Authors Christmas Recommendations 2024 - Part II
Welcome to Part II of a special series of posts in the run up to the holiday season! I asked some of the lovely authors that have previously appeared on the site about their Christmas book recommendations for this year. They graciously replied with some fantastic book picks! Hopefully these book recommendations might help you with your own Christmas shopping gift ideas too! :-) (You can also see more book gift ideas in Part I here.)
Q. Is there a smart thinking book that you are looking forward to reading this Christmas, or one you would like to give or receive as a gift?
Samreen McGregor
If Women Rose Rooted: A Life-Changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging by Sharon Blackie.
I am looking forward to reading If women rose rooted by Sharon Blackie and would love to receive this as a gift.
If Women Rose Rooted: A Life-Changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging
Description from Bookshop.org:
If Women Rose Rooted has been described as both transformative and essential. Sharon Blackie leads the reader on a quest to find their place in the world, drawing inspiration from the wise and powerful women in native mythology, and guidance from contemporary role models who have re-rooted themselves in land and community and taken responsibility for shaping the future. Beautifully written, honest and moving, If Women Rose Rooted is a passionate song to a different kind of femininity, a rallying, feminist cry for the rewilding of womanhood; reclaiming our role as guardians of the land.
Buy On:
Blackwells £11.25 Bookshop.org UK £12.34 Bookshop.org US $14.83 Waterstones £11.99(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Leader Awakened: Why accepting adversity drives power and freedom
Description from Bookshop.org:
The world we live in confronts us with unavoidable, and at times unprecedented, challenges and adversities.
These experiences can - but do not need to - impede your ability to lead. Leader Awakened invites you to accept, embrace and work with difficult or traumatic events and experiences. It gives you the tools to use them as a powerful catalyst for change and enable learning, empowerment, agency and wellbeing.
Learn how to:
- Become more acutely aware of the internal, external, personal, professional and organisational factors that affect you as a leader
- Understand the impact of your life story on your thoughts, behaviour, values and actions
- Discover fresh perspectives and explore new directions to see and do things differently
- Enhance your ability to deal with and navigate uncertainty
- Accept and face up to adversity and challenge and improve your wellbeing, relationships, agency, performance and sense of fulfillment
Buy On:
Bookshop.org US $16.99 Blackwells £15.48 Waterstones £14.99(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
David Roche
Somewhat unusually (I expect?), I am going for fiction and I would like to give everyone a copy of Richard Powers' brand new novel Playground.
I've often had the debate about the value of reading fiction versus a diet of business books and was lucky enough to be given permission by Booker Prize winning author Eleanor Catton to use a quote in her book Birnam Wood to help me illustrate my point in my own, recent book. The value of stories can do wonderful things and have a longer lasting impact than bullet points and instructions.
Playground by Richard Powers is my book of the year so far by some way. It covers AI, gaming, friendships, relationships, isolation, race, colonialism, the climate crisis, as well as being a love letter to diving in the oceans. I went straight from completing the last page to starting again on the first. For me, there's not a better author writing about the issues of the day.
Playground
Description from Bookshop.org:
Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game. It sets them up for life: Rafi will get lost in literature, while Todd’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
Elsewhere, Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs; Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home.
All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out into the open sea. As the seasteaders close in, how will Evie play the ever-unfolding oceanic game? Will Ina engage in acts of destruction? Todd and Rafi, now estranged, still find themselves in competition: Todd unravels while working on an idea to redraw the boundaries of human immortality, while Rafi and the residents must decide if they will greenlight the new project on their shores and change their home forever.
Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize and interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.
Buy On:
Blackwells £20.00 Bookshop.org UK £19.00 Bookshop.org US $27.89 Waterstones £17.99(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Description from Blackwells: (All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Become a Successful First-Time CEO: Master the confidence, relationships and strategies you need to succeed
Regardless of your expertise and experience, it's your people skills, political nous and ability to build key relationships that will ensure you survive and thrive. Packed with real-life examples and practical guidance, Become a Successful First-Time CEO is a roadmap to help you develop the confidence and master the strategies you need to be an inspirational corporate leader.
