Edited by Margie Kelley

Invisible Trillions: How Financial Secrecy Is Imperiling Capitalism and Democracy—and the Way to Renew Our Broken System
By Raymond W. Baker (MBA 1960)
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Over the last half century, capitalism has created the means for trillions of dollars, euros, pounds, and other stores of wealth to move invisibly—beyond the control of central bankers, law enforcement agents, and international institutions. With an entire financial secrecy system now dominating capitalist operations, riches flow inexorably upward and accelerate economic inequality. And rising inequality is directly imperiling democracy. Rather than a screed against capitalism, this book is a call for capitalism to return to its roots, reenergizing its synergies with democracy. Raymond Baker explains the tax havens, secrecy jurisdictions, disguised corporations, anonymous trusts, fake foundations, regulatory loopholes, money laundering techniques, and more that make up the financial secrecy system. He then examines the motivations driving the system that generates and shelters trillions of dollars that could otherwise go toward spreading wealth, generating public goods, and protecting the environment. Baker illustrates how these realities further corrode the commonwealth, with specific, pragmatic measures to reset capitalism so that it once again contributes to shared prosperity and sustained democracy.

Have a Good Job? Why You Will Need a Career
By Roy Carriker (MBA 1976)
Independently published
This book is for anyone earning a living, or students preparing to do so, in an increasingly chaotic world of work. It’s a world in which, for many, the uncertainty regarding a financially comfortable future continues to grow. The book explains what you need to know regarding the decreasing life spans of jobs—and even careers—because of rapidly advancing technology and global competition. It’s about your first line of defense, your awareness—without which you may be blindsided. You need to understand and potentially prepare for the possibility that you may become an independent self-employed income earner. Also examined is how education for a career is becoming more important than ever, but it may not necessarily be a college degree. Why and how higher education is having to evolve as a viable career path is also explored. Finally, it’s about being better prepared and more resilient for success in the face of life’s uncertainties.

Many Colors Make a Rainbow: Diversity & Inclusion Make Us Better Together
By Doctor Daffee a.k.a David Fisher (MBA 1980)
Book Biz LLC
In a beautiful little picture book ultimately about diversity and inclusion, we follow four adventurous kids across all seven colors of an amazing rainbow to see how all colors stand and shine better together. We learn from nature that our own Human Rainbow is much the same because:
With our own special mix of colors and cultures,
all people are different, that’s easy to see.
But on the inside, in their hearts and minds,
they are all just like you and me.

The Island of the Fours Ps: A Modern Fable About Preparing for Your Future
By Ed Hajim (MBA 1964)
Skyhorse
The Island of the Four Ps, a spinoff of Ed Hajim’s bestselling memoir, On The Road Less Traveled, is a modern fable about Marketus, a young man who leaves home for the first time and travels to an island on a quest to answer some of life’s basic questions. The book, a conversation with the hero's inner voice, is divided into four fundamental sections: passions, principles, partners, and plans. This magical trip takes Marketus and his guide to four villages named after each of the four Ps. As he enters each place, Marketus places a green pea into a special device, which allows him to store his thoughts, retrieve them, and integrate them. Featuring full-color illustrations throughout, this engaging parable comes to life in the most unusual way. Perfect for those looking for inspiration in an ever-changing world.

Lead to Win: How to Be a Powerful, Impactful, Influential Leader in Any Environment
By Carla A. Harris (MBA 1987)
Avery
Work has undergone a sea change, introducing a new matrix of concerns and questions for leaders and potential leaders. What does it take to lead effectively now? What does leadership even mean? In Lead to Win, Carla Harris examines the journey from individual contributor to leader. She targets the essential skills necessary to succeed, such as the importance of taking risks, creating a vision, and leveraging assets like relationships and partnerships. At the heart of this book are the eight things you must be intentional about every day—authenticity, building trust, creating other leaders, clarity, diversity, innovation, inclusivity, and voice—qualities that you need to hone and manifest to become a powerful, impactful leader no matter where you work. She also examines the key traits of being a transformational leader, focusing on the gaps she has seen in leadership that could impede or damage any leader’s effectiveness.

Clearly Write: Win Over Your Readers with Clarity and Concision
By Soo Ping Lim (AMP 160, 2001)
Write Editions
Highly readable and succinct, Clearly Write provides direct, definitive and practical guidance on how to write with clarity and concision. The book is distilled from four decades of experience with the writing of Cabinet papers, board papers, policy papers, management strategy reports, business proposals, a commission of inquiry report, minutes of meeting, corporate letters, audit reports, opinion editorials and blog articles. The author also taught a course on writing for management executives for three years. Clearly Write is structured for ease of learning and referencing, and full of examples. To inspire learning, each chapter is preceded by a personal anecdote.

