Read On: 10 New Books By Women Leaders For Your September Reading List
September is Literacy Month and also typically back to school month. Even with school on hold, virtual, hybrid or postponed for so many, we can still enjoy a robust reading month. And what possibilities you have with great new books by, for and about women and the issues and concerns facing all of us.
Take The Lead frequently highlights the latest books from women leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers and doers. It’s why Take The Lead has launched a new Book Club and why Take The Lead includes great reads from our leadership, staff and partners here.
“@Takeleadwomen frequently highlights the latest books from #womenleaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers and doers. It’s why Take The Lead has launched a new #BookClub.”
(Register here for the October Book Club event) with Kristin Grady Gilger, co-author of There’s No Crying in Newsrooms. )
Here is a carefully curated list of 10 new books (alphabetical by author) from a wide range of authors with different backgrounds, disciplines and experiences addressing topics of discrimination, leadership, equality, bias, power, story, anxiety, kindness, history, inclusion, business and capitalism. The book descriptions quoted are from the publishers.
Your Hidden Superpower: The Kindness That Makes You Unbeatable at Work and Connects You with Anyone by Adrienne Bankert. It’s like your mother told you: “Kindness isn’t merely about getting along with people and being nice. It’s a game changer in business, the door-opener to opportunity, and the key to authenticity and confidence. It’s a superpower that can be honed through an intentional lifestyle of kindness and is especially important in these divisive times. Through years of developing her own kindness practices and studying those of others, Good Morning America correspondent and anchor Adrienne Bankert has experienced firsthand the unbeatable power of kindness and witnessed its transformative impact on others. Adjusting our perspective from being closed off and self-centered to a mindset of kindness ripples into a staggering amount of personal fulfillment and growth. No matter our age or ethnicity, where we come from, or how much money we make, every one of us can be kind. Every one of us can be a change agent.”
““Your Hidden Superpower: The Kindness That Makes You Unbeatable at Work and Connects You with Anyone,” by @ABonTV will teaches us that “Every one of us can be a change agent.” #womenauthors #womenleaders”
Reimagining Capitalism In A World On Fire by Rebecca Henderson. The Harvard University professor’s “rigorous research in economics, psychology, and organizational behavior, as well as her many years of work with companies around the world, gives us a path forward. She debunks the worldview that the only purpose of business is to make money and maximize shareholder value. She shows that we have failed to reimagine capitalism so that it is not only an engine of prosperity but also a system that is in harmony with environmental realities, striving for social justice and the demands of truly democratic institutions. Henderson's deep understanding of how change takes place, combined with fascinating in-depth stories of companies that have made the first steps towards reimagining capitalism, provides inspiring insight into what capitalism can be. With rich discussions of how the worlds of finance, governance, and leadership must also evolve, Henderson provides the pragmatic foundation for navigating a world faced with unprecedented challenge, but also with extraordinary opportunity for those who can get it right. Reimagining Capitalism addresses the climate emergency, but her solutions — notably the need for a collaborative compact between government, society and purpose-led businesses — look relevant as economies emerge from the acute phase of the Covid-19 crisis.”
“In her new book, #ReimaginingCapitalism In A World On Fire, @RebeccaReCap “provides the pragmatic foundation for navigating a world faced with unprecedented challenge.” #innovation #womenleaders”
Read earlier book recs from Take The Lead
Once I Was You: A Memoir Of Love And Hate in A Torn America by Maria Hinojosa. Veteran journalist and Futuro Media founder Hinojosa writes about “the history of U.S. immigration policy that has brought us to where we are today, as she shares her deeply personal story.” Growing up as a Mexican-American in Chicago, “she offers a personal and eye-opening account of how the rhetoric around immigration has not only long informed American attitudes toward outsiders, but also enabled willful negligence and profiteering at the expense of our country’s most vulnerable populations—charging us with the broken system we have today.”
“In @Maria_Hinojosa’s new memoir, “Once I Was You,” the journalist, @Futuromedia founder “offers a personal and eye-opening account of how the rhetoric around immigration.. (informs) the broken system we have today.” #books #immigration #stories”
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for Us All by Martha S. Jones. With 2020 the centennial of the 19th Amendment, Jones dives into the fight of Black women for voting rights, equality and much more. “Acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women's political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women -- Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more -- who were the vanguard of women's rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.”
“@Marthasjones_ dives into the fight of #Blackwomen for #votingrights, #equality and much more in her new book, “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for Us All.””
Welcome to the United States of Anxiety: Observations from a Reforming Neurotic by Jen Lancaster. Who isn’t anxious right about now? “Our collective FOMO, and the disparity between the ideal and reality, is leading us to spend more and feel worse. No wonder we’re getting twitchy. Jen Lancaster is here to take a hard look at our elevating anxieties, and with self-deprecating wit and levelheaded wisdom, she charts a path out of the quagmire that keeps us frightened of the future and ashamed of our imperfectly perfect human lives. Take a deep breath, and her advice, and you just might get through a holiday dinner without wanting to disown your uncle.”
“Who isn’t anxious right about now? Unpack it all by reading “Welcome to the United States of Anxiety: Observations from a Reforming Neurotic,” by @Altgeldshrugged. #booksbywomen #womenauthors”
Confessions From Your Token Black Colleague: True Stories & Candid Conversations About Equity & Inclusion In The Workplace by Talisa “Tali “Lavarry. A must read for all business leaders, the author reveals “conversations with progressive white business leaders and professionals in the fields of human resources and diversity and inclusion, and with their help she demonstrates what has to be done to create real solutions that protect and fortify people of color and other marginalized groups.”
Read more in Take The Lead on good books
Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser. Women, power, history and the stories of women is what Lesser dives into here with careful, diligent attention. “Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence. Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human.”
“@ElizabethLesser dives into women, power, history and the stories of women with careful, diligent attention in, “Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes.” #womenwriters #womenshistory”
Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine. A professor at Yale University who teaches a course, Construction of Whiteness, offers essays, poems and images that are “an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness. Rankine’s questions disrupt the false comfort of our culture’s liminal and private spaces―the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth―where neutrality and politeness live on the surface of differing commitments, beliefs, and prejudices as our public and private lives intersect.”
“In her new book, “Just Us,” Claudia Rankine offers “an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together...especially in breaching the #silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of #whiteness.””
The Double X Economy: The Epic Potential of Women's Empowerment by Linda Scott. “Scott argues on the strength of hard data and on-the-ground experience that removing those barriers to women’s success is a win for everyone, regardless of gender. Scott opens our eyes to the myriad economic injustices that constrain women throughout the world: fathers buying and selling daughters against their will; husbands burning brides whose dowries have been spent; men appropriating women’s earnings and widows’ land; banks discriminating against women applying for loans; corporations paying women less than men; men treating women as their intellectual inferiors due to primitive notions of female brain development; governments depriving women of affordable childcare; and so much more.”
“In her new book “The Double X Economy: The Epic Potential of Women’s Empowerment,” @ProfLindaScott “argues...that removing those barriers to women’s success is a win for everyone, regardless of gender.” #equality”
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. The Pulitzer Prize winning author “gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.”
“#Pulitzer winner @isabelwilkerson in her book, “Caste,” offers “a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America... she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people.” #equality #antiracism #fairness”
