September 17, 2024

Finding the right book at the right time can transform your life or your organization. We help you discover your next great read by showcasing four recently released titles each week.

The books are chosen by Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team: Dylan Schleicher, Gabbi Cisneros, and Jasmine Gonzalez. (Book descriptions are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted.)

This week, our choices are:

Dylan’s pick: Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Penguin Press

The billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. Started in the mid-2000s as a playful microblogging platform, Twitter quickly became a vital nexus of global politics, culture, and media—where the retweet button could instantly catapult any idea to hundreds of millions of screens around the world, unleashing raw collective emotion like nothing else before. While its founder had idealistically dreamed of building a "digital town square," he detested Wall Street and never focused on building a profitable business.

Musk joined the platform in 2010 and, by 2022, had become one of the site’s most influential users, hooking over 80 million followers with a mix of provocations, promotion of his companies, and attacks on his enemies. To Musk, Twitter — once known for its almost absolute commitment to free speech — had badly lost its way. He blamed it for the proliferation of what he called the “woke mind virus” and claimed that the survival of democracy and the human race itself depended on the future of the site. In January of 2022, Musk began secretly accumulating Twitter stock. By April, he was its largest shareholder, and soon after, made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company for the unimaginable sum of $44 billion dollars. Backed into a corner, Twitter’s board accepted his offer—but Musk quickly changed his mind, forcing Twitter to sue him to close the deal in October. The richest man on earth controlled one of the most powerful media platforms in the world—but at what price? Before long Twitter would be gone for good, replaced by something radically different, as Musk remade the company in his own image from the ground up.

The story of the showdown between Musk and Twitter and his eventual takeover of the company is unlike anything in business or media that has come before. In vivid, cinematic detail, Conger and Mac follow the inner workings of the company as Musk lays siege to it, first from the outside as one of its most vocal users, and then finally from within as a contentious and mercurial leader. Musk has shared some of his version of events, but Conger and Mac have uncovered the full story through exclusive interviews, unreported documents, and internal recordings at Twitter following the billionaire’s takeover. With unparalleled sources from within and around the company, they provide a revelatory, three-dimensional, and definitive account of what really happened when Musk showed up, spoiling for a brawl and intent on revolution, with his merciless, sycophantic cadre of lawyers, investors, and bankers.

This is the defining story of our time told with uncommon style and peerless rigor. In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost?

Sally’s pick: Leading Through: Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership by Kim B. Clark, Jonathan R. Clark, and Erin E. Clark, Harvard Business Review Press

Generative AI and the remote-work revolution show us every day that we're in a new era. The rules and norms have changed--and so must leadership. And yet, coercive bureaucracy, hierarchy, and control—old ways of thinking and working—are still with us, a deep-seated and powerful legacy. We are living through a profound transition from an old, industrial era to a new one that is digital, transparent, and complex.

In this important new book by former dean of Harvard Business School Kim Clark, written with his business school professor son, Jonathan, and management consultant daughter, Erin, the dynamic struggle between two competing paradigms of leadership is compellingly illustrated: an old paradigm that involves control and power over people versus a new one that enables and inspires power through people.

With rich examples and stories, the authors show how deeply ingrained the legacy model of leadership remains and how destructive it is, causing waste and loss of human potential, stifling innovation, and ultimately resulting in what the authors call "organizational darkness." They go on to articulate a new, positive model, one that consciously seeks to do good and to make things better; that cares for people, helping them to thrive; and that mobilizes people to solve tough problems. These three elements, they argue, are the soul, heart, and mind of leadership, and activating them requires careful attention to both the personal and the organizational dimensions of leadership.

The narrative is interwoven with probing analysis and reflection, and the authors speak clearly and frankly about the moral aspects and impact of leadership. They also provide a concrete frame and approach for scaling the new model and creating a vibrant leadership system.

Leading Through is a deep and essential account of the evolution of our leadership thinking and practice that is both timely and timeless.

Gabbi’s pick: Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life by Brigid Schulte, Henry Holt and Co.

Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte’s groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prize-winning journalist now turns her attention to the greatest culprit in America’s quality-of-life crisis: the way our economy and culture conceive of work. Americans across all demographics, industries, and socioeconomic levels report exhaustion, burnout, and the wish for more meaningful lives. This full-system failure in our structure of work affects everything from gender inequality to domestic stability, and it even shortens our lifespans.

Drawing on years of research, Schulte traces the arc of our discontent, from a time before the 1980s, when work was compatible with well-being and allowed a single earner to support a family, until today, with millions of people working multiple hourly jobs or in white-collar positions where no hours are ever off-duty. She casts a wide net in search of solutions, exploring the movement to institute a four-day workweek, introducing Japan’s Housewives Brigade—which demands legal protection for family time—and embedding with CEOs who are making the business case for humane conditions. And she demonstrates the power of a collective and creative demand for change, showing that work can be organized in an infinite number of ways that are good for humans and for business.

Fiercely argued and vividly told, rich with stories and informed by deep investigation, Over Work lays out a clear vision for ending our punishing grind and reclaiming leisure, joy, and meaning.

Jasmine’s pick: Why We Sing: A Celebration of Song by Julia Hollander, Atlantic Books 

From lullabies to songs for the dying, Why We Sing is a fascinating exploration of singing in all its varied forms, from the personal perspective of Julia Hollander, song therapist, teacher and performer. Hollander explores singing's importance to our wellbeing, charting its extraordinary influence on all aspects of our spiritual, emotional, and physical lives.

Why do parents feel compelled to sing to their newborns, and how does it help their development? What is it about song that brings communities together in harmony but also in protest? How come an activity that helps to embed languages and math formulas can also be used to rehabilitate Long Covid sufferers? And what magic is at work when people who have lost the power to speak are still able to sing?