee to small business owner.

• Managing the Professional Service Firm by David H. Maister.  A comprehensive “how to” guide on building and managing a professional services firm.

• Nichecraft: Using Your Specialness to Focus Your Business, Corner Your Market and Make Customers Seek You Out by Lynda Falkenstein.  Helps you to define and focus on your target market.

• www.sba.gov/starting (Small business administration website).  Provides information on starting and running a small business.

 

Personal Development

• Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior by Dr. Mark Goulston and Philip Goldberg. A practical and easy to understand guide to determining and overcoming those self-defeating behaviors that are getting in the way of you having the life you truly want. Great tips, great quotes, and a great read. Do yourself a favor and just buy it!

• What to Say When you Talk To Yourself by Shad Helmstetter. Negative self-talk holding you back? This book provides the perfect antidote.

• Zillience! How to Succeed in Business without Really Frying by Sandy Davis. A truly extraordinary and practical guidebook on developing resilience to deal with pressures and stress of everyday living, especially when you are not in a career that is aligned with your passions, values, and strengths. Order directly from Sandy's website, http://www.zillience.com (and he offers a complimentary newsletter and monthly accountability log).

• The Art of Possibility, Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. The Zander’s hit all the right notes to inspire and teach others how to lead a life of infinite possibility.

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephan R. Covey. Practice these 7 habits regularly to improve your business and personal relationships.

 

Books About Michelangelo

Pope John Paul II, in a 2002 poem, urged the cardinals who would choose the next Pope to take inspiration from Michelangelo -- the nine biblical scenes from the book of Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.  He wrote:

“It is here, beneath this wondrous Sistine profusion of color that the cardinals assemble -- the community responsible for the legacy of the keys of the Kingdom.”

“During the conclave Michelangelo must teach them -- Do not forget: all things are naked and opened before His (God’s) eyes.  You who see all, point to him!  He will point him out.”

We recommend the following books about Michelangelo’s art and his life, which might inspire you as it did for the conclave of cardinals who elected Pope Benedict XVI.

• The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo by Irving Stone. Fascinating biographical novel. Reads like fiction but very well researched.

• Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling: Illustrations, Introductory Essay, Backgrounds and Sources, Critical Essays (Norton Critical Studies in Art History) by Charles Seymour (Editor). A full description of the dual drama -- artistic and spiritual -- posed to Michelangelo by the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

• Michelangelo: A Biography by George Bull. Possibly the best Michelangelo biography available. Complete and very readable.

• The Life of Michelangelo by Ascanio Condivi, Hellmut Wohl (Editor), Wohl, and Alice Sedgwick (Translator).  Condivi, a pupil, assistant and confidante of Michelangelo, provides us with a contemporary view, often using his own first, hand experience.

• Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo
  by Michelangelo, Creighton Gilbert (Translator). A great way to understand Michelangelo’s character, values and relationships is through these poems and letters.

• Michelangelo (art and ideas) by Anthony Hughes. Full of beautiful, full color pictures of Michelangelo’s work. Hughes makes it easy for you to follow the parallel progression of Michelangelo’s life and art.

• Life of Michelangelo by Giorgio Vasari, Frank Sadowski and Gaston Du C. De Vere.  Full of opinions and easily read, this biography by Vasari, an art historian who knew Michelangelo, is a primary source for all modern biographies.