New Book Releases | April 7
From the most powerful force in business and permission to play as adults to what to make of a life and the economic forces the shape it, this week's new releases all look at fundamental elements that affect our lives.
Marcus Buckingham and Jim Collins, two giants of the business book genre, have new books out. Throw in a guide from the world’s leading economics podcast and permission to play from the cofounder of Refinery29, and you have a veritable smorgasbord of ideas and inspiration to choose from this week.
All four of these titles are available online and hitting bookshop shelves today. Unless otherwise noted, all descriptions of the book below come from the publisher.
Interested in buying multiple copies for your team, book club, or employee resource group? Follow the links below to purchase the books, or check out our services for bulk book buyers to learn more about how we can help.
Design Love In: How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business by Marcus Buckingham, published by Harvard Business Review Press
From New York Times bestselling author and pioneer of the strengths movement comes a bold new blueprint for leading with the most powerful force in business—love.
Think about the last time you said, "I love that." Maybe it was about a product that exceeded expectations, a service experience that built instant loyalty, or a moment when your work brought out the best in you. That reaction isn't just emotional—it's electric. In the organization, it fuels engagement, strengthens performance, and drives lasting success. Yet most leaders don't even acknowledge it, let alone measure or make use of it.
In Design Love In, leading researcher on human performance and bestselling author Marcus Buckingham reveals how love—the deep connection that makes people feel seen, valued, and inspired—isn't just a soft feeling. It's a measurable driver of performance and growth. He shows how leaders, as experience-makers, can intentionally "design love in" to everything we do: our interactions with team members, our company policies and practices, the products and services and experiences we create for those we lead and serve. When we do this, we not only unlock deeper commitment, higher engagement, stronger customer loyalty, and lasting business results, we strengthen the human connection between us and create a better world.
Featuring vivid stories of global brands, current research, and personal experiences, Buckingham illustrates that tapping into this force is not simply about being more "warm and fuzzy"—it's a concrete strategy of utilizing loving experiences to drive behaviors to drive outcomes, and the book provides step-by-step advice on how to "design love in" to all your actions as a leader.
Love—it's the most powerful force in business. This book shows how you as a leader can unleash it.
Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life by Alex Mayyasi and the Hosts of NPR's Planet Money, published by W. W. Norton & Company
From the world’s leading economics podcast comes an irresistible guide to the hidden world of everyday economics.
Hello, and welcome to Planet Money! Millions of listeners trust the world’s leading economics podcast to explain the mysterious inner workings of the global economy and the forces that affect nearly every decision we make. Through expert research and delightful stories the Planet Money hosts help everyone see the world like an economist.
For their first-ever book, longtime contributor Alex Mayyasi and the hosts of NPR's Planet Money present brand new stories and insights gathered from more than a decade of reporting that reveal ways AI might help you or replace you, demystify dating markets, and show how pro sports’ "dumbest" contract holds the secret to building wealth. Taking readers on adventures to a smartphone factory in Patagonia, a raisin cartel in California, and an Indigenous reserve in Canada that might just have a solution for the housing crisis, Planet Money shows how economics shapes our world, and how we can harness key principles to make our own lives a little richer.
The Playful Way: Creativity, Connection, and Joy Through Everyday Moments of Play by Piera Gelardi, published by HarperOne
Playfulness can help you navigate life with more creativity, resilience, and joy—entrepreneur Piera Gelardi offers simple practices and radical permission to shift from the Pressured Way to the Playful Way.
Somewhere along the way to adulthood, we learned that play is frivolous. Childish. Something to outgrow. We treat it like a reward we have to earn, separate from our "real" lives. But denying our playfulness has a cost—it leaves us feeling drained and disconnected. We rely on pressure and perfectionism, trying to force outcomes, wondering why nothing feels fun anymore.
There's another way.
In The Playful Way, creative entrepreneur Piera Gelardi shows how to shift from the Pressured Way—clenching, forcing, white-knuckling through life—to the Playful Way, where you move through the world with fluidity, curiosity, and aliveness. For Gelardi—who has built iconic brands, created daring experiences, and consistently put herself out there in bold, creative ways—play has never been frivolous. It was how she made sense of the world. As an adult, she realized that what she'd called burnout or creative block was really a disconnection from play—and that returning to it helped her feel alive again.
Through intimate stories, research, and accessible practices, you'll discover how to:
- quiet the inner critics that restrict your playfulness
- unlock the Eight Powers of Play
- embrace a mindset that transforms how you navigate challenges, deepen connections, and find joy in everyday moments
The Playful Way is your guide to living with more whimsy, wonder, and possibility—through both the light moments and the tough ones. Because when you embrace playfulness, you don't have to go play. Play comes with you everywhere.
What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative by Jim Collins, published by HarperEdge
Jim Collins, international bestselling author of Good to Great, offers transformative lessons on constructing—and reconstructing—a life through the cliff moments and transitions we all will face repeatedly in our lives.
What to make of a life?
It is a question we all wrestle with more than once: How do we find our way in the world? How do we make it past the cliffs, significant events that can radically change a life? How do we keep the inner fire burning bright, long and late? Inspired by relentless curiosity, Jim Collins devoted a decade to studying these questions and to minutely analyzing those moments when life flips from clarity to confusion and casts us into a befuddling fog.
His exploration follows various lives side-by-side, paired together at cliffs, and analyzes the different choices made and divergent paths taken. Two rock musicians confronting a future without the group that had brought them success. Two public figures tainted by scandal having to make decisions about how to rebuild their lives. Two suffragists achieving their epic goal and so left with the puzzle of what to do next. Two figure skaters seeking new purpose when their Olympic careers come to an end. What emerges from Collins’s extensive studies—of writers, actors, scientists, leaders and many others—is a framework for understanding how individual lives can be built, sustained and constantly renewed.
By examining the long arc of these remarkable lives, Collins tackles life’s questions. What does it take to:
- Discover a deeply fulfilling role in life—one that you are naturally ‘encoded’ for—and then to find a second one, if the first one ends?
- Overcome a major cliff—a fracture point that forces choices about what’s next and calls for you to re-envision the years to come?
- Make your personal economics work so that you can focus on one big thing that feeds your inner fire?
- Navigate the fog, when you feel uncertain or even outright lost, and build confidence step by step?
- Build personal momentum decade upon decade, so that your most creative and energetic years are spread across an entire lifetime?
- Achieve the imperative to “Know Thyself” and apply self-knowledge to each phase of life?
And for the first time, Collins movingly chronicles his own story to reveal how undertaking this project transformed him, changing his thinking and reshaping his emotions in fundamental ways. Surprising, story-driven, deeply researched, and uplifting, What to Make of a Life is a book like no other, convincingly showing how a richly fulfilled life is within reach of us all.
