Robert Reich is former Secretary of Labor and is University Professor at Brandeis University. He was the special guest at our Competitive Advantage event on April 26. He spoke about his latest book, The Future of Success. You can listen to the RealAudio recording of the event here .

This summer, he recommends you spend lazy afternoons with:

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Corelli's Mandolin
by Louis de Bernieres

Extravagant, inventive, emotionally sweeping, this rich and lyrical, heartbreaking and hilarious novel has been widely hailed as a classic. Set on the peaceful island of Cephallonia, just as the horrors of World World II reach its remote shores, Corelli's Mandolin is "an exuberant mixture of history and romance, written with a wit that is incandescent" (Los Angeles Times Book Review)
pb, $14.00

Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love
by Dava Sobel

While Galileo Galilei was under house arrest, accused of heresy for his claim that the earth revolved around the sun, his daughter Virginia, a cloistered nun, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength through the difficult years of his trial and persecution. Winner of the Christopher Award and named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.
pb, $14.00

Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver

In a beautiful hymn to wildness, Kingsolver celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature and of nature itself. Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate takes over the countryside, the novel's characters find their connections to one another in the forested mountains of southern Appalachia.
hc, $26.00

An Instance of the Fingerpost
by Iain Pears

In 1663 Oxford, a servant girl confesses to a murder. But four witnesses - a medical student, the son of a traitor, a cryptographer, and an archivist - each finger a different culprit.

pb, $7.99

Paul Revere's Ride
by David Hackett Fischer

David Fischer fashions an exciting narrative that offers deep insight into the outbreak of revolution and the emergence of the American republic. Beginning in the years before the outbreak of war, Fischer illuminates the figure of Paul Revere, a man far more complex than the simple artisan and messenger of tradition.
pb, $17.95