which doctor would you want to have perform your next surgery? The doctor who has one introductory biology textbook from college collecting dust on the shelf behind his desk? Or the doctor whose office is a library of the latest medical texts and whose desk is buried under the past four years worth of the New England Journal of Medicine?

I'm serious. Which doctor do you want standing over you with a scalpel? Well, in terms of expertise, is what we do here in advertising any different? If we propose to sell ourselves as experts to our clients, we actually have to be experts.

I implore you to read. And learn. And learn a lot. There is no shortcut to being the best. No easy way around it. You have to know your stuff and know it cold.

The short list of books and online resources I've included here is only the beginning. They happen to be my favorites in the creative area. But there are many other disciplines you should be studying—marketing, branding, interactive—all of which will be relevant to your craft.

There is no shortcut. This is how we learn it. Bit by bit.

Text BreakLet's start with books focusing more on digital. The first one I recommend is Teressa Iezzi's The Idea Writers: Copywriting in a New Media and Marketing Era. It's not about writing for print anymore, folks.

Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising for a Digital World. This is a must-read. Faris Yakob has put together an incredibly helpful book on how to get your brain around this new digital world. We quoted from it liberally and reprinted his new format for briefs (Figure 11.5).

The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual, by Christopher Locke and company, who wrote the book on social media long before social media even existed. Fairly dated now, but he was one of the first people who got it.

The Lean Start-Up: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Companies, by Eric Ries. I like his definition of start-up: “an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” Ries explores a number of counterintuitive practices that shorten product development cycles.

Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age, by Jonah Berger. Why do people talk more about certain products and ideas than others? What is it that makes online content go viral? Berger discusses how social influence shapes everything from what we wear to the names we give our children.

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success, by Shane Snow. How do some start-ups go from zero to billions in mere months? Snow explores why innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter.

Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators, by Clay Shirky. He reveals how new digital technology is unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. For the first time, people are embracing new media that allow them to pool their efforts at vanishingly low cost.

The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World, by Rick Mathieson. This is probably the best book out there right now on understanding the new digital marketing space.

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd edition by Steve Krug. A great primer on user experience. Written in English, not geek, this wonderful book helps you understand the ideas behind information architecture and user experience design.

Truth, Lies, and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning, by Jon Steel, is the single best book on how smart brand planning adds value to the whole creative process. Steel is also the author of Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business. He's a joy to read and so smart.

Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete against Brand Leaders, by Adam Morgan. Such a brilliant read. The title pretty much explains what this book is about: how to outsmart the competition when you can't outspend them.

Advertising: Concept and Copy, by George Felton, is a wonderful textbook on the craft. Excellent, detailed advice on how to think, how to write. Good stuff.

The Advertising Concept Book, by Pete Barry. To hammer home the point that idea comes before execution, every piece of advertising in Barry's book is a pencil sketch.

Scott Belsky (he started Behance) has a couple of books out, but the one you gotta read today is titled Master Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind.

Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson. Johnson identifies the seven key patterns behind innovation. He investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.

For the sheer joy of writing, I recommend Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.

If you're just trying to break into the business, I recommend Vonk and Kestin's Pick Me: Breaking into Advertising and Staying There. Then there's Breaking In: Over 100 Advertising Insiders Reveal How to Build a Portfolio That Will Get You Noticed, by William Burks Spencer. It features interviews of creative directors and what they look for in a book.

Become a student of advertising history. On the subject of history, I'll list these titles: When Advertising Tried Harder, by Larry Dubrow; Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads? by David Abbott; From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor, by Jerry Della Femina; A Book about the Classic Avis Advertising Campaign of the 60s, by Ericksson and Holmgren.

Then there's Warren Berger's book, Hoopla: A Book about Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Expensive, but a good look inside that agency. Berger's newest book is A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough ideas.

e, by Matt Beaumont—the only fiction on this list. A novel of life inside an agency told entirely in e-mails. It is hilarious.

And bringing up the rear, next time you're in Czestochowa or Gdansk, make sure you pick up a copy of the excellent Jak Robic Switene Reklamy. And for you readers in Constantinople, I highly recommend the delightful Satan Reklam Yaratmak. (Okay, kiddin'. They're translations of this book.)