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How to be Useful: A Beginner’s Guide to Not Hating Work
By Megan Hustad
Houghton Mifflin, 232 pages, $19.95
“Make yourself useful,” my mother frequently admonished, so this title caught my eye. Rather than offering matronly exhortations, however, this smart little book is a wry new entry in the burgeoning literature of the new economy’s workplace. There’s great advice, in the tradition of Dale Carnegie, like, “Do be determined to see coworkers as endlessly fascinating, multifaceted individuals, regardless of how reliably they work your nerves.”