Understand how to:
- Create a dynamic, engaged and empowered senior leadership team
- Manage upwards and impress your boss and the board
- Maximise your position to exploit opportunities
- Develop strong relationships with your most important clients, suppliers and partners
- Become highly regarded and influential in your industry
Regardless of your expertise and experience, it's your people skills, political nous and ability to build key relationships that will ensure you survive and thrive. Packed with real-life examples and practical guidance.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK £16.14
Bookshop.org US $21.99
Blackwells £16.99
Waterstones £16.99
Iris Clermont
Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work by Heidi K. Gardner & Ivan A. Matviak.
I am looking forward to reading this Christmas is Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work by Heidi K. Gardner
Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work
Description from Bookshop.org:
We need a new approach for solving tough problems in a complex world—we need to collaborate smarter.
Market volatility. Sustainability demands. Hybrid working. Opportunities and hazards of fast-changing technology and regulations. Companies and nonprofits face more daunting challenges than ever. How can we collaborate in our organizations—and with outside partners—to solve problems, innovate, and succeed?
Smarter Collaboration offers groundbreaking solutions. This indispensable new book lays out a pragmatic action plan blending rich stories, new empirical research, and loads of practical advice to help companies thrive by collaborating more effectively. As Harvard professor Heidi K. Gardner and senior executive Ivan A. Matviak show, firms that collaborate smarter consistently generate higher revenues and profits, boost innovation, strengthen client relationships, and attract and retain better talent. In this successor to Gardner's bestselling first book, Smart Collaboration, the authors expand their mandate, illustrating the fundamental dynamics of collaborating well across industries like financial services, health care, biotech/pharma, consumer products, automotive, and technology.
Based on their research with thousands of executives from around the world, they share deep insights on how to implement smarter collaboration and avoid the potential pitfalls. They also help leaders troubleshoot thorny challenges like misaligned incentives, collaboration overload, and unintended consequences on diversity and inclusion. Complete with how-tos and cases, the book concludes with inspiring examples of groups harnessing smarter collaboration to tackle society's biggest challenges such as saving the oceans, eradicating diseases, and tackling global warming.
Smarter Collaboration is the essential guide for forward-thinking leaders to transform their organizations, reshape the way they work, and increase impact and success.
Buy On:
Blackwells £25.00 Bookshop.org UK £25.00 Bookshop.org US $29.76 Waterstones £25.00(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Team Rhythm: Eleven ways to lead your team from overwhelmed to inspired
Description from Blackwells:
Juggling multiple transformations and diverse business demands can be overwhelming for leaders and their teams – but it doesn’t have to be.
Uncover and embrace the metaphorical and literal aspects of rhythm to create profound connections with your teams and cultivate a thriving co-creative environment. Team Rhythm provides engaging tools and techniques to ensure both leaders and teams feel appreciated and make tangible contributions to business success.
Complemented by thought-provoking illustrations, this practical handbook brings key concepts of team building to life with lightness and humour.
Explore:
• Leadership growth and team inspiration with self-reflections and excellent leadership diagnostics
• A wealth of practical team development exercises
• New ideas to navigate with candour through challenging aspects of leadership
• Your team’s potential to achieve added-value outcomes
• Co-creating an effective and empowering work environment
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK £16.14 Bookshop.org US $21.99 Blackwells £16.99 Waterstones £16.99 Wordery $20.72(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Jonn Elledge
How the World Made the West: A 4,000 Year History by Oliver Burkeman.
My book of the year is How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn. Over 4,000 years, Professor Quinn breaks down the silos of "civilisational thinking" which have led the standard narrative of western history to imagine a simple inheritance from Greece and Rome, to highlight the extent to which those societies, and those which followed, drew on other sources from outside that canon (Mesopotamian, Phoenician, Islamic and so on).
How the World Made the West: A 4,000 Year History
Description from Bookshop.org:
The West, the story goes, was built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome, which disappeared from Europe during the Dark Ages and were then rediscovered by the Renaissance. But what if that isn’t true?
In a bold and magisterial work of immense scope, Josephine Quinn argues that the real story of the West is much bigger than this established paradigm leads us to believe. So much of our shared history has been lost, drowned out by the concept – developed in the Victorian era – of separate ‘civilisations’.
