Our picks for this week's best new releases examine the history of global interdependence, the nature of leadership, and why "though you’re often told to make the best of your situation, it is far, far better to make your situation better first."

All four of the following titles hit local bookshop shelves and online today. Interested in buying multiple copies for your team, book club, or employee resource group? Follow the links below or give us a call to purchase the books, or check out our services for bulk book buyers to learn more about how we can help.

Unless otherwise noted, all descriptions of the books below come from the publisher.

The Capitalist Era: The Making—and Unmaking—of the Global Mind by Jeremy Adelman, published by Princeton University Press

A sweeping history of global interdependence from the late eighteenth to the twenty-first century—with essential lessons for today.

In The Capitalist Era, leading global historian Jeremy Adelman puts the world’s current unwinding in much-needed historical perspective. Combining political, economic, intellectual, and environmental history, the book tells the epic story of the forces that, since the late eighteenth century, have transformed the world into a single but fractured survival unit that is integrated by exchange and flow, yet divided by suspicion and fear. It is a story of hopes for universal peace, panic over planetary destruction, and debates, policies, and media that have shaped how people view one another across distances and borders.

The Capitalist Era chronicles how global integration compelled people from different parts of the world to reckon with what it means to need each other for resources or recognition without knowing one another, and it describes the confrontations and experiments that have shaped the world through periods of integration and disintegration over the past two centuries. As trade, migration, and new technologies have brought people closer together in search of wealth, security, and survival, there have been huge clashes and collisions involving writers and soldiers, biologists and economists, photographers and missionaries.

Strangers—are they partners or rivals, liberators or oppressors? As The Capitalist Era shows, this is perhaps the biggest question hanging over our past, present, and future. To understand our world, it is essential to grasp how strangers have regarded each other as they decided to welcome or exclude, to respect or dominate. Rejecting simplistic determinisms about inevitable peace or inescapable doom, this book illuminates the brittle unity of today’s world.

The Origin of a Leader: Transforming Family Patterns into Leadership Power by Pam Manfredo Curtis, PhD, published by Simon Acumen

A groundbreaking approach to transforming the hidden influences of your childhood into your unique and extraordinary leadership style.

What if the path to achieving your full leadership potential wasn’t in a business school classroom, but in your childhood home? Veteran executive coach Pam Manfredo Curtis, PhD, brings the therapist’s couch to the corner office, revealing how your earliest experiences are the most significant predictor of your leadership style.

The Origin of a Leader guides you on a revelatory journey into your past. You’ll explore specific childhood environments and discover how they shaped your strengths, communication patterns, and hidden limitations. Drawing on decades of experience coaching the world’s most influential CEOs and executives, Manfredo Curtis moves beyond theory, providing powerful, actionable tools to help you identify and overcome personal blocks, have truly authentic conversations, and foster psychological safety within your teams. Learn to engage in constructive conflict and give feedback that inspires growth, not fear. By understanding the origin of who you are, you can fundamentally change how you lead.

No matter your current position—whether that’s at your job, your home, or in your community—The Origin of a Leader empowers you to reach your highest potential. This isn’t just about becoming a more capable, self-aware, inspiring leader; it’s also about transforming yourself into a more competent, confident, and empathetic human being.

Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter? by Jared Diamond, published by Mariner Books

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, multimillion-copy bestselling classic Guns, Germs and Steel,  a landmark study of leadership across politics, religion, business, and sports—seeking to decode how and why leaders matter.

Can one person change the world? What qualities determine effective leadership? How do individual talent and historical circumstances combine to shape great leaders?

In his acