Every once in a while a book comes along that despite a seemingly simple subject ends up being a very impactful and thought provoking book.  Seth Godin's "the dip" proves to be exactly that type of book.

"the dip" is all about understanding opportunities and yourself; there are many things we can all spend our time doing, but how many of them can you be the absolute best?  And how do you tell the difference between the struggle before success and the slow, painful death-march to failure?

As the book cover suggest, there's really two parts, which I'll highlight now: When to Quit and When to Stick.

We are in the midst of a renaissance. Not only is entrepreneurship gaining momentum on a regional and national scale, but we are blessed with brilliant entrepreneurs who are more than happy to share their greatest knowledge and experiences.  While there is great value in the many blog posts circulating RSS readers, Twitter and other sources every day, the right book can capture much more than even the best posts by Paul Graham. In the last 6 months, all of the following books have come out and been game-changers in the content their share:

Inbound Marketing by Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan– Changing the way you market your business.

Mastering the VC Game by Jeff Bussgang – Changing the way you think about raising money.

ReWork by Jason Fried– Changing the way you think about building your business.

And today we add one more…

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh– Changing the way you think about customer service, corporate culture and the meaning of happiness.

Evaluating ReWork as a traditional book would be a mistake, because it’s not like regular books. Technically, it’s 273 pages, but there’s realistically only about 70 pages of real content.  At first glance, that may be alarming, but the level of quality in the limited words in this book make it all worthwhile.  The immense buzz in the startup community is well deserved.