Leading Diversity for Competitive Advantage: The Twelve Strategic Competencies
By Peter Linkow (MBA 1977)
Koehler Books
Despite investing billions of dollars, the world’s institutions are making scant progress toward the promise of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The central cause: top leaders lack the means to construct and implement comprehensive diversity strategies that are responsive to the unique circumstances of the organizations they helm. Leading Diversity for Competitive Advantage provides the evidence-based strategic models, methods, tools, and templates that top leaders require to create equity and inclusion, and drive sustainable diversity for competitive advantage in talent and customer markets. Peter Linkow, who has devoted his career to the study and practice of diversity and business strategy, delivers the full range of competencies that top leaders need to guide their organizations to strategic diversity success.

Vectors: Heroes, Villains and Heartbreak on the Bridge of the U.S. Navy
By Thomas B. Modly (MBA 1992)
Advantage Books
Thomas Modly had an eclectic career in the military, academia, business, and government when he answered the call to service in 2017 and returned to the Navy, where his career began. As Acting Secretary of the Navy, he held fast to the mantra of “acting, not pretending,” and thus advocated aggressively for the Navy and Marine Corps’ future—a future he believed would be defined by uncertainty and unpredictability. Every Friday, he wrote a personal message to the entire department, regardless of rank, called SECNAV Vectors. Each Vector was intended to clearly communicate his priorities and to establish a rapport with all levels of the organization. The subject of each Vector was inspired by real events that occurred in real time. As these events unfolded, the Secretary’s unyielding emphasis on being prepared for unpredictable events proved to be prescient as the Navy found itself, unintentionally, in the center of COVID-19 crisis.

Show and Tell! Great Graphs and Smart Charts: An Introduction to Infographics
By Stuart J. Murphy (OPM 11, 1986) and Teresa Bellón
Charlesbridge
Want to find the most popular meal in the cafeteria? Compare town sports enrollments? Or maybe you just want to know who burps the most in your family. Learn what line graphs, bar graphs, pie charts, and pictographs are, and how and when to use them to represent data. Each project shows how to build a chart or graph and ties it all together with a creative infographic that really puts the A in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics). Whether used as an introductory aid or to underscore previous knowledge, the book prepares today’s visually savvy children to succeed in school and life by analyzing the world around them.

All the World’s a Stage: A Personal Branding Story
By Ambi Parameswaran (AMP 186, 2014)
Westland Business
A brand is an identity—and it is certainly not restricted to products. Allow Ambi, Shankar, Rita, Kunal, and Joe, who are back in college for their silver reunion, to bring alive for you the notion of people as brands. As they walk through the campus, rediscovering old haunts, the friends enter into an animated discussion. Their conversation offers keen insights into how each individual has a unique brand, which must be as thoughtfully cultivated as product brands. Personal brands can be both a factor and a marker of success. As businesses compete, the personal branding of a company’s leadership can influence how well it performs. Similarly, how a new hire brands herself could alter the opportunities that open up for her, and so also her career path. In short, individuals—and how others perceive them—matter. Ambi Parameswaran offers a concrete roadmap towards brand building that will give you an unmatched strategic advantage.

The Way Up: Climbing the Corporate Mountain as a Professional of Color
By Errol L. Pierre (AMP 203, 2022) and Jim Jermanok
Wiley
In The Way Up: Climbing the Corporate Mountain as a Professional of Color, accomplished executive Dr. Errol L. Pierre delivers a pragmatic and actionable guide to help underrepresented individuals from all ethnic backgrounds achieve their professional goals and elevate their careers in today’s virtual workplace. The book takes a step-by-step approach to understanding the skills and strategies required to move from entry-level and middle management roles to the executive ranks. Pierre offers key lessons and short stories containing practical advice designed to help readers achieve their professional potential; strategies proven to work in the real-world, full of innovative insights and practical know-how; and tips on navigating the offices and Zoom calls that make up today’s employment environment.

