We here at RKG like to read. We’ve found these 9 books particularly useful and wanted to share this recent list. Some of these titles are new, some are classics, all are recommended. Happy reading! (Nov 2005)

Business & Marketing Books

The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle
Looking back on Google’s short history, and forward to the future of media, advertising, and privacy.

The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, et al.
Somewhat giddy with pre-crash breathlessness, this book shows its age. But Locke et al were right: markets are conversations. Interesting tidbit: the book doesn’t even contain the word “blog.” Worth revisiting, if last read in ‘01.

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few by James Surowiecki
Under the right conditions, groups are smarter than all their members. Fascinating discussion of prediction markets. Relevant to decision-making processes in companies.

My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
Direct marketing advertising 101 from one of the field’s founders; as relevant today as in 1923.

Web Measurement & Usability Books

Web Site Measurement Hacks by Eric Peterson
The rare must-read for both marketing and IT types. Extremely useful code snippets and essays to help you better understand your visitors and how they use your site.

The Unusually Useful Web Book by June Cohen
More broad than deep, this is the perfect book to toss on the desk of a new employee to give a lay of the land of web retailing and site creation.

Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces by Carolyn Snyder
Idea: test new site layouts using Post-It stickies before expensive coding. (Staples must love her.) Sure, this could be covered in 1/3 the space, but “office-supplies-usability” is a powerful tool.

Information Technology Books

Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization by Andrew B. King
Web marketers pay lip service to the importance of site speed, but few commit to the changes required to gain the improvement. King shows how to trim bytes from pages, leverage CSS, and use HTTP compression. The best book on this underappreciated topic.

Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (2nd Edition) by Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres
Can web IT be nimble, fast, flexible, and reliable? The XP folks argue “yes.” Radical, threatening to the status-quo, XP offers web marketers a development method which matches the urgency of online retail. One of the best software ideas of the decade. Now, could you make it fly politically?