Amazon has 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake ebook for the Kindle for FREE.

In just over a week, a group of unpaid professional and citizen journalists who met on Twitter created a book to raise money for Japanese Red Cross earthquake and tsunami relief efforts. In addition to essays, artwork and photographs submitted by people around the world, including people who endured the disaster and journalists who covered it, 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake contains a piece by Yoko Ono, and work created specifically for the book by authors William Gibson, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein.

“The primary goal,” says the book’s editor, a British resident of Japan, “is to record the moment, and in doing so raise money for the Japanese Red Cross Society to help the thousands of homeless, hungry and cold survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. The biggest frustration for many of us was being unable to help these victims. I don’t have any medical skills, and I’m not a helicopter pilot, but I can edit. A few tweets pulled together nearly everything – all the participants, all the expertise – and in just over a week we had created a book including stories from an 80-year-old grandfather in Sendai, a couple in Canada waiting to hear if their relatives were okay, and a Japanese family who left their home, telling their young son they might never be able to return.”

Amazon has Al Pittampalli’s Read This Before Our Next Meeting ebook for the Kindle for FREE (9.99 – 9.99 instant savings) for a limited time.

Al Pittampalli addresses a time worn challenge that all of us have experienced for which many of us are chief executioner: Death by Meeting. However, rather than simply adding to the chorus of complaints about time-sucking, energy-sapping, life force-killing meetings, Al actually proposes something useful–The Modern Meeting and its seven critical principles of effective meeting management.

The single most powerful question to ask yourself or your co-workers when faced with a challenging situation is: What difference could you make that requires no one’s permission other than your own? Al embraces this critical notion of personal responsibility in his counter-intuitive approach to getting senior management to adopt the modern meeting: you don’t have to get everyone on board–you just need to start and let your success influence others to get on board.

If you find yourself withering away in endless meetings, if your organization suffers from consensus constipation, if you can’t seem to get a decision made this century, read this book now. Wait a minute–reading this book won’t help any more than reading a prescription will get you better. Instead, apply the Seven Principles and let your creative productivity soar!