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News & Opinion

The 2021 Porchlight Business Book Awards Longlist

Dylan Schleicher

November 18, 2021

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"The authors who make up this year’s Porchlight Business Book of the Year Awards longlist gift us with a feast of new ideas to explore and, even more valuable, a renewed sense of possibility.”

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We often turn to books for comfort, as a place to curl up and retreat from the struggles of life and the harsh realities of the world around us. After the past 20 months, no one could be blamed for seeking that comfort, but it has also been a time that lays bare the need to seek new ways of seeing and doing things. And, at their best, in times like these, books make us a little uncomfortable by challenging our preconceived notions and intellectual complacency, overthrowing conventional thinking, exposing injustice, and pushing back against so-called best practices while providing new ideas and narratives. 

Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, offered the following thoughts as we were wrapping up the list: “For all its uncertainty, the upheaval we’ve all experienced over the past two years in our businesses and in our lives is an opportunity for change. We have learned that we are resilient, that we can adapt to new constraints, and that, if we are a little brave and a lot determined, we can grow in ways we hadn’t previously imagined. But the path forward is itself uncertain. So, we look for a map, or maybe to draw our own, using the insights of teachers, mentors, scholars, leaders, survivors, and guides to fuel our journey. The authors who make up this year’s Porchlight Business Book of the Year Awards longlist gift us with just that: a feast of new ideas to explore and, even more valuable, a renewed sense of possibility.”   

The forty books on our longlist give us a fresh perspective on our past and present, and visions of a better way forward, with a wide breadth of erudition, ideas, and actions that we can engage in to help us change what must be changed, and preserve that which we must not lose.

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Image by Gabbi Cisneros

Leadership & Strategy 

Management & Workplace Culture 

Marketing & Sales 

Innovation & Creativity 

Personal Development & Human Behavior 

Current Events & Public Affairs 

Narrative & Biography 

Big Ideas & New Perspectives 

Thanks to all the authors who wrote these books (and the many other books it pained us greatly to leave off this list), and to everyone else working in the industry who helped bring them to life. We appreciate all of you, and the prodigious efforts you put into bringing more books and ideas into the world. 

We will announce our shortlist on December 16th, and the overall winner on January 13th, 2022.

About Dylan Schleicher

Dylan Schleicher has been a part of Porchlight since 2003. After beginning in shipping and receiving, he moved through customer service (with some accounting on the side) before entering into his current, highly elliptical orbit of duties overseeing the marketing and editorial aspects of the company. Outside of work, you’ll find him volunteering or playing basketball at his kids’ school, catching the weekly summer concert at the Washington Park Bandshell, or strolling through one of the many other parks or green spaces around his home in Milwaukee (most likely his own gardens). He lives with his wife and two children in the Washington Heights neighborhood on Milwaukee's West Side.

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