The Porchlight staff members choosing books each week include Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team of Gabriella Cisneros and Dylan Schleicher. 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

Finding Focus: Own Your Attention in an Age of Distraction by Zelana Montminy, published by Balance

Our brains are wired for focus. We are designed for it, we crave it, and yet in our current age of overload, we often feel like our minds are bolting from one distraction to the next, with sustained focus always just out of reach. Finding Focus is an empowering guide to reclaiming your most precious resource: your attention. Leading behavioral scientist Dr. Zelana Montminy unveils the science behind focus and distraction, revealing how our hyperconnected reality and the endless flux between digital and physical life fragments our thoughts and diminishes our well-being. Finding Focus equips you with powerful strategies to:

• Silence the noise
• Rewire your brain
• Unleash your potential
• Rediscover yourself

If we can control our attention and be present, if we choose when and how we engage, we have a greater sense of wellbeing, deeper fulfillment, and a clear purpose. Finding Focus invites you to ask the question "Where do I want to direct my focus today?" It is a call to arms for anyone yearning to break free from the grip of distraction and live a life brimming with purpose and connection.

Manage Yourself to Lead Others: Why Great Leadership Begins with Self-Understanding by Margaret C. Andrews, published by Basic Venture

What is the "best" way to lead others? The answer may surprise you.

The basis for powerful, effective leadership comes from within—from understanding the people, ideas, and events that have shaped your worldview and how these influences express themselves in your leadership style. In Manage Yourself to Lead Others, leadership expert Margaret Andrews helps you understand yourself and translate this understanding into effectively managing yourself, leading others, working with your boss, and making better decisions.

Andrews has taught thousands of executives in her professional development course at Harvard, and she shares her insights, practical tips, and questions for reflection here. This book will allow you to identify the kind of leader you want to be, the behavioral patterns that help get you there or stand in your way, and what it takes to develop new leadership capabilities. Whether you've just been promoted or you've been leading a team for decades, Manage Yourself to Lead Others is essential reading for all leaders.

Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change by Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly, published by MIT Press

Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change, racism, and poverty, are structural. They emerge from our collective practices: laws, economies, history, culture, norms, and built environments. The dilemma is that there is no way to make structural change without individual people making different—more structure-facing—decisions. In Somebody Should Do Something, Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly show us how we can connect our personal choices to structural change and why individual choices matter, though not in the way people usually think.

The authors paint a new picture of how social change happens, arguing that our most powerful personal choices are those that springboard us into working together with others—warehouse worker Chris Smalls's unionization at Amazon is one powerful example. Taking inspiration from the writer Bill McKibben, they stress how one "important thing an individual can do is be somewhat less of an individual."

Organized into three main parts, the book first diagnoses the problem of "either/or" thinking about social change, which stems from the false choice of making better personal choices or changing the system. Then it offers a different way to think about social change, anchored in a new picture of human nature emerging across the social sciences. Finally, the authors explore ways of putting this picture into practice. Neither a how-to manual nor an activist's guide, Somebody Should Do Something pairs stories with science (plus some jokes) to help readers recognize their own power, turning resignation about climate change and racial injustice into actions that transform the world.

Strategic Enemy: How to Build and Position a Brand Worth Fighting For by Laura Ries, published by Wiley

Consumers are overwhelmed by choices and inundated with marketing messages. And despite an obsession with positioning amongst the world's most well-known companies, too many brands retain an outdated focus on "being better" and using "line-extensions" rather than on what really matters in the mind—being different than your strategic enemy.

In The Strategic Enemy: How to Build and Position a Brand Worth Fighting For, bestselling author and brand strategist Laura Ries delivers an exciting and powerful new discussion of how some of the world's most energetic brands make an impact in the market. She explains the key to effective brand positioning—identifying an "enemy"—and shows you how to use an indisputable difference to drive your brand into the minds of consumers. To get people to fight for something, it will require them to reject something else. Ries draws on her extensive experience in marketing and branding to show you how to develop a "visual hammer: " a crystal-clear image that distinguishes your brand from everyone else's. You'll also find:

• Illustrative case studies of real-world companies—like Liquid Death, the popular canned water brand, Chick-fila-A's "Eat More Chikin" campaign, Oatly's "Wow no Cow," slogan, and Nvidia, the leader in AI computing—that demonstrate how to effectively position using focus and a distinctive enemy (plastic bottles, beef, and dairy milk, respectively)
• Strategies to adapt to a constantly changing marketplace where trends, products, and customer needs shift every day
• How to keep your company from expanding or extending to such an extent that true differentiation is impossible

Perfect for branding and strategy teams, managers, executives, and other business leaders, The Strategic Enemy is also a must-read for marketing professionals, sales leaders, and anyone else with an interest in driving revenue at their company.