If you want a book that is focused on the alignment between IT and business, look no further. The five authors, along with several contributing authors, draw an analogy to a three-legged race. IT and business are tied together, and their goal is to cooperate with each other and coordinate their "third leg," which can be viewed as an amalgam of strategy, governance, business processes, budgeting, risk management, business partners and the external marketplace.

The authors, who include a mix of academics and CIOs, such as PepsiCo Inc.'s Tom Trainer and Marriott International Inc.'s Carl Wilson, do a credible job of describing the evolution of business technology management and providing anecdotes of real-world successes and failures from which readers can learn. The book is masterfully sprinkled with flow charts, diagrams, text boxes, mini case studies and tips from leading experts, such as F. Warren McFarlan of Harvard Business School, and MetLife Inc. CIO Steven Sheinheit. A must-read for today's IT executive.

Get Back in the Box: Innovation From the Inside Out, by Douglas Rushkoff (HarperCollins, 336 pages, $23.95).

I've always despised cliches and prefabricated expressions in business. And "think outside the box" is right at the top (or is it the bottom?) of the heap.

That's certainly one of the reasons why Rushkoff's book appealed to me. But as I began paging through it, I realized that there's a lot more to this volume than my personal disdain for marketingspeak.