Books June 18, 2009, 5:00PM EST

Come Back from the Beach a Bit Savvier

Our summer reading roundup spotlights a rake's guide to success, outsourced espionage, and a delicious wine caper, among other books

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As you pack your bags for the Hamptons or the Sierra Nevadas or that trout lake in northern Ontario, don't give in to the summertime tradition of reaching for the latest page-turner from John Grisham or Elmore Leonard. Instead, consider investing $15 in a paperback that is at least tangentially business-related and will pay dividends at the water cooler. If your colleagues are like mine, they won't get wound up about some ghost heroine's quest for revenge. Watch them lean in, though, to hear about Kirk Kerkorian getting kicked out of high school for punching a teacher's son in the throat. Besides, if ever there were a summer to appear productive on vacation, this is it. The 2009 edition of BusinessWeek's annual summer roundup of new paperbacks ranges from a self-help book by a reformed crackhead media magnate to an engaging romp through the history of international trade.

First, the (former) crackhead: Felix Dennis. Surprisingly, How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets (Portfolio, $16), by the man who made a mint with lad magazine Maxim, offers lots of thought-provoking and sound advice on accruing wealth through entrepreneurship. And just for fun, it's peppered with episodes from the hard-drinking and somewhat mangy author's whacky past, like the time at John Lennon's house (during the recording of Imagine) when Dennis grabbed a mic, started belting out R&B standards, and got a lesson in both life and singing from the Liverpudlian, as producer Phil Spector glowered from the control room. Dennis' main business maxim: Never sell your stake, unless you must.

Fareed Zakaria's best seller from '08, The Post-American World (Norton, $15.95), remains chillingly relevant. Timed, perhaps, to broaden the conversation prior to the last Presidential election, the book lays out how badly the U.S. has been playing a geopolitical hand he calls "the best of any country in history." In painting a portrait of the growing prowess and stature of China and India, as well as the rapid progress of many African nations, Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, also makes it clear the U.S. is not yet a lost cause. Its strengths include a maligned but still unparalleled education system and the cross-border bonds built by American multinationals.

Next on the menu, alphabet soup. In Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (Simon & Schuster, $16), investigative reporter Tim Shorrock turns his sights on the 16 agencies—from the CIA to the NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency)—that report to the ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence). What he found is that $42 billion, or 70% of the nation's intelligence budget in 2006, went to contractors. These include Verizon Communications (VZ) and AT&T (T) but also lesser-knowns such as ManTech International (MANT) and CACI International (CACI), whose interrogators-for-hire have been implicated, but never charged, in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Shorrock's take: "It's not just the secrecy, or the corruption, or the cronyism, or the lack of oversight that's wrong with intelligence contracting: it's also the extent of outsourcing."

The fraught and at times fraudulent world of fine wine is the setting for The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine (Three Rivers Press, $14.95). Author Benjamin Wallace delivers a delicious account of how wine con man (and rock band manager) Hardy Rodenstock relieved Malcolm Forbes of $156,000 in exchange for a bottle of Château Lafite.