Surprise! Here's a pop quiz. Please complete the following sentence: Our work lives are most like

A.  Waste disposal engineering

B.  Early childhood development

C. 15^th Century French etiquette

D.  Traveling to exotic locales with all your crazy relatives

If you chose D we're going to get along great. To me, our work lives are like travel with our crazy relatives: Challenging, adventurous, unexpected, tiring, often frustrating, intermittently thrilling -- and ultimately rewarding. Our co-workers — like our crazy relatives — may be eccentric, irritating, difficult and nosy, but they can also be smart, helpful, funny and invaluable. No matter how much we might wish it otherwise on some days, in the end we can't really get along without them.

Sadly, I find that most business books seem to start with the assumption that business is more like A, B or C: Extraordinarily complex, humorless, dull, unrewarding and arcane. No wonder the books themselves are often extraordinarily complex, humorless, dull, and unrewarding. Perhaps you've read (or tried to read) one or two that struck you that way.

Anyway, when I got to the point in my career when I was ready to write a book I wanted the book to be closer to how I see life: Funny, direct, lively and full of examples that recognize that work is part of life, not an island somewhere totally divorced from the rest of civilization.

I hope I've succeeded with my (to date) two books. In writing them, I've been fortunate to work with some great colleagues: Workplace 911 columnist Bob Rosner, illustrator John Lavin, and attorney Alan Levins.

The Boss's Survival Guide (Second Edition) is out now. Click here to learn more about it. And of course you can still find out  about the original The Boss's Survival Guide and Gray Matters: A Workplace Survival Guide. I hope you enjoy them.