There are ten thousand business books published each year and way over a hundred thousand in print. Most business books are worthless drivel, some are a good article fluffed out into a thin book, and maybe 100 out of those hundred thousand are worth reading. Out of those 100 best, only 10 might have something to say to you.

But how to find those few? Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten, two guys who sell biz books, seem to have read all of the ones in print, and they have done the world a favor by selecting the 100 best business books ever, and then packing summaries of them all into one meta-book. If all you want is their list, you can go to their website and check it out.

But their book is much better than a simple list, and their list is better than most. The two have reviewed, abstracted, and compared all the best 100 in the context of thousands of similar books, unlike say your average Amazon reviewer who may have only read one other business book in his or her life. You get context instead of content. Reading Covert and Sattersten's summaries of these classics is often better than reading the book itself, and the review is always useful in pointing you to the few books or authors you might actually want to read in full.

In addition to including the expected gems like Good to Great, The Effective Executive, and Purple Cow, the 100 Best list also includes many lesser-known titles, some of them oldies-but-goodies, like Up the Organization, The Innovator's Dilemma, and Flow. Not everything is new in business; the wisdom of the past is often surprisingly relevant.

Finally, this book itself is one of the best business books, and can be read alone as a pretty good education in business in its broadest sense, even if you don't read any of the references.

A couple of caveats. One, the authors has included one of my books (Out of Control) in their list, which tickles me greatly but might have warped my perspective. Two, they sell business books (at 800CeoRead) and so their book can be seen as a sales tool. On the other hand, the authors have great incentive to sell and include only the best, and so their list is pretty persuasive. Three, in a slip of bad design each of the 100 books featured on their website does not appear with the review as found in their book, but is featured with the standard publisher verbiage; the author's fantastic summaries and analysis are only found in their printed book. (They sell books, see?)

All in all, this is a great business resource at a modest price. If you took their list and read all 100 books you'd get a better MBA than any university would give you, at a fraction of the cost.

I’ve used this for a year, and it can hold nails, pins, etc., on my wrist rather than in my mouth. Here’s a brief list of tasks I’ve used this for: Putting together a Huffy Green Machine for my son; hanging pictures; shortening pants/dresses. It really does make jobs easier, and I don’t think anything similar exists.

I've been wearing a Citizen Eco-Drive watch for about four years. The watch is solar powered. It doesn't require sunlight exclusively, and can create power even from artificial lighting. In the four years I've owned it, it's never stopped running. When I was shopping for a watch I wanted an analog face, and I wanted solid water resistance for surfing, and other wet outdoor pursuits. It needed a basic timer function and a date. And I didn't want to spend a lot of money. At about $130, with water resistance to 100 meters, the low-end Citizen Eco-Drive fit the bill perfectly.

It's the most basic men's model, which comes with a cheap canvas strap. In fact my only complaint is this cheap watchband. It's a faux military canvas that was too small for my wrist. I tried a few different bands, but finally settled on the previously reviewed Zulu watchband. The best thing about the Zulu band, which wasn't mentioned in the original review, is that the buckle can be adjusted to rest on the inside of your wrist, rather than the traditional underside of the wrist. This allows me unrivaled comfort while working at the computer.

I'm an occasional rock climber, and the face of the watch has sustained a couple of very minor scratches. The special glow-in-the-dark hands of the watch works wonderfully all through the night. Combined with the Zulu band, it's likely the combination I'll continue to use until they quit making one or the the other.

Along with the previously reviewed Evernote, this ultracompact scanner is the best computer-related tool I've found in a long time. I’ve owned several flatbed scanners and an all-in-one printer-scanner-fax-copier. The S300 is so far out of their league it doesn't seem right to call it a scanner. It's more like a paperless life enabler.

Because it feeds itself (ADF or auto document feed) and scans in full color duplex (both sides of the paper in one pass), it scans piles of paper in laughably short time, converting them to .pdf (or whatever format you like), auto rotating and stitching pages together, and filing them to your preferences. You can set up and choose multiple scanning profiles depending on how you'd like the material scanned and stored. If some pages in a stack are double-sided and others are single-sided, it will discard the blank pages while stitching together your finished product.

There is only one button on the device: SCAN. The ScanSnap doesn’t even have a power button—opening the feeder turns it on and closing it turns it off. And scan it does. After initial setup and some test scans, jaw still hanging open at the sheer speed and quality of the first few scans I'd done, I decided on a torture test, ripping handwritten pages out of a spiral-bound notebook and feeding them into this diminutive powerhouse as fast as it could digest them.

It's been a month. Stacks of disorganized and dusty papers have disappeared from my life, ready to be called up with a few keystrokes in Evernote or on my hard drive. I've jammed this scanner only a few times, and it couldn't be easier to clear. My flatbed scanner will still have its place —for utmost quality photo scanning or the scanning of books and physical objects—but mostly it’ll now sit idle in my desk drawer.

The ScanSnap is powered via AC or dual USB ports (one for data, one for power) for true portability. The bundled software is excellent, intuitive, and snappy. The CardIris business card software also bundled with it was not impressive. If you do need to scan a lot of business cards, I'm sure there are paid versions that would be superior. This little scanner is one of the rare products I can find literally nothing to complain about. It comes in two versions, the S300 (Windows) and the S300m (Mac).

