Unleash Different: Achieving Business Success Through Disability

Rich Donovan

ECW Press, 272 pp., $28.95

There are 1.3 billion people around the world who identify as having a disability, making them the world's largest emerging market. In Unleash Different, Donovan, who has cerebral palsy, discusses how he moved up the ladder as a professional—ultimately becoming a manager of a $6 billion budget for a leading company on Wall Street. While his disability presented certain challenges for him, Donovan believes that he may have never reached the heights he did without it. His emergence serves as living proof that companies must not put people with disabilities into a box—they can be just as capable as anyone else.

Taking the Work Out of Networking: An Introvert's Guide to Making Connections That Count

Karen Wickre

Touchstone, 240 pp., $25

This book is the modern networking bible. Wickre encourages readers to build deeper connections and form a brain trust while also leveraging weak ties—those who can provide insights, share best practices, and help us, even if they are outside our immediate orbit. This book is a reminder that there has never been a greater need to network, because it has become less about imparting knowledge and more about connecting with people to share and gain knowledge. Given more frequent job changes, longer working lives, and the growth of independent work, we all have even more reasons to connect with a wide variety of people.