Edited by Margie Kelley

The Power of Imperfect Eating
By Kavita Bhatnagar (SELP 11, 2022)
Penguin Enterprise
Rather than dictating which foods are good or bad, this book weaves together stories that mirror the intricate, emotional, and often imperfect connection we all share with food. Through these narratives, it invites the reader to reflect, not just on what you eat, but on how food fits ihow they engage with food in their everyday life without guilt, without judgment—just curiosity and understanding. She unveils something truly transformative at the end—a powerful tool that will become the reader’s greatest asset in creating lasting, positive change in their relationship with food and health.

Uncertainty and Enterprise: Venturing Beyond the Known
By Amar Bhidé (DBA, 1988, MBA 1979)
Oxford University Press
Uncertainty—doubt about what is or could be—fuels our ambitions and fears. Tantalizing possibilities spur us to innovate and explore. Yet, we also strive to reduce uncertainty. Mountain climbers and deep-sea divers plan carefully. Rules, routines, and research in business, the law, and medicine are designed to increase predictability and forestall unpleasant surprises. Mainstream economics, however, hides from uncertainty, banishing it to the mystical world of unknown unknowns or reducing it to mechanistic calculation. Its textbooks ignore everyday problems that lack demonstrably correct solutions. But resolute responses to such problems require confidence. Where does confidence come from, especially when we go beyond the known? How do we justify our fallible judgments to ourselves and others? Drawing on more than 30 years of teaching and research, Amar Bhidé challenges both hyper-rational economic orthodoxy and claims of pervasive behavioral biases. He shows that while big bets require more justification, the facts alone don’t persuade skeptics. Instead, narratives that combine reason, contextual evidence, and creative interpretations align our imaginations. Cutting through esoteric theories—but avoiding glib prescriptions—Uncertainty and Enterprise examines the foundations of bold yet reasonable action.

Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results
By Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi (MBA 2016)
Harper Business
To make organizations more fair, many well-meaning individuals and companies invest their time and resources in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. But because inequity is built into the structures, processes, and environments of our workplaces, adding these programs often becomes a burden passed off to the individuals they are meant to help. In Make Work Fair, behavioral scientist and author of What Works Iris Bohnet and gender expert Siri Chilazi offer data-backed, actionable solutions that build fairness into the very fabric of the workplace. Their methods—tested at many organizations and grounded in data proven to work in the real world—help us make fairer, and simply better, decisions. Using their three-part framework, employees at all levels can embed fairness into their everyday practices. Believing in equal opportunity is essential—but it isn’t enough. Offering an evidence-based blueprint, Make Work Fair shows you how to make it a reality, no matter your role, seniority, responsibilities, or where you are in the world.

Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn
By Christopher Cox (MBA 1997)
Simon & Schuster
More than a century after he dominated American politics, Woodrow Wilson still fascinates. With panoramic sweep, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn reassesses his life and his role in the movements for racial equality and women’s suffrage. The Wilson that emerges is a man superbly unsuited to the moment when he ascended to the presidency in 1912, as the struggle for women’s voting rights in America reached the tipping point. The first southern Democrat to occupy the White House since the Civil War era brought with him to Washington like-minded men who quickly set to work segregating the federal government. Wilson’s own sympathy for Jim Crow and states’ rights animated his years-long hostility to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which promised universal suffrage backed by federal enforcement. Women demonstrating for voting rights found themselves demonized in government propaganda, beaten and starved while illegally imprisoned, and even confined to the insane asylum. When, in the twilight of his second term, two-thirds of Congress stood on the threshold of passing the Anthony Amendment, Wilson abruptly switched his position. But in sympathy with like-minded southern Democrats, he acquiesced in a “race rider” that would protect Jim Crow. The heroes responsible for the eventual success of the unadulterated Anthony Amendment are brought to life by Christopher Cox, an author steeped in the ways of Washington and political power. This is a brilliant, carefully researched work that puts you at the center of one of the greatest advances in the history of American democracy.

Another Sort of Freedom: A Memoir
By Gurchuran Das (AMP 91, 1983)
India Penguin
Another Sort of Freedom is a funny, moving and honest memoir of a man’s struggle to break free from expectations. Gurcharan Das was born in Lyallpur, Punjab, during World War II, when Hitler, Churchill, and Hirohito were bashing everyone around. His mother noted in her diary, “This is a restless baby.” By age two, he had become “a difficult child,” and by three she was calling him a “troublemaker.” He discovered one day that he could run, and he has been running ever since.

