As our leaders remind us, it is increasingly important for every American to embrace greater literacy and higher standards if we are to meet the competitive challenges of the coming century. A key component of higher standards in business is, of course, exposure to age-appropriate reading material. As a public service, the Consultant Debunking Unit (CDU) has applied standard reading-level assessment formulas* used by educators to some of the most popular management texts. How does your favorite guru rate?

Grade level	Best-selling Business Book
10th	Now, Discover Your Strengths (Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton)
10th	The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick M. Lencioni)
9th	Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Robert T. Kiyosaki)
8th	Fish!(Stephen C. Lundin, et al.)
8th	Good to Great (James Collins, Jerry I. Porras)
7th	Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill)
7th	Who Moved My Cheese? (Spencer Johnson, Kenneth H. Blanchard)
7th	Who Moved My Cheese? For Kids (Spencer Johnson, Steve Pileggi)
6th	Who Moved My Cheese? For Teens (Spencer Johnson)
5th	The Automatic Millionaire (David Bach)
5th	Trump: Think Like a Billionaire (Donald J. Trump, Meredith McIver)

* Average of Dale-Chall and Flesch Reading Ease scores of representative text selections

CDUniversity

sporty (adj.) optimistic, e.g., "25% growth in the dried-milk sector seems really sporty to me."

Martin Kihn is author of House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time (Warner Books, 2005).