I wear glasses (not contacts). Swimming underwater without glasses, using average swim goggles gave the world a uniform pathetic watery blur. A few years ago it finally dawned on me that I could get corrective goggles. I was surprised to discover that goggles with prescription corrective lenses were not much more expensive than plain ones -- less than $10. These "optical" goggles are magic. For only a few dollars more my underwater vision is crystal clear. Anit-fog, fair fit, and prescription built in. So many brands make them (and of course many models are more expensive) that I wonder if I am the last person in the world to learn about them. In any case I only have experience with the ClubSwim models. They are available in a limited choice of diopters in half point increments from -2.0 to -7.5.

So many useful things around my house arrived via the personal recommendations posted by Cool Tools. But the "staff" of Cool Tools is not limited to the staff listed on the About page. That's where you come in. We'd like your recommendations.

Here are a few things we are currently looking for:

The ultimate walker for an elderly person?
A decent vacuum-cooking cookbook for amateurs?
The best digital wildlife trail monitor camera?
Is there a product available that uses WI-FI to connect a desktop hard drive to a stereo? The previously reviewed Roku Soundbridge did, but is no longer available.

Best inflatable kayak?
Cheap hair analysis for heavy metals?
Affordable, high-functioning walkie talkies?
Racquet stringing machine?
Best time accounting software/website?
Best (cheapest/most efficient) dimmable CFL replacement for a 60-watt tungsten bulb
What's the best guide to internet radio? A site, blog or forum where various internet radio stations are reviewed, compared, and recommended. Not just listings of links.
Best intro to beekeeping book?
Best fiction podcast?

Have you used/read and can you recommend the following, or something comparable that's superior?

Drill Doctor
Cobrahead gardening tool
Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle
Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth?

Or anything else you can heartily recommend from your own personal experience. If you love something you'd love others to know about as well, write me. (If you are feeling extremely helpful you might want to check the Cool Tools archive to make sure we haven't already featured it.)

If you're not already a subscriber receiving our weekly e-mail with five new tool recommendations every week, sign up and submit your recommendation. For a broader perspective of this site's tool philosophy, I recommend this essay. Tell us what you use to open up possibilities, save money, make stuff, live better.

-- es (elon {at} schoenholz dot com)

Here are the two best vegan (no meat or dairy) cookbooks as suggested by many Cool Tool readers. Thanks to readers Charlotte, Scott Carlson, Chris, Jared, Terri Alice, Ryan Freebern and Ian Hall.

Veganomicon is the best vegan cookbook out there. It's reputation is based on the quantity and variety of its recipes, and the complexity and deliciousness of the resulting dishes. There are more than 250 recipes, presented with wit and lighthearted punk-rock irreverence, as well unpretentious and helpful instructions. These vegan dishes don't only try to mimic meat-based meals; they are just good food. Our household doesn't adhere to a vegan diet, yet we've found some of these recipes great eye-openers as to how tasty and accessible homemade vegan food can be.

-- Elon Schoenholz

Simply Vegan is perfect for beginning vegans because it has specific sections on how to be a healthy vegan, as opposed to a "Fritos and Sprite" vegan.

It goes into sources for proteins, minerals, has ready-to-go weekly shopping lists, and daily meal lists, so if you're getting into veganism you can do it safely and intelligently with a minimal amount of work (just buy the stuff on the shopping list and cook it). I went vegan at 14 (and have been vegan 14 years so far) and my parents made me sell them on the idea of being healthy sans animal products. At first the task seemed incredibly daunting, but once I found Simply Vegan I had all the answers. And these days my folks are mostly vegan as well.

I won't say the recipes in this book are the best ever - they certainly can't hold a candle to much of Veganomicon -- but if you know your way around some spices there's no better book that I've found which covers the nutritive bases and really can set a new vegan on the right path to whole health.

-- Ian Hall

There may be slightly better sounding or feature-rich PA systems in this price range, but nothing comes close to the outstanding portability of Fender’s Passport. It’s barely 30 pounds, and when it’s packed up and put together in its slick integral case no moving or delicate parts are exposed to scraping or damage. And since the case tapers at each end, it’s easy to carry without it bumping against my side with every step.

I use it primarily as a sort of keyboard amp for a laptop, also for playing music from an iPod. I play in a band with some friends and plan to use this Fender PA system for small or outdoor shows. There are three of us in the band, and we needed vocal and laptop amplification. The PD-150 has three mic/instrument inputs, so we're all set.

It’s most cool as PA—the mixer is perfunctory but useful and welcome. It is a trade-off in terms of price, portability and integration—like a boom box versus a component system. The advantage of buying the speakers, amplifier and mixer separately is that you can customize the amount of power, mixer features, and speaker quality that you'd like, but it will be more expensive and harder to transport. The portable PA is just so cool in that it does the basics decently and packs itself into a supercompact little suitcase.

I purchased a PD-150 that I found on Craigslist for $150, but the current model is the PD-150 Pro, which supposedly has better sound quality, and adds a second stereo input. It’s also 3 pounds lighter.