Golf: A Course in Business: A Few Lessons Golf Can Teach Us About Management & Entrepreneurship
By Maria L. Ellis (OPM 32, 2003)
Independently Published
In today’s high-stakes game of modern business, many professionals are finding themselves stuck in the rough, struggling to balance their drive for success with personal fulfillment. Despite the long hours and your relentless effort, sales are down, and your work-life balance is off, making you feel like you’re in a constant cycle of stress and underperformance. But entrepreneurship shouldn’t be that way. Running a business shouldn’t leave you feeling like you’re constantly playing defense, trying to avoid the bunkers of missed opportunities and the water hazards of poor decisions. There is a way to excel in business and finally score that hole-in-one deal you’ve been dreaming of. In this comprehensive and playful guide, bestselling author and experienced golfer Maria L. Ellis brings her wealth of experience as a former international banker, investment advisor, and financial planner together to help entrepreneurs finally succeed in business. This highly anticipated fifth book in her acclaimed The Journey to Wellness, Freedom, and Legacy Series offers a fresh perspective on achieving business success through the lens of golf.

A Purposeful Life: Ages 80, 90, & Beyond
By Brooks Fenno (MBA 1962)
Prime Publishing
A Purposeful Life: Ages 80, 90 & Beyond offers a positive learning approach for optimizing our latter years, and is designed to be helpful in enriching and possibly extending our active lives. The book contains numerous suggestions for enhancing and thus fulfilling the last quarter of life, plus recommendations for dealing with and realizing a healthy lifestyle in the process.

Ranchin’ and Rodeoin’ (1940-2000)
By Sue Hemphill (PMD 47, 1984), Danny Hemphill, and Holly Attick
Bowker
The Hemphill family has ranched and rodeoed along the Texas Gulf Coast and in South, East, and Central Texas for six decades. In their collective memoir, the Hemphills share stories of the challenges and rewards of raising cattle, breeding horses, and competing in rodeos.

Flying for Peanuts: Tough Deals, Steep Bargains, and Revolution in the Skies
By Frank Lorenzo (MBA 1963)
Skyhorse
Frank Lorenzo is the epitome of the American dream. A first-generation American and entrepreneur, Lorenzo started an airline advisory business in his mid-20s based on little more than bravado and ultimately rose to control the largest fleet of airplanes in the free world. Flying for Peanuts recounts how Lorenzo grew his empire from nothing and helped shape the airline industry as we know it. The son of Spanish immigrants, Lorenzo put himself through Columbia College by driving a Coca-Cola truck and then grew the fledgling advisory into ownership of Texas International Airlines. At TIA, he fought through the industry’s transformation, in part by introducing the new, low-cost model for fares that are a major part of the industry today. From there, through a series of shrewd moves and a hostile takeover, Lorenzo became CEO of Continental Airlines, a large loss-making west coast airline at the time. This memoir gives a play-by-play of the high-stakes negotiations that got Lorenzo there, including faceoffs with Carl Icahn and a chapter devoted to selling the Eastern Airlines Shuttle to Donald Trump, soon to become the doomed Trump Shuttle. It details Lorenzo’s competition with upstarts like Southwest Airlines and the clashes with unions that led Fortune to name him one of “America’s toughest bosses,” along with accolades from his employees. Along the way, Lorenzo highlights the strategies and tactics that propelled his growth.

LEADING: Service Before Self
By John M. Lotz (MBA 1971)
Pangaea Publishing Group
In your lifetime, almost everyone serves in natural, informal leadership “roles:” parent, mentor, coach, teacher, husband, wife, friend, counselor, and more. In your lifetime, you will observe and judge leaders. In your lifetime, your career paths may lead you into formal roles of leadership. At its core, leadership is built on an understanding of human nature, human needs, and human relationships. Three themes—service before self, tough love, and personal integrity—make up the bedrock of leadership, and of better relationships. Leaders fail. Sometimes they are not suited. Sometimes they really do not want the job. Sometimes they are disingenuous in their motives, intent on asserting control. In the book, retired General John Lotz distills his long experience as a leader in the Air Force and the U.S. Department of Defense to help you be a better friend, a better leader, and a better judge of leaders.

Mastering Project Management: A Guide for Leading
By Victor Allen and Ron May (AMP 165, 2003)
Independently Published
Mastering Project Management: A Guide for Leading reveals the secrets to successfully leading and managing projects of any size. With step-by-step instructions, illustrations, and real-world stories, this book offers the most effective project management techniques and leadership practices known today. Perfect for both beginners and seasoned professionals, it includes practical tools, methods, and processes that make successful projects possible.

Codename: Blackjack
By Rusty McClure (MBA 1975) and David Stern
Ternary Publishing
A mysterious phone call brings Espy Harper and The Cincinnati to a rendezvous where she learns an accident was actually a murder, triggering a chain of events leading Espy and her team to a cache of decade-old documents. These documents suggest that John Kennedy Jr. was close to exposing his father’s killer just before his plane went down.

