Co-Leaders: The Power Of Great Partnerships; Library Edition

Behind each good CEO, head coach, and general, there's a number-two person who is supremely capable and yet either shuns the spotlight or is willing to wait patiently for his or her turn. Heenan and Bennis take a thorough look at the contributions of these number twos, finding brilliance and dogged determination--qualities the financial press traditionally finds only in bosses--but also the humility and loyalty necessary to remain second banana.

Although the authors refer to almost every professional marriage you can think of--from Abbott and Costello to the short-lived duo of Ovitz and Eisner--the heart of the book focuses on 11 genuine successes in the annals of number-twodom.

The chapter on Al Gore contains an interesting dissection of the role of the VP in American politics. A chapter called "Cyberstars" talks about how Intel's Craig Barrett and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer have contributed to the spectacular success of those companies. (Interesting tidbit: Ballmer once beat Bill Gates in a math competition when both were undergraduates at Harvard.) Bill Guthridge, an assistant basketball coach at the University of North Carolina who served under Dean Smith for 30 years before succeeding him, gets his due in a chapter that ably explains what an assistant coach actually does: it's a tough gig.

The point of the book is that all these fascinating lieutenants represent an argument for a newish type of power-sharing management. It's a strong argument, but it seems dependent on brilliant adjutants, and one senses there may not really be enough of those to go around. --Lou Schuler