Book Summaries 2024

In today’s "hustle culture," many workers end up ruining their lives in their attempts to get ahead in their careers. They sacrifice the time and energy they should be spending on their lives outside of work. In It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work , Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson contend that there’s a better way to work: By establishing more reasonable, sustainable goa...

Many women feel barred from advancing their careers but can’t identify the barriers holding them back. In How Women Rise, Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith argue that these barriers seem invisible because they’re the result of women’s overly self-critical mindset—the product of their desire to meet the rigid gender expectations placed on them by society and to avoid the backlash that occurs wh...

In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog , child psychiatrist Bruce Perry describes a series of child abuse and neglect cases to illustrate how trauma impacts the developing brain and explain how he and his colleagues established a more effective therapy model for traumatized children. In our guide, we’ll explain the psychiatric principles that Perry discovered during his years of working with traumatiz...

According to Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, there’s a very real possibility that AI could one day rival, and then vastly exceed, human intelligence. When and if this happens, the future of humankind would depend more on AI-generated decisions than human decisions, just as the survival of many animal species has depended more on human decisions than those of the animals in question ever since hum...

Why do the decisions that leaders make often go unquestioned? What causes workers to stay silent when they have concerns? In Leadership Is Language, former Navy captain L. David Marquet argues that answers lie in the language that leaders use to communicate to their team—language that discourages workers from voicing their opinions. Marquet provides a new approach to leadership that empowers worke...

Published in 1977, Servant Leadership is Robert K. Greenleaf’s answer to the failure of modern institutions to meet the needs of those they serve and employ. He argues that institutions and the individuals within them should adopt the philosophy of servant leadership: prioritizing their followers’ needs, thus enabling those followers to achieve their goals and empowering them to be of service to o...

Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world. In Principles: Work and Life , he shares the guiding principles powering his success and Bridgewater’s. Principles is a manual for rational thinking. The main theme is that finding truth is the best way to make decisions , and that ego, emotion, and blind spots prevent you from discovering the truth . Dalio sh...

Peter F. Drucker is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in the field of modern management. Drawing from his decades of experience as a consultant, Drucker authored dozens of books on organizational management and innovation, and he’s been cited as a major influence on many of today’s business leaders. The Essential Drucker is composed of key chapters from Drucker’s most respect...

In 2004, General Stanley McChrystal took over as commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. The sprawling organization—encompassing strategists, analysts, and elite special forces from every branch of the U.S. military—was struggling to make headway against an unconventional enemy and environment. In Team of Teams , McChrystal describes how he transformed...

In When They Win, You Win , employee experience expert Russ Laraway explains that employee engagement in the workforce is at an all-time low, but it’s not the employees who are at fault; it’s their managers. Poorly trained, ineffective managers are everywhere, and they’re costing companies billions of dollars every year. However, Laraway says he has the solution: By developing a few key leadership...

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a way of interacting with ourselves and others that’s rooted in empathy and compassion. The ultimate goal of NVC is to foster authentic connections between people regardless of their differences. That focus on human connections makes NVC a powerful conflict resolution tool—once there is a genuine human connection, the original problem tends to solve itself. You ca...

What makes a good leader? Some say you’ll know one when you see one; others confuse being a leader with simply having a title. In The 5 Levels of Leadership , John C. Maxwell gives a shape and form to something seemingly indefinable and provides a roadmap to help you reach your full leadership potential. In this guide, you’ll learn how to go from being a boss to a real leader, how to get people to...

While many business books tell you how to manage other people, this 1966 classic by management expert Peter F. Drucker explains how to manage yourself to be effective. Effectiveness is key to individual and organizational success. Without it, other attributes, such as talent, intelligence, knowledge, and hard work, are useless. Drucker says anyone can learn five practices for effectiveness: managi...

Do you belong to a community you care about and want to improve? If not, have you ever wondered how to establish or join a new community? In either case, community expert Charles Vogl can help you achieve your goals with the advice in his 2016 book, The Art of Community. Vogl covers everything from the beginning stages of community development to the roles and responsibilities of community leaders...

Positive behavior change is one of the most persistent challenges of personal growth—and in How to Change , Katy Milkman draws from the latest research and presents a powerful strategy for creating lasting change. She argues that real behavior change comes from a deliberate, scientific understanding of how human nature gets in our way and how we can leverage it to our advantage. Milkman, an econom...

Your baby won’t stop crying. The screams start up at any time of day or night and continue for hours, no matter what you do. The doctor says you just have to wait it out; your friends and family give conflicting advice, none of which works. You’re pretty sure you’re going to lose your mind. Luckily, you don’t have to: In The Happiest Baby on the Block , pediatrician Harvey Karp offers a solution t...

In Fix This Next, entrepreneur and business author Mike Michalowicz introduces the Business Hierarchy of Needs, a system for determining which of your company’s problems you should fix next. Michalowicz created this system because many entrepreneurs struggle with prioritization. They’re often overwhelmed by problems, so they focus on fixing the most immediate problem instead of identifying the mos...

Do you have the power to shape your own future? Popular yogi and spiritual guide, Sadhguru argues that you do—if you correctly understand the concept of karma. In Karma , Sadhguru demystifies this ancient concept, explaining that it’s not an external system of reward and punishment, as many believe; rather, it’s a way of living rooted in your actions, thoughts, and emotions. In this guide, we’ll b...

If you want to start a successful business, many would argue that Amazon is the one to imitate. In just a few decades, Amazon has grown from an obscure internet startup to a household name, raking in hundreds of billions of dollars by offering a vast range of products and services. In Working Backwards , Amazon insiders Colin Bryar and Bill Carr explain how the company achieved its meteoric growth...

Have you ever wondered how platform businesses like Spotify and Amazon became so successful? In Platform Revolution, a team of economists and businesspeople—Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary—offer some insight: Platform businesses harness their unique characteristics to drive competitiveness and transformation, resulting in profound economic, societal, and poli...

As a CEO, it often feels impossible to manage and grow an entire company while getting the results you want—and according to Cameron Herold, that’s because it usually is. It’s unrealistic for a CEO to have the expertise to manage every area of their business—this is why they have COOs. A COO is like a CEO’s perfect puzzle piece, allowing the CEO to focus on the things they’re best at and leave the...

If you’re like most people, you have a pretty good sense of who you are and how you relate to the world. But everything you know about yourself is wrong—according to neuroscientist Chris Niebauer. In No Self, No Problem , he explains that your sense of self is nothing more than an illusion crafted by your storytelling left brain. While science is just catching on to how this works, Niebauer notes...

If you’re like most people, you have a pretty good sense of who you are and how you relate to the world. But everything you know about yourself is wrong—according to neuroscientist Chris Niebauer. In No Self, No Problem , he explains that your sense of self is nothing more than an illusion crafted by your storytelling left brain. While science is just catching on to how this works, Niebauer notes...

The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most acclaimed works of the 20th century. Written by Anne Frank from 1942 to 1944, the diary reveals the humanity of those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis during their occupation of the Netherlands. Anne wrote about her experiences with anger, love, puberty, and fear as she and her family hid from an occupying force that wished to see her and her Jewi...

The Gulag Archipelago is a work of historical nonfiction that describes life in Soviet prison labor camps, popularly known as gulags , in the USSR from the late 1910s to the mid-50s. Prisoners like author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were arrested on minor or even fabricated charges, tortured and robbed by security officials, and held in camps for decades, where many were worked to death. Though the boo...