Business Books

Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her By Robin Gerber Collins Business; 278 pages

She had an image issue right from the beginning. "No mother is going to buy her daughter a doll with breasts," Ruth Handler's husband and business partner Elliot insisted. Her other male colleagues at Mattel, the company she founded, concurred. But Handler, a 5-ft. 2-in. (1.6 m) dynamo, was convinced there was a market for a mass-produced adult doll. Little girls aspired to be bigger girls, she reasoned. For years she pressed on, finally introducing the doll at the 1959 Toy Fair in New York City.

Fifty years later, Barbie is becoming a star even in China--not to mention the lead character of a compelling business saga. It's one of unrelenting ambition that ends sadly but not unsuccessfully. Sales of Barbie, plus her carefully tailored outfits and paraphernalia, garnered more than $1 billion last year, helping keep Mattel the world's No. 1 toymaker. The curvaceous doll, who would measure 39-21-33 if she were an adult woman, is both an icon and a kitsch object that has provoked feminist ire. In recent years, Barbie's sales have vacillated because of competing dolls and other childhood diversions like video games. (The maker of a popular rival, the Bratz doll, was just ordered to turn over its franchise to Mattel for infringing Barbie's copyright. Bad girl.)

Handler, Barbie's most fervent advocate, was born in 1916, the 10th child of Polish-Jewish immigrants. Though she married and had a family, she had little interest in staying at home with her children, Barbara and Ken (who resented their mother's naming her dolls after them). "If I had to stay home, I would be the most dreadful, mixed-up, unhappy woman in the world," she once said.

As a workplace pioneer, Handler found the corporate road difficult. "It was not a glass ceiling in those days," she later reflected. "It was concrete." Yet, as author Gerber says, "Ruth's maverick spirit fueled her drive and her risk-taking in the early years of Mattel." The dream went sour for Handler, though. First, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then, at 62, she became a convicted felon after filing false financial reports. She was forced out of her company because of the scandal. Still, by the end of her life in 2002, she was celebrated by a new generation of working women who forgave her transgressions. "Ruth personified her own ideal for Barbie," says Gerber, "a woman who defied convention and culture to realize her dreams."

Elsewhere, U.S.A. By Dalton Conley Pantheon; 221 pages

Running, running, with BlackBerry, cell phone and laptop in hand, members of America's professional class are in a perpetual race with time. "There is a palpable sense out there that many of us have lost control of our lives," says the author, a prominent sociologist at New York University. Conley is a master chronicler of our attention-challenged age, tallying up the social and personal costs of always striving to be somewhere else. He is admirably frank about his own frenetic life: "It's all enough to drive one bonkers," he admits. "That rocking chair in my grandparents' house sounds real nice about now."

The Power of Who: You Already Know Everyone You Need to Know By Bob Beaudine Center Street; 174 pages

Stop handing out business cards as if they were mints. Old networking techniques are almost useless for reaching your goals, says sports and entertainment search executive Beaudine. Instead, rely on your "Who network," meaning your community of true friends--and their friends--to get you where you want to go, both professionally and personally. But don't be so sure success is the answer, he cautions: "If money, power and fame were the magic bullet in life, then Elvis Presley would've been the most deliriously happy, contented person on the planet."