July and Everything After
By Allie Nava (MBA 2002)
DartFrog Books
On the eve of Maya’s 22nd birthday, civil war breaks out in Sri Lanka. During what will become known as “Black July,” Maya is targeted and attacked in the organized massacres and pogroms against minorities, and she barely escapes the genocidal chaos. Haunted by the horrors she witnessed, Maya returns to the U.S. and tries to rally a diverse group of allies to help expose the atrocities in her birth country, among them her Norwegian-American best friend, a magnanimous Catholic nun, and a gifted young man from her past. Bent on justice, Maya isn’t prepared for the unexpected twists and turns, and confrontations with a nemesis that will test her resolve. As the war and humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka intensify, so does Maya’s disillusionment, but contact with a mysterious mentor whose wisdom she once ignored holds the key to her future. Fans of Paolo Coelho, Amy Tan, Vaddey Ratner, and Khaled Hosseini will be captivated by July and Everything After, a modern tale of resilience and transformation against extraordinary odds and war.

Risks and Returns: Creating Success in Business and Life
By Wilbur Ross (MBA 1961)
Regnery
Before being named President Trump’s Secretary of Commerce in 2017, Wilbur Ross had already earned a reputation as the “King of Bankruptcy” over his 55-year career on Wall Street. Often working on high-profile bankruptcies such as Pan Am and Texaco, Ross helped restructure more than $400 billion in assets and was named among Bloomberg’s 50 most influential people in global finance. After coming to Washington, Ross faced equally tough challenges yet survived in his post for all four years. Risks and Returns: Creating Success in Business and Life explains how Ross applied simple principles with strict discipline. Ultimately, his strategies and dealmaking skills led to relationships with King Charles, Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, the Rothschild family, Steve Wynn, Lakshmi Mittal, Mike Milken, and many other personalities. Anyone driven to find career success will learn from Ross’s life the strategies and mentality to achieve it.

The Change Engineer
By Garry Sanderson (AMP 175, 2008)
Rethink Press
It takes a radical shift in mindset to cultivate the deep, effective collaboration required to meet the challenges of today’s complex and fast-changing business climate. The Change Engineer delivers practical strategies to achieve this and was written to help you craft a purpose-driven leadership narrative that triggers intrinsic motivation and aligns team efforts to deliver your leadership outcomes; foster responsive working relationships, reinforce effective commitments, and focus leadership attention on the right things; establish psychological safety to encourage candid contributions and diverse perspectives, and apply positive reinforcement to maximize discretionary effort; find out what’s really going on, increase intensity of feedback, learning and knowledge sharing, and understand and address resistance to change.

Stay at Risk and Live Forever
By Byron Wien (MBA 1956) and Taylor Becker (MBA 2025)
Advantage Media Group
Byron Wien, a legendary figure on Wall Street, shared his profound insights and life lessons for this book before his death in 2023. Co-authored by Taylor Becker, this memoir provides a unique blend of personal anecdotes and professional wisdom from Wien’s decades-long career. Known for his famous “Ten Surprises” and “Life’s Lessons” lists, Wien guides readers through the complexities of investment strategy, risk management, and lifelong learning. The book delves into Wien’s early challenges and triumphs, revealing the innovative strategies and intellectual curiosity that propelled him to success. From his humble beginnings, overcoming personal adversity, to becoming one of Wall Street’s most respected strategists, Wien’s journey is a testament to resilience and perseverance. Whether you’re an investment professional, a business student, or someone interested in personal development, this memoir serves as an inspiring and instructive read. Learn how to navigate the complexities of both the financial world and life itself, and embrace the principles of curiosity, grit and reinvention.

The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That “Win-Win” Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice
By Ken Wilcox (MBA 1983)
Wiley
The former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Ken Wilcox shares the firsthand challenges encountered in his four years of trying to establish a joint venture between SVB and the Chinese government to fund local innovation design―and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to systematically sabotage the project and steal SVB's business model. This book provides actionable advice drawn from meticulous notes Wilcox took from interviews with Party and non-Party members, the business elite, and domestic workers. Engrossing, enlightening, and entertaining, The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That “Win-Win” Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice is an essential cautionary tale and guidebook for all Western bankers, C-suite executives, consultants, and entrepreneurs seeking to do business within China.

Create the Future: Powerful Decision-Making Tools for Your Company and Yourself
By Rick Williams (PMD 33, 1977)
Amplify Publishing
Leaders create the future with the decisions they make. Impactful leaders believe they can create the future, and they change uncertainty into hope and possibility. Create the Future outlines the process and the tools, successful leaders use when they must make an important decision—and get it right. Not every company can hire McKinsey or Deloitte. Create the Future gives you the tools you and your leadership team will use for making critical decisions without a hefty price tag. Author Rick Williams has been a management consultant, company founder, and CEO and has worked with large international companies, nonprofits, early-stage growth companies, and large government agencies. Drawing on his broad expertise and first-hand observations of top executives in action, Create the Future is the essential guidebook for leaders when they must make difficult decisions that will determine their organization’s future.

