New Book Releases for the Week of May 6, 2025
Featuring new book releases from Eunji Kim, Dave Whorton, Suzy Welch, and Ian Kumekawa.
Every week, there's a fresh wave of new book releases, and with so many excellent options, picking your next great read might feel daunting. We're here to help!
This week’s roundup of new book releases includes an analysis of reality television's lasting legacy, a guide to creating enduring companies, a playbook for uncovering one's true purpose in life, and the fascinating story of the many lives of a single barge.
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
Jasmine’s pick: The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy by Eunji Kim, published by Princeton University Press
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the United States as the land of opportunity. The American Mirage addresses this puzzle by exposing the stark reality of today’s media landscape, revealing how popular entertainment media shapes politics and public opinion in an increasingly news-avoiding nation.
Drawing on an eclectic array of original data, Eunji Kim demonstrates how, amid a dazzling array of media choices, many Americans simply are not consuming the news. Instead, millions flock to entertainment programs that showcase real-life success stories, such as American Idol, Shark Tank, and MasterChef. Kim examines how shows like these leave viewers confoundingly optimistic about the prospects of upward mobility, promoting a false narrative of rugged individualism and meritocracy that contradicts what is being reported in the news.
By taking seriously what people casually watch every day, The American Mirage shows how rags-to-riches programs perpetuate the myth of the American Dream, glorifying the economic winners, fostering tolerance for income inequality, and dampening support for redistributive policies that could improve people’s lives.
Sally’s pick: Another Way: Building Companies That Last…and Last…and Last by Dave Whorton with Bo Burlingham, published by Harvard Business Review Press
Dave Whorton was John Doerr's associate partner at high-flying Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers during Silicon Valley's big shift, when he witnessed the VC industry pivot from a proven forty-year playbook of managing risk to something much more aggressive: "get-big-fast." Don't worry about profitability. Cash out and find another venture.
For a while, Whorton took part in this whirlwind as he pursued his dream of becoming the next Hewlett or Packard, starting two companies himself. But soon it all got to be too much. Whorton recognized that if get-big-fast was the formula for building a great technology company in the twenty-first century, that just wasn't for him.
That could have been the end of the story, but instead it turned out to be the beginning of another, deeply inspiring one. Whorton went on a journey to find a better way to build companies, a way focused on long-term stability and steady growth, funded through profitability; a way in which leaders were committed to a purpose beyond personal wealth generation, to putting their people first, and to setting up their companies to endure. He calls these companies "Evergreen." Another Way combines Whorton's inspiring story with his Evergreen 7Ps framework, designed to guide more entrepreneurs and business leaders to follow his path.
Full of revelations, practical advice, and real-world examples of companies going Evergreen, Another Way is as instructive as it is inspiring at showing capitalism at its best.
Gabbi’s pick: Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career by Suzy Welch, published by Harper Business
Bestselling author and career expert Suzy Welch helps you answer the question, “What should I do with my life?” Based on a methodology Suzy has spent the past 15 years developing, researching, testing, and teaching, Becoming You helps people discover their authentic purpose.
The Becoming You methodology is about teaching you who you are when you’re standing still, so that when you get moving, you actually know which way to go. It’s about building the bridge between the life you’re living, and the life you want, can and should be living. In the lexicon of Becoming You, it about finding your “Area of Transcendence,” which is made possible when:
- You live according to your deepest, most authentic values.
- You’re in alignment with your strongest and most unique aptitudes.
- Your work is economically viable, and calls you emotionally or economically, or both.
Welch introduces concepts and exercises that help readers uncover their values, identify their aptitudes, and pinpoint their economically viable interests. Along the way, we meet people of all walks of life, at all stages of their journey, putting their values, aptitudes and interests together to create their Areas of Transcendence.
Becoming You is a true-to-life exploration of what is required to achieve self-knowledge and how to apply those discoveries to your life, your career(s), your relationships, and even your hopes and dreams. Regardless of background, age, career, location, or education, Becoming You is a guide for personal transformation that anyone can use to discover the most fulfilled version of you. It’s about you waking up, opening your eyes, and thinking, “I. Am. So. Excited. About. Today.”
Dylan’s pick: Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge by Ian Kumekawa, published by Knopf
What do a barracks for British troops in the Falklands War, a floating jail off the Bronx, and temporary housing for VW factory workers in Germany have in common? The Balder Scapa: a single barge that served all three roles. Though the name would eventually change to Finnboda 12. And then to Safe Esperia. And later on, to the Bibby Resolution. And after that... in short, a vessel with so many names, and so many fates, that to keep it in our sights—as the protagonist of this fascinating economic parable—Ian Kumekawa has no choice but to call it, simply, the Vessel.
Despite its sturdy steel structure, weighing 9,500 deadweight tons, the Vessel is a figure as elusive and abstract as the offshore market it comes to embody: a world of island tax havens, exploited labor forces, free banking zones, Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and mass incarceration, where even the prisoners are held offshore. Fitted with modular shipping containers, themselves the product of standardized global trade, the ship could become whatever the market demanded. Whether caught in an international dispute involving Hong Kong, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the Virgin Islands—to be settled in an English court of law—or flying yet another foreign “flag of convenience” to mask its ownership—the barge is ever a container for forces much larger than even its hulking self.
Empty Vessel is a jaw-dropping microhistory that speaks volumes about the global economy as a whole. In following the Vessel—and its Sister Vessel, built alongside it in Stockholm—from one thankless task to the next, Kumekawa connects the dots of a neoliberal world order in the making, where regulation is for suckers and “Made in USA” feels almost quaint.
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