Dare to Un-Lead: The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World by Céline Schillinger | Figure 1

Céline Schillinger boldly calls for a deconstruction of our historical and hierarchical assumptions about leadership. Too often, “Leadership … becomes a badge of honor, a status, rather than something fluid, contextual, enabling, and active.” To instead build a collective culture “that truly encourages action, risk-taking, autonomy, and accountability,” leaders must “learn to let go and replace control with trust.” Equal parts radical and practical, the impassioned yet deeply researched Dare to Un-Lead will challenge everything you think about leadership, expanding both your vocabulary and your vision in the process.

Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work by Jess Rimington & Joanna Levitt Cea | Page Two

Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea have not only pondered what it would look like if we were to build an economy that nurtures us, they show us what that looks like. In Beloved Economies, they take us inside a diverse array of organizations and different circumstances where people are building a more resilient way of working and connecting based on promoting well-being, building community, and making meaning.

How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney | Portfolio

The level of animosity in our public debate has become debilitating. To lessen the level of division, we need to learn how to talk to each other even when we disagree. We also need to understand the nature of disagreement better. David McRaney accomplishes both in How Minds Change, explaining why relaying facts is less persuasive than engaging with others' lived experiences and emotions, and how we can change others’ perceptions through withholding our condemnation and engaging in conversation. It may feel at times as if we are living in completely different realities, and to a certain extent, we are. McRaney helps us understand why and how to bridge the divide.

Inspired: Understanding Creativity: A Journey Through Art, Science, and the Soul by Matt Richtel | Mariner Books

Matt Richtel looks realistically at how creativity evolves across industries and across time, and how it is tied to our humanity. What he shows is that creativity cannot exist in a vacuum; Creative ideas and humans are built on the shoulders of the generations that have come before them, and their characteristics depend on adapting to the conditions of their environment; Creative individuals depend on being connected with their communities, but they also depend on internal review and rest and; Across the world and across time, the most fulfilling creativity occurs when we tap into our most true and complete selves without needing to put ourselves into specific creative categories or allowing others to do so.

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari | Crown

The computer always at our fingertips receives more of our attention than the people we love, and the companies that steal our attention have designed them that way. But I don’t think most of us want to live this way. Johann Hari found and interviewed the foremost scientists and experts and gathered up the latest research on the act of focusing. The book follows Hari’s quest to discover how we can reconnect with the world around us and tame the metal beast that tends to control our every move. It will help every distracted office and any individual who finds themselves unfocused throughout their day reprioritize and regain their focus.

Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick by J. David McSwane | One Signal Publishers

If there could be a better test case than a global pandemic for when and where an unfettered free market might fail us, I can’t think of one. But it wasn’t a free market failure alone. As David McSwane writes, “COVID-19 would render in high definition the contrasts of an inequitable nation. At the same time families waited in miles-long lines for groceries at food banks, the pandemic economy created about 500 new billionaires.” At least 40 of those 500 were minted due to “the boom in biotech and healthcare stocks” in “companies that gained from COVID-19.” The stock market soared as local economies sputtered and people suffered. As conspiracy theories proliferated, so did unscrupulous profiteers. The human cost has been, and continues to be, staggering. McSwane's book helps document it all. 

Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop by Danyel Smith | Roc Lit 101

Danyel Smith's Shine Bright tells the story of the Dixie Cups, of Dionne Warwick and Cissy Houston, of Leontyne Price and Linda “Peaches” Greene, of Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey, and of so many more Black women whose intelligence, talent, and drive made the music that has created so much of American pop culture. Interweaved with those stories, she also relates the struggles and successes of her own life and career, which saw her rise to become the first Black and first woman editor in chief of Vibe. It is a mind-bogglingly ambitious formula, and Smith pulls it off with aplomb. It is also also a solid business book—about an individual career and about an industry that has not done well historically by those who create the product that produces the wealth, about the women who have defined the culture, and one woman who has covered their triumphs.

The College Devaluation Crisis: Market Disruption, Diminishing ROI, and an Alternative Future of Learning by Jason Wingard | Stanford Business Books