Even grown-ups can't escape the summer reading club phenomenon.
The difference is that kids get to pick their books for pure pleasure. Forget about political potboilers, steamy romances or the latest Stephen King horror novel. In fact, forget fiction altogether for your beach blanket reading pleasure. Instead, wealthy adults are being steered toward "self-improvement" by their money managers, in this case, JPMorgan Private Bank, the brokerage unit of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., New York.
Morgan brokers reviewed more than 250 books in categories ranging from investing to stories of perseverance. Their 10 summer "must-reads" are:
* "April 1865: The Month that Saved America" by Jay Winik;
* "The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm" by Tom Kelley;
* "The Attention Economy" by Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck;
* "Sotheby's Caring for Antiques" by Mette Tang Simpson and Michael Huntley;
* "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" by Caroline Alexander;
* "Generation to Generation: Life Cycles of the Family Business" by Kelin E. Gersick, John A. Davis, Marion McCollom Hampton and Ivan Lansberg;
* "How They Achieved" by Lucinda Watson;
* "How to Think Like Benjamin Graham and Invest Like Warren Buffett" by Lawrence A. Cunningham;
* "The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization" by Thomas L. Friedman; and
* "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand.
Morgan set up links from the summer reading site at www.jpmorgan.com to Amazon.com. Books purchased from Amazon through the J.P. Morgan online bookstore generate a commission that will be donated to Literacy Partners, a non-profit literacy group.