Negotiation: The Game Has Changed
By Max H. Bazerman, Professor of Business Administration at HBS
Princeton University Press
The world has changed dramatically in the past few years—and so has the game of negotiation. COVID-19, Zoom, political polarization, the online economy, increasing economic globalization, and greater workplace diversity—all have transformed the who, what, where, and how of negotiation. Today, traditional negotiating tactics, while still effective, need to be tailored to vastly different situations and circumstances. In Negotiation: The Game Has Changed, legendary professor Max Bazerman, a pioneer in the field of negotiation, shows you how to negotiate successfully today by adapting proven negotiation principles and strategies to the challenging new contexts you face. Negotiation offers a groundbreaking new way of thinking about the importance of the unique context of any negotiation—and when and how it should influence how you negotiate. At the same time, the book provides a concise and expert overview of essential negotiating techniques for anyone new to the subject or who wants a refresher.

Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career
By Ethan Bernstein, Associate Professor of Business Administration at HBS, Michael B. Horn (MBA 2006) and Bob Moesta
Harper Business
Each year, an estimated one billion people switch jobs worldwide. A lucky few stumble into the role of their dreams, but hundreds of millions are disappointed. What if, when looking for a job, we could make more informed choices to better select the opportunity we seize? What if the power to move along our career paths lies with each of us, as opposed to hiring managers or the market? According to the “Jobs to Be Done” theory of product design—customers don’t simply buy products; they recruit them to do specific jobs that solve a problem. Job Moves adopts this model to view jobs as positions we “hire” to help us make progress in our lives and careers. Based on research conducted with more than a thousand professionals at all stages of their careers, this notion bears out no matter your age, stage, or trajectory. This team has created a process to help individuals identify the current circumstances driving them to look for new opportunities, the experiences they hope to gain in a new job, what tradeoffs they’ll gladly make in return, and how to learn, before switching, if a new job will deliver. The result encourages job seekers to look beyond a title or company for a more holistic view and ask not what you can do in a job, but what a potential job can do for you. Full of useful activities and tools, Job Moves offers the timeless framework of our generation to help anyone create a career that will be happier and more fulfilling.

The Fading Light of Democratic Capitalism: How Pervasive Cronyism and Restricted Suffrage Are Destroying Democratic Capitalism as a National Ideal … and What To Do About It
By Malcolm S. Salter, James J. Hill Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus
Cambridge University Press
What are we to do about declining public trust and confidence in democratic capitalism, which many citizens consider a cornerstone of our national ideology and identity? Malcolm Salter addresses how we can rekindle the fading light of democratic capitalism as an aspirational ideal. Drawing on the fundamental democratic principle of political equality, as well as the two related sub-principles of power sharing and reciprocity, the author propose a series of practical steps to make our economic and political markets more democratic. He also addresses how private corporations—which serve as our nation’s primary social institution—can become more “democracy supporting.” The book ends with personal reflections on the moral culture required to support the restoration of a more relational democratic capitalism, along with suggestions about how the norms and values underpinning such a culture can be socialized in the years ahead.

Smart Rivals: How Innovative Companies Play Games That Tech Giants Can’t Win
By Feng Zhu, Professor of Business Administration at HBS,
and Bonnie Yining Cao (HBS PhD student, HKS 2017)
Harvard Business Review
Companies are fighting the wrong battle. The consensus has been to learn the best practices from tech giants and then imitate them. But new paths for growth aren’t created by imitation; they’re forged by radical differentiation. In Smart Rivals, HBS professor Feng Zhu and former Bloomberg journalist Bonnie Yining Cao show business leaders how to create competitive advantages by offering product features and benefits that tech giants and other competitors cannot match in the digital/AI age. Taking readers on a global journey, Zhu and Cao showcase a variety of companies—including Domino’s, Nike, and Sephora—and fascinating case studies, such as Belle, the leading women’s footwear retailer in China; EbonyLife, Nigeria's top media conglomerate; and Telepass, Italy’s popular electronic toll payment service. These diverse examples illustrate how companies identify their path for growth in the digital age by leveraging their unique capabilities. Drawing on original research and insights gleaned from leaders in a wide range of industries, Smart Rivals is a blueprint for uncovering your company’s hidden strengths. It will help you spark innovative solutions and capabilities—including new products, services, strategies, and advantages—that mere imitation could never provide.

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