Never Eat Alone

Keith Ferrazzi, whose parents were a steelworker in a small town and a cleaning lady, credits his knack for connecting with people for a scholarship to Yale, an MBA from Harvard and a run of senior executive jobs, and for a network reaching from Washington to Hollywood. Drawing on that networking experience, he separates genuine relationship-building, rooted in generosity and in helping friends meet other friends, from the crude glad-handing the word networking usually suggests. He lays out the steps and the mindset behind a contact list of thousands of colleagues, friends and associates, and distills them into principles such as never keeping score and pinging contacts constantly rather than only when something is needed.

Examine.com co-founder Sol Orwell, who says he hates business books, named it among the books he would have people read instead.