New Book Releases | February 24
From what limits us at work to why a world appears before us when we open our eyes, this week's new releases offer a diverse range of topics for your autodidactic inquiries and pleasure.
First up (alphabetically), Nilofer Merchant explores the "24 invisible norms—born of hierarchy, control, and a worn-out model of capitalism—that limit us all" and offers instruction for "changing the rules of work itself." Next, Beth Gardiner exposes how plastics have become a financial lifeline for Big Oil as it "stares down a future of diminishing demand for fossil fuels," and the "hidden health crisis caused by chemicals in the items we use every day." Then, we turn to Michel Nieva, author of the acclaimed sci-fi novel Dengue Boy, for the nonfiction alternative to the novel which "explores the almost always ambiguous threshold that technology and culture have drawn between what is understood as human and what is not, living and nonliving, and which is the seed of the biggest questions of this century." Finally, Michael Pollan "takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves"
All of these books offer potential for profound change—in how we work, in what we consume, in how we think about and experience the world around us, and the individual minds and identities we experience it through—and all four are available online and on local bookshop shelves today.
Interested in buying multiple copies for you team, book club, or employee resource group? Check out our services for bulk book buyers.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are from the publisher.
Our Best Work: Break Free from the 24 Invisible Norms That Limit Us by Nilofer Merchant, published by Harper Business
How can we fix what we can't see? In Our Best Work, the norms crushing innovation—and our joy—are finally made visible. All 24 of them.
In Our Best Work, Nilofer Merchant names the 24 invisible norms—born of hierarchy, control, and a worn-out model of capitalism—that limit us all. Along the way, she dismantles some of management’s most beloved ideas:
- Servant Leadership
- Personal Branding
- Speaking Up
- Performance Reviews
- Move Fast and Break Things
These aren’t just ideas that fall short—they are daily routines that trap us in the past. Merchant exposes how and why they fail us. But it’s not enough to know the problem, we must also know how to move forward. She lights the path to the future by providing the 24 leading indicators that bring out the best of us and the best of us. Each chapter closes with a concrete practice, so teams can turn insight into action.
Ranked among the world’s most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50, Merchant brings an unmatched range of experience: from her start as an administrative assistant to shaping strategy at Apple and early-stage startups to serving on corporate boards. She has experienced the realities of power from every seat at the table, across industries, and around the globe. Her ideas have already reshaped companies—and their futures. With this incisive take, Merchant offers a clear and collective path to do our best work, including:
- Unlocking the essential source of innovation: new and novel ideas
- Replacing competition with trust
- Creating the solutions of tomorrow, not just today’s profits
If you’ve tired of self-help fixes or the latest fads, Our Best Work offers another way: by changing the rules of work itself.
Plastic Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil's Biggest Bet by Beth Gardiner, published by Avery
An extraordinary exposé of the industry flooding our world with plastic—and now ramping up to make more than ever.
Plastic, the foundational material of modern consumerism, is everywhere in our daily lives. But the oil and petrochemical companies making it are hiding in plain sight. Because for all the vivid coverage of where plastic ends up, there is remarkably little discussion of where it comes from. Today, industry is pouring billions of dollars into plans to double, or even triple, the amount it churns out, even as individuals concerned about plastic’s out-of-control proliferation try to use less. As Big Oil stares down a future of diminishing demand for fossil fuels, plastic has become its financial lifeline.
Award-winning journalist Beth Gardiner gives readers an up-close look at the plastic industry’s relentless growth, its extraordinary profits, its toxic pollution and its hidden role in exacerbating climate change. Every chapter in Plastic Inc. brings new revelations, including:
- How Big Oil sold us the lie that recycling was the panacea for our plastic worries, even though companies always knew it couldn’t work at scale
- The hidden health crisis caused by chemicals in the items we use every day, and scientists’ growing fear that microplastics may pose even bigger dangers
- How the industries making and using plastic have wielded political muscle to stop bans on single-use items like plastic bags, while blaming us for the global mess they’ve created—and profited from
- That Big Oil’s plastic dreams spring directly from decades of denying climate science, and draw on the playbook of deceit this industry wrote—one later borrowed by tobacco and pharma companies
- The characters and personalities behind a hidden corporate and political scandal perpetuated over decades
Plastic Inc.’s gripping stories will reframe for readers a problem many of us think we understand, but which has deeper roots, and greater dangers, than we know.
Technology and Barbarism (or: How Billionaires Will Save Us from the End of the World) by Michel Nieva, translated by Rahul Bery, published by Astra House
Thought-provoking pieces of nonfiction exploring the crossroads of technology with art and science, as well as how hard science fiction has inspired the craziest ideas of our times, for the good and the bad.
The nonfiction pieces included in Technology and Barbarism, as well as the long essay "Capitalist Science Fiction," constitute the nonfiction alternative to Nieva’s Dengue Boy and has similar potential to achieve cult-status. Equally fast and furious, grounded in deep research as well as far-reaching literary traditions, Nieva writes about the crossroads between civilization and barbarism through history, literature, and the incidence of genetics in the arts and humanities.
Could the inspiration for Kafka's stories have come from his visits to human zoos where he saw indigenous people kidnapped from Tierra del Fuego? Can an algorithm understand the verses of Rubén Darío? Can bacteria write literature? And can a monkey reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare? These are some of the questions that run through this collection of essays, which explores the almost always ambiguous threshold that technology and culture have drawn between what is understood as human and what is not, living and nonliving, and which is the seed of the biggest questions of this century.
From nineteenth century science fiction to contemporary art exhibitions, via a philosophical take on COVID, this book examines the impact of capitalism, indigenous extermination, and medical policies in Latin America and elsewhere, in order to interrogate our very identity.
In "Capitalist Science Fiction," Nieva studies the influence of historical "hard" science fiction on technology and capitalism today, with a special focus on Silicon Valley, and a particular spin at the end on, of course, Elon Musk. The essay is totally timely and super smart.
First published as Tecnología y barbarie and Ciencia Ficcion Capitalista by Editorial Anagrama.
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan, published by Penguin Press
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, a panoptic exploration of consciousness—what it is, who has it, and why—and a meditation on the essence of our humanity.
When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all agree: it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like, when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.
When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy gray matter could generate a subjective point of view—assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.
In Pollan’s dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves.
