This is one of the best self-help books I may ever have read.  Richard Wiseman is one of my favorite self help/psychology authors.  Between his easy, entertaining writing style and his solid scientific underpinnings, Wiseman is justifiably popular.  

Another thing to like about Wiseman is that if he has a question that no other researcher has answered, he does the study himself.  Such is the case with his question about "What wallet contents ensure that the wallet will be returned to its owner?"  

Unable to find scientific literature testing this question, Wiseman bought a whole whack of wallets and started stuffing them with various items, then dropping them around town.  (The most successful item, by the way, turned out to be a picture of a smiling baby.  Put one of those in your wallet and if it's lost, it's a lot more likely to be returned.)

This is what I would call "evidence based self help advice."  Wiseman breaks things down into ten categories (Happiness, Persuasion, Motivation, Creativity, Attraction, Relationships, Stress, Decision Making, Parenting, and Personality) then digs out concrete studies which show the way to success.  

This book dovetails nicely with Wiseman's earlier book "The Luck Factor," and with Malcolm Gladwell's books and essays.  A lot of "isn't it surprising?" happens here, things like if you hand someone a warm beverage, they will judge you as being kinder (i.e. warmer) than if you hand them a cold beverage.  

Each chapter winds its way through a series of studies and advice topics, and it can be easy to get a little lost.  Therefore it's particularly helpful that Wiseman has finished each chapter with a set of bullet pointed advice items and a worksheet of sorts.  For example, at the end of the Motivation chapter he includes a worksheet you can use to create a step by step plan.  "Step 1, my first sub goal is to…. I believe that I can achieve this goal because…"

My only caveat about this book is that Wiseman's advice is only as accurate as the studies he cites.  I noticed one glaring case of problematic source material when Wiseman was discussing finger length at the end of the final chapter, Personality:

"Noting that there are about ten times as many male professional musicians as females, Manning argues that musical ability is associated more with a masculine brain than a feminine brain…"  

Imma stop you right there, man.  It's true that there is about a 10:1 ratio of male to female professional musicians.  However, *I* recently read a study where classical musicians auditioned behind a curtain, so that the interviewers were unable to tell if the performers were male or female.  In blind auditions, women were hired at an equal, 1:1 ratio with men.

Aside from this little digression (in a section which is particularly odd and useless anyway), 59 Seconds is a fast, entertaining, and useful read.  Although it's large and comprehensive enough that one does wish for an index of some kind!  I had to spend several minutes paging through until I found the quote I was looking for above.