Gather 'round, kids. It's story time. Goldilocks on Management: 27 Revisionist Fairy Tales for Serious Managers (Amacom, $21.95) may be the only business book you read with an actual smile this year. How can you resist Gloria Gilbert Mayer and Thomas Mayer's "The Princess and the Pea," where a picky prince finds his mate via the "Princess Identification System" (i.e., 20 mattresses and a monogrammed pea) he purchases from a Hammacher Schlimmer catalog. The lesson? Verify credentials, of course.
The Mayers follow their slightly cheeky tales with real-world applications and stories, so you don't have to feel naughty because you're enjoying the read. And where else will you learn a lesson from the seven dwarves turning Snow White's glass coffin into an amusement park, or the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood's involuntary merger?
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