(Crown Business, $22)
Most books about starting a business are either “ego trips for successful entrepreneurs” or the creation of not-so-successful entrepreneurs who are trying to become self-help authors, said Brad Feld in MIT’s Technology Review. This book, from the founders of Web-based productivity firm 37Signals, is neither. “I pounded my way” through this collection of “short essays and cool drawings” inspired by the authors’ experience. You could say that Fried and Hansson “are the Henry David Thoreaus of entrepreneurship,” said Leigh Buchanan in Inc.com. They preach simplicity, “doing less, and embracing constraints,” a philosophy that can sometimes lead to “counterintuitive advice,” including listening less to what your customers say they want. The book itself, with its relative brevity and absence of business jargon, fits their less-is-more credo. “You can finish it over lunch, so there’s no need to skip anything.”
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