Let My People Go Surfing

Let My People Go Surfing is Yvon Chouinard's combination auto-biography and call to action. Chouinard's managed to accomplish a lot and the biographical part of the book is a good read on its own. After that he goes into the various philosophies regarding Patagonia's products and corporate operations. While some bits are not generally applicable, the design philosophy in particular is useful to anyone trying to make a high quality product. The thirty pages on product design alone make this book worthwhile.

Making Great Decisions in Business and Life

Making Great Decisions in Business and Life is a book that tries to teach people how to make better decisions. David Henderson and Charles Hooper provide a few interesting anecdotes, but overall, the book falls flat. Basically, their advice comes down to: evaluate the value of each possible choice when making a decision, and then choose the path of highest value. They tell a bunch of stories, some of questionable relevance, and for each one lay out a decision tree, make up some probabilities and values, and say what people should have done.