A Million Dollars in Change: How to Engage Your Employees, Attract Top Talent, and Make the World a Better Place

Alessandra Cavalluzzi

Wise Ink Creative Publishing, 149 pp., $20

Do you see a charitable giving or corporate social responsibility (CSR) program as a potential tool for attracting the best people to your organization, helping others in the process? Worried about the start-up costs and pushback from management? A Million Dollars in Change dispels the myth that organizational programs benefiting the community don't earn their keep, and Cavalluzzi shows how to launch them on a budget. Told with rich stories from the experience developing a CSR program at her company, the book shows how leaders can imbue their companies with a culture of giving that engages employees.

Human Resource Excellence: An Assessment of Strategies and Trends

Edward E. Lawler III and John W. Boudreau

Stanford University Press, 208 pp., $40.91

For talent development professionals interested in learning about how the HR and talent management fields are changing, Human Resource Excellence is a useful resource. Supported by an incredible amount of research, the book is built around the idea that human capital often is a company's most valuable asset, making people practices more important than ever. HR has come to play a new, more prominent role in organizations; as such, its strategies, duties, and design must change. The book explores HR's strategic role and decision science, new measurements and their results, technology and HR, HR effectiveness, and the future of the field.