New Book Releases for the Week of May 13, 2025
Featuring new book releases from Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, Amina AlTai, Zach Mercurio, and Amanda Litman.
This week, our roundup of new book releases addresses common workplace issues you may be facing and offers solutions from respected experts.
Is artificial intelligence having an undue impact on your work and creativity? Let a linguist and a sociologist guide you through recognizing and deconstructing AI hype. Have you been burned by chasing unattainable career goals? Let a leadership coach show you how to set more sustainable goals that honor your talents. Are you struggling with disengagement and loneliness in the workplace? Let an organizational learning researcher show you a new way to make your colleagues feel appreciated. Are you looking to navigate a new leadership role while replacing outdated templates of leadership? Let a millennial founder and executive show you the way.
The Porchlight staff members choosing books each week include Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team of Dylan Schleicher, Gabbi Cisneros, and Jasmine Gonzalez. As expert booksellers, we browse publisher catalogs and explore new titles from across the book industry to discover what captures our interest, and we're excited to share our findings with readers like you.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are provided by their respective publishers.
Our Recommended Books This Week
Dylan’s pick: The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, published by Harper
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype looks and smells fishy: It twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms.
Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.
Sally’s pick: The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living by Amina AlTai, published by The Open Field
Most of us think ambition means doing everything in our power to get what we want. But this approach costs us our health and wellbeing, and ultimately upholds oppressive systems. In The Ambition Trap, leadership coach Amina AlTai shows you how to break the cycle of overwork once and for all—and finally create the greatest, most joy-filled work of your life.
The thing is, what most of us really want isn’t money or accolades, but acceptance, security, and belonging. When we use external metrics to fulfill these internal wounds and desires nothing ends up being enough, so we work harder and longer in a never-ending cycle—and therein lies the ambition trap. It turns out, we get to have more of what we want when we anchor our ambition to our purpose and not our pain.
Drawing on her work with Fortune 500 leaders, Olympic gold medalists, start-up founders, and former “girlbosses,” AlTai guides you through the process of reconciling your ambition, starting with healing the core wounds and insecurities currently driving you. Along the way, she introduces actionable strategies for aligning your work with your deepest “why,” leaning into your most natural gifts, nourishing yourself in the long-term pursuit of your goals, setting a sustainable pace, and allowing contentment to guide the way.
It turns out, ambition isn’t a dirty word but an invitation to design your life with even greater purpose, meaning, and joy.
Bonus: Register to watch a live-streamed interview with Amina AlTai, author of The Ambition Trap, on May 19, 2025.
Jasmine’s pick: The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance by Zach Mercurio, published by Harvard Business Review Press
Increasingly, people report feeling overlooked, ignored, and underappreciated at work. Simply put, they don't feel like they matter to their leaders or organizations—and it's taking a toll. This hidden epidemic of insignificance is fueling a mental health crisis, intensifying loneliness, and, for organizations, driving disengagement, turnover, and low performance.
The good news is that leaders can learn the skills to ensure that everyone around them feels valued and knows how they add value at work. Through a captivating exploration of the emerging science of mattering and drawing from hands-on work in hundreds of diverse industries and organizations, researcher and speaker Zach Mercurio reveals how mattering to others is a fundamental—yet often overlooked—requirement for thriving.
He introduces a simple yet effective framework for making daily interactions with your people more meaningful:
- Noticing: the practice of seeing and hearing others
- Affirming: the practice of showing people how their unique gifts make a difference
- Needing: the practice of showing people they're relied on and indispensable
Filled with practical advice, helpful exercises, and inspiring real-world examples, The Power of Mattering equips leaders at all levels with the tools they need to revitalize their teams—and entire organizations—by showing people that they matter.
Bonus: Read an excerpt from The Power of Mattering.
Gabbi’s pick: When We're in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership by Amanda Litman, published by Zando
Most leadership books treat millennials and Gen Z like nuisances to manage around, focusing on how leaders from older generations can fit young people into their existing corporate cultures.
Not this one. When We’re In Charge is a no-bullshit guide for the next generation of leaders on how to show up differently, break the cycle of bad boomer leadership, and navigate the changing demands of those in power and the evolving expectations people have of their workplace.
Based on author Amanda Litman’s experience as a founder and executive (and mom of two who’s trying desperately to have a life outside of work), and informed by conversations with more than 100 next-gen leaders across politics, business, media, tech, education, and more -- and including people like Versha Sharma, editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue; Maxwell Frost, first Gen Z member of Congress; and Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc — this book is a vital resource for new leaders trying to figure out how to get stuff done without making your team or yourself miserable.
When We’re in Charge offers solutions for sticky challenges:
- How to be yourself without giving your full self to your role
- How to think about social media when your team sees what you post
- How to set up guardrails for work-life balance
Litman also makes powerful arguments about the practices and shape of work:
- Why a four-day work week is the future
- Why transparency is a powerful tool that can do real damage if not wielded with intention
- Why it matters for you, the boss, to both provide and take family leave
A necessary read for all who occupy or aspire to leadership roles, When We’re in Charge is a vision for a future where leaders at work, in communities, and across the country are compassionate, genuine, and effective.
Buy these recommended new book releases and more directly from Porchlight Book Company.
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