Atul Gawande

With no end in sight to the war between Amazon and Macmillan, the publisher fighting the retailer's pricing on digital books, rival publisher Hachette is taking Macmillan's side, adopting the agency model and releasing e-books simultaneously with the first print edition.

"The Checklist Manifesto," a new book by surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande, contends that the simple checklist has become indispensable throughout the world of increasingly complex work -- and it should not be underestimated or dismissed, even by experts.