5 Smart Books: Let's Get Fiscal

The banking world is getting scolded for its profligate ways. Toyota is under fire for its slow reaction to malfunctioning brakes. Consumers are looking to navigate the new fiscal realities.

See 5 books that will help you protect your financial future

Against this backdrop, our staff chooses books that examine ethics in business, how to keep hold of your money and the expanding world of social networking.

By Dan Zarrella

O'Reilly; $19.99

Reviewed by Thomas E. Weber

Much like the social-networking systems it sets out to describe, this book offers up its wisdom in small, bite-sized chunks.

That seems appropriate, somehow, since the target audience entrepreneurs and marketers hoping to tap the power of Facebook and Twitter is trying to figure out how to reach the attention-span-challenged legions of the Internet. But it's actually pretty useful for anyone needing a primer on the social world.

Haven't tried Twitter? Zarrella walks through the basics of posting and finding contacts. Trying to get attention for your blog? The book explains social news sites like Digg and Reddit.

After poring over The Social Media Marketing Book you may not come away with a master marketing strategy, but you'll get a good briefing on tactics.

Weather Any Economy, Rebuild Your Portfolio, Protect Your Future

By Brett Arends
Wiley; $24.95
Reviewed by Robert J. Hughes

WSJ.com s personal finance columnist outlines ways in which you can ease back into the market and looks at strategies for investing, boosting cash flow and holding onto your money. (WSJ.com is owned by Dow Jones, which co-owns SmartMoney.com.) This is a book aimed at beginners as well as seasoned household economists who want to reassess their finances.

Arends is very clear-headed about the basics, such as breaking out of debt and planning for the future. In case you hadn t thought about where the debt you re paying off on your credit card is going, he drops some head-rattling tidbits -- such as the $13 billion U.S. banks made a few years ago simply on credit-card late fees. Enough to make you take a big gulp and pay off what you owe.

Arends has chapters on how to invest, how not to invest (i.e., putting too much faith in stocks, taking too much risk), handling the next inevitable crash, and shoring up your portfolio.
His advice applies to the steps you can take every day to save (make your own bread, stop buying expensive cups of java and brew your own) to those you plan out, such as household energy audits and considering tax shelters.

By Anna Bernasek

Harper Studio; $19.99

Reviewed by Robert J. Hughes

There s a deep level of trust in even the simplest transactions of our daily lives. Following a series of stories about people and business in a variety of fields, financial writer Anna Bernasek shows how a trusting relationship between customer and provider can lead to growth in the marketplace from the retail to the investor level.

She looks at several areas in which integrity plays an essential part of our daily business. Think of the ATM that many of us visit each day. This kind of system, Bernasek says, was built upon a history of integrity in the business.

We take for granted the steps involved in processes including the verification of our identities, processing withdrawals or deposits among a network of banks, and the security of our identities and passwords. None of this would have been possible without trust among the companies and the customers who depend upon this complex system.

Think of trusted brands, too, such as L.L. Bean, which for over a century has offered a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee. Bernasek argues that such commitment to quality and integrity applies to all kinds of business. In investing, for instance, it behooves shareholders to consider the long-term rather than the short-term since integrity flourishes in long-term relationships -- despite the fact that we ve become accustomed to the tyranny of quarterly returns.

Bernasek suggests ways of changing this attitude by, among other things, redesigning compensation structures to reward people for creation over the long term rather than their ability to make money in the short term.

Of course, one of the many reasons for our recent economic crisis was short-term thinking. Whether investors are willing to think in a different way after years of conditioning is debatable. Nevertheless, this is a thought-provoking book that asks us to consider how we conduct business in all aspects of our lives.

Reflection on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World

By Stephen Green
Grove/Atlantic; $25
Reviewed by Robert J. Hughes

Can you reconcile shareholder value with values? Can finance be ethical? Is investing immoral? Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC, looks at the history of the global economy and tries to reconcile the demands of capitalism with the common good and individual needs.

It s interesting that a lifelong banker asks people in a capitalist society to consider that money, as he writes, is a seductive addiction that harms as well as helps. Yet Green has also been an ordained Anglican priest for more than 25 years. His book reads like a cross between a sermon (a well-written one at that) and an economic appraisal.

He doesn t advocate that we do away with money. But he does suggest that businesspeople consider more than the bottom line and how they go about achieving profits. The business world today is more complex than it ever has been, and a company needs to consider more variables beyond investors (i.e., media and the environment, among others).

Green looks at some of the most popular ideas floating around (such as those espoused in Thomas Friedman s The World Is Flat ) and looks at how they hold up. He combines instances from current news with literary references from Goethe to T.S. Eliot and Teilhard de Chardin. Sounds heavy but like the best kind of preacher Green makes it seem as if you d thought of these connections yourself and come to these conclusions at the same time he uttered them.

By Noah Boyd

William Morrow; $24.99

Reviewed by Robert J. Hughes

The lead character in a thriller series is usually a loner who manages to get things done his way (think of Lee Child s bestselling Jack Reacher books). This debut novel by a former FBI agent (Noah Boyd is a pseudonym) starts off with that now-familiar thriller trope and runs with it.

Steve Vail, who s been fired from the FBI for insubordination, is working as a bricklayer to make ends meet and, in a nicely underplayed touch, is also a sculptor who is modest about his craft. When a former FBI colleague finds him and asks him to come back temporarily to work on a baffling case, he reluctantly agrees and our story begins.

People are dying in mysterious ways, and the culprit could be a domestic terror group or a greedy renegade. To make matters worse, the killer also knows the ways of the FBI and continually keeps the team off guard as more bodies pile up. It s a suspenseful ride.

Boyd specialized in tracking serial killers when he was an FBI agent, and he gives a visceral authenticity to the crime settings and the workings of the FBI (including clueless upper management). Boyd also has a real flair for action and deft characterization. This is the start of what could be a nifty series.