Moving from the Bronze Age to the Age of Exploration, How the World Made the West reveals a new narrative: one that traces the millennia of global encounters and exchange that built what is now called the West, as societies met, tangled and sometimes grew apart. From the creation of the alphabet by Levantine workers in Egypt, who in a foreign land were prompted to write things down in their own language for the first time, to the arrival of Indian numbers in Europe via the Arab world, Quinn makes the case that understanding societies in isolation is both out-of-date and wrong. It is contact and connections, rather than solitary civilisations, that drive historical change. It is not peoples that make history – people do.
Buy On:
Blackwells £30.00 Bookshop.org UK £28.50 Bookshop.org US $35.34 Waterstones £26.99(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Description from Bookshop.org:
People have been drawing lines on maps for as long as there have been maps to draw on. Sometimes rooted in physical geography, sometimes entirely arbitrary, these lines might often have looked very different if a war or treaty or the decisions of a handful of tired Europeans had gone a different way. By telling the stories of these borders, we can learn a lot about how political identities are shaped, why the world looks the way it does - and about the scale of human folly.
From the Roman attempts to define the boundaries of civilisation, to the secret British-French agreement to carve up the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, to the reason why landlocked Bolivia still maintains a navy, this is a fascinating, witty and surprising look at the history of the world told through its borders.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK £23.75 Bookshop.org US $23.20 Blackwells £25.00 Waterstones £20.99(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Theresa MacPhail
Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness by Jamil Zaki.
I would like to get a copy of Hope for Cynics by Jamil Zaki. It seems appropriate for our times and, as a cynic, I think I'm the perfect audience for this.
Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness
Description from Bookshop.org:
For thousands of years, people have argued about whether humanity is selfish or generous, cruel or kind. But recently, our answers have changed. In 1972, half of Americans agreed that most people can be trusted; by 2018, that figure had fallen to 30%. Different generations, genders, religions and political parties can't seem to agree on anything, except that they all think human virtue is evaporating.
Cynicism is a perfectly understandable response to a world full of injustice and inequality. But in many cases, cynicism is misplaced. Dozens of studies find that people fail to realise how kind, generous and open-minded others really are. And cynical thinking worsens social problems, because our beliefs don't just interpret the world; they change it. When we expect people to be awful, we coax awfulness out of them. Cynicism is a disease, with a history, symptoms and a cure. Through science and storytelling, Jamil Zaki imparts the secret for beating back cynicism: hopeful scepticism. This approach doesn't mean putting our faith in every politician or influencer. It means thinking critically about people and our problems, while simultaneously acknowledging and encouraging our strengths. Far from being naïve, hopeful scepticism is a more precise way of understanding others, and paying closer attention re-balances how you think about human nature. As more of us do this, we can take steps towards building the world we truly want.
Buy On:
Blackwells £17.00 Bookshop.org UK £20.90 Bookshop.org US $27.90 Waterstones £22.00(All affiliate links earn commission from purchases that help fund this site. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World
Description from Bookshop.org:
An eye-opening investigation - combining reporting, history and cutting-edge science - into allergies and their rise in recent decades
Hay fever. Peanut allergies. Eczema. Billions of people worldwide have some form of allergy; millions have one severe enough to seriously endanger their health. And over the past decade, the number of people diagnosed with allergy has been steadily increasing, an ever-growing medical burden on individuals, families, and our health care system.
Medical anthropologist Theresa MacPhail, herself an allergy sufferer whose father died of a bee sting, set out to understand why. The result is a holistic and deeply researched examination of allergies, from their first medical description in 1819 to the mind-bending new treatments that are giving patients hope. MacPhail spent years interviewing hundreds of experts, patients and activists, in an effort to understand how recent changes in our environment and lifestyle are contributing to the dramatic rise in cases globally. Pollution, chemicals, antibiotics and, increasingly, climate change are all making our immune systems become more and more irritated. But, as she shows us in Allergic, understanding what is irritating us and why will help us to craft better environments in the future-so we can all breathe easier.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK £23.75 Bookshop.org US $26.96 Blackwells £20.16 Waterstones £25.00(All links earn commission from purchases. Prices accurate at time of writing)
Huge thanks to Samreen, David, Iris, Jonn, & Theresa for their great Christmas book picks!
Watch out next week for Part III of the series next week with more author recommendations :-)
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Little, Brown Book Group, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, Harvard Business Review Press, Cornerstone, Duckworth Books, Penguin Books Ltd, Headline Publishing Group, Rethink Press.
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