BOOKS / In the lists

THE business books in our special list show a real Dunkirk spirit: No 1 is a bookstraps story; No 2 is about a Brazilian experiement to do away with managers; Charles Handy, at No 3, discusses life without work. It's tough out there, they're saying: we've almost all bitten the dust, but we're fighting back. One notable exception (quaintly old-fashioned, it doesn't even hint at the possibility of dust-biting) is the alluringly entitled Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This has been selling strongly ever since its publication in 1992 - which just goes to show, we think, that business people are romantics at heart. Because, once past the dedication 'To my colleagues, empowered and empowering', and the thanks to 'my proactive literary agent and my 'can-do' assistant', and the other eye-watering jargon, the reassuringly repeated gobbledegook, the charts and diagrams for 'personal change' seem just like a set of medieval spells. The alchemy of success, yours for only pounds 10.99.