By Kathy Groob, Publisher ElectWomen Magazine

Summertime is the season of books.  Well-worn classics read while poolside, sitting on a porch swing or lying on a beach.  Among the passed around copies of The Shack, Swimsuit and The Outliers, there are some outstanding newer women’s books worth placing on your reading list in the waning weeks of summer.

1.  Womenomics – Authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman    

This collaboration between broadcasting powerhouses Shipman and Kay gives career women explicit permission to demand the balance that’s been missing in their lives. The authors assert that after decades of trying to outdo men or fighting the Mommy Wars in the office trenches of the 1980s and 1990s, women have gained enough corporate clout to start changing the workplace to suit their needs. Shipman and Kay review the depth of women’s influence as consumers and earners, maintaining that their power gives them the right and the ability to ask for flexibility in their work lives, to negotiate assertively and effectively, to say no and to give up the guilt associated with getting their needs met.

2.  Why Women Should Rule the World – Author Dee Dee Myers

Everything could change, according to former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers. Politics would be more collegial. Businesses would be more productive. And communities would be healthier. Empowering women would make the world a better place—not because women are the same as men, but precisely because they are different.

3.  Seducing the Boys Club:  Uncensored Tactics From a Woman at the Top – Author Nina DiSesa

Chairman of McCann Erickson New York, part of one of the largest advertising networks in the world, DiSesa delivers a one-on-one mentoring session on working with, competing against and managing both men and women. Confirming that her nature is to nurture, she is thoughtful and confessional as DiSesa looks back at how she learned to defy her own bad habits—including in-office meltdowns—and to substitute charm in their stead.

4.  Life Begins and Ends With Girlfriends – Author Dr. Judith Van Ginkel

The book, Life Begins and Ends with Girlfriends, is written in an engaging personal style.  While other books have analyzed women’s friendships, none has examined the changing bond over a lifetime, using interview responses and the current cultural milieu. Millions of women are intrigued by the subject of girlfriendship.

5.  Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man – Author Steve Harvey

A favorite on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Steve Harvey expresses an extremely important message especially geared for young women and girls. In Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Steve lets women inside the mindset of a man and sheds lights on concepts and questions.

6.  The Help – Author Kathryn Stockett (haven’t read it yet- it’s next on my list)

What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and maiden publication of Amy Einhorn’s new imprint) set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia Skeeter Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing about what disturbs you.

7.  And His Lovely Wife,  A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man – Author Connie Schultz

Writing with her trademark warmth, wit, and common sense, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz reveals the rigors, adrenaline joys, and absolute madness of a new marriage at midlife and campaigning with her husband, now the junior senator from Ohio. 

8.  Readers Favorites List

Tell us what you’re reading this summer.  If you have a good book that other women would relate to and enjoy, send us the title and we’ll include it on the Readers Favorites List.

E-mail:  [email protected]

From Our Readers:

Why Women Should Rule the World, Dee Dee Myers