Healthcare researchers will mine stories about the COVID pandemic for decades to come. It stretched both American and global society to their limits to a degree not seen since the flu pandemic of 1918. Many expected federal coordination of the response, but they swiftly became disappointed. Both the White House and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) left the pandemic looking really bad, and I suspect history’s judgment upon each will only worsen with time.…
The Coronavirus pandemic provided a great challenge for modern business and introduced new challenges for us all to address. Post-pandemic, business is working through which novelties are good to keep and which to discard. Among these are remote work, artificial intelligence, ESG (environment, social, and governance), and social justice movements (like DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion). This book, compiled by Harvard Business Review (HBR), seeks to help business leaders make smarter decisions by understanding…
In 1976, a 7.6-scale earthquake rocked the region around Tangshan, China. Hundreds of thousands died, and hundreds of thousands more struggled for survival after houses, essential services, and bridges were leveled. Thirty years later, one survivor Xiaodeng is an acclaimed writer in Toronto, Canada, but is still haunted by the events of that day, when she was just a child. She tries to piece together her personal life, now falling apart. In reconstructing her life…
As technological development has increasingly driven the world economy, many observe that it causes a disruptive economic effect. New technology can humble big players and lift new players to leading positions. These effects often happen despite managers doing all the “right things.” We now have enough data to begin to analyze how technological disruptions happen across many industries. More importantly, we have data about how to manage innovation’s turbulence. In this classic text, Clayton Christensen…
Facing a seven-hour drive, I picked up this audiobook so that I wouldn’t have to listen to a business book for that long in one day. The author David Blight had won a Pulitzer Prize and is renowned for his annals of African-American history. I knew his writing to be eloquent and clear, and his observations of human nature, compassionate and acute. I had great hopes for this drive, and thankfully, with Blight’s erudite help,…
The COVID pandemic continues to shape the face of the global workforce in 2024. This book, written in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, sought to bring prior research about remote work to the forefront of business leaders. Written by a Wharton School professor, it briefly summarizes earlier studies and speculates on the pandemic’s future business outcomes. Given that it was written in the middle of a global crisis, this work is tightly coupled…
In the early twentieth century, Harlem was the place to be for black culture. Many had recently moved northward from the South to try out city life. As much as they wanted to reinvent themselves, past culture, built on the Christian Scriptures, remained ever near. In a small Harlem church, a teenage son came to terms with his identity in a relatively short amount of time. This book starts with the beginning of his epiphany,…
To the casual observer, a quick look at the American healthcare system brings out more questions than insights. Most of the developed world has some form of socialized medicine, whether nationalized health insurance or a national health system. By comparison, the American system appears disorderly and inefficient, yet resisting any changes, some swear by its effectiveness. Why? The answer lies not in a simple social, political, or economic force but in the scope of history.…
The COVID pandemic forced the global workforce to become used to working from home, and many of us transitioned there permanently. I grew up with my professor-father often working from home in the evenings and trudged through graduate school studying and writing in a home office. Thus, working from home was not entirely new to me. In 2013, when this book was written, this idea was still a relatively fresh management technique, and this short…
Modern leadership is often contrasted with healthy relationships. Leaders, we are told, have to be a lonely and isolated genius, like Steve Jobs. However, in truth, no one can lead without relying on other people. Getting things done requires healthy relationships, and most key advances just cannot be made without others’ influence. In this book, leadership psychologist Henry Cloud examines how to best take advantage of others’ help by identifying mutually beneficial relationships. Cloud’s main…