My Twenty Years in Italy: How Opera and Skiing Changed My Life
By David Scott (MBA 1953)
Outskirts Press
The author describes how an ignored alarm clock led to meeting the love of his life, and eventually three children. He shares his experiences doing business in the Common Market, communist countries, the Middle East and Africa from 1961 to 1980. This book is based on lengthy Christmas letters widely shared with family and friends annually from 1961 to 1980.

Billy from Affton
By William S. Thompson (MBA 1970)
Bowker Identifier Services
The exploits and adventures of Bill Thompson, a neighborhood guy chosen by his peers to lead, whose work ethic and respect for others mattered, and who never forgot what got him here. Covering 77 years and counting, author Bill Thompson tells his life story, not from the CEO suite, but from his personal memories of people, places, and unexpected turns in the road.

Harvard Square: A Love Story
By Catherine J. Turco (MBA 2003)
Columbia University Press
“Harvard Square isn’t what it used to be.” Spend any time there, and you’re bound to hear that lament. Yet, people have been saying the very same thing for well over a century. What does it really mean that Harvard Square―or any other beloved Main Street or downtown―isn’t what it used to be? Catherine J. Turco, an economic sociologist and longtime denizen of Harvard Square, set out to answer this question after she started to wonder about her own complicated feelings concerning the changing Square. Diving into Harvard Square’s past and present, Turco explores why we love our local marketplaces and why we so often struggle with changes in them. Along the way, she introduces readers to a compelling set of characters. Harvard Square tells the crazy, complicated love story of one quirky little marketplace and in the process, reveals the hidden love story Americans everywhere have long had with their own Main Streets and downtowns.

The Successful Entrepreneur Playbook: A Practical Guide to Building a Successful Business
By Paul H. Woodruff (PMD 27, 1974)
Independently Published
Many people want to turn their passion into a successful business. With this book, Paul Woodruff compiles his lifetime of business experience into this all-in-one book for those who want to start or grow their own business. The Successful Entrepreneur’s Playbook outlines the key ingredients that would-be entrepreneurs should consider in assessing their likelihood of success and then provides the key components in building a successful business—from the basic legal and organizational choices in starting a business, to tips on how to staff and create a winning team, market, sell, and deliver products or services that create satisfied customers, repeat business, and make a profit.

Deeply Responsible Business: A Global History of Values-Driven Leadership
By Geoffrey Jones, the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, and Faculty Chair of the School’s Business History Initiative
Harvard University Press
For decades, CEOs have been told that their only responsibility is to the bottom line. But consensus is that companies―and their leaders―must engage with their social and environmental contexts. In this book, Geoffrey Jones distinguishes deep responsibility, which can deliver radical social and ecological responses, from corporate social responsibility, which is often little more than window dressing. The book offers an invaluable historical perspective, going back to the Quaker capitalism of George Cadbury and the worker solidarity of Edward Filene. Jones also profiles business leaders from around the world who combined profits with social purpose to confront inequality, inner-city blight, and ecological degradation, while navigating restrictive laws and authoritarian regimes. He found that these leaders were motivated by bedrock values and sometimes―but not always―driven by faith. They chose to operate in socially productive fields, interacted with humility with stakeholders, and felt a duty to support their communities. While far from perfect, each one showed that profit and purpose could be reconciled. Inspired by these passionate and pragmatic business leaders, Jones envisions a future in which companies and entrepreneurs can play a key role in healing our communities and protecting the natural world.

Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Can Make You Sick—or Keep You Well (Updated)
By Joseph G. Allen and John D. Macomber, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at HBS
Harvard University Press, 2022
For too long, we’ve designed buildings that haven’t focused on the people inside—their health, their ability to work effectively, and what that means for the bottom line. An authoritative introduction to a movement of vital importance, Healthy Buildings breaks down the science and makes a compelling business case for creating healthier offices, schools, and homes. As the COVID-19 crisis brought into sharp focus, indoor spaces can make you sick—or keep you healthy. Fortunately, we now have the know-how and technology to keep people safe indoors. But there is more to securing your office, school, or home than wiping down surfaces. Levels of carbon dioxide, particulates, humidity, pollution, and a toxic soup of volatile organic compounds from everyday products can influence our health in ways people aren’t always aware of. This landmark book, revised and updated with the latest research since the COVID-19 pandemic, lays out a compelling case for more environmentally friendly and less toxic offices, schools, and homes. It features a concise explanation of disease transmission indoors, and provides tips for making buildings the first line of defense. At the center of the great convergence of green, smart, and safe buildings, healthy buildings are vital to the push for more sustainable urbanization that will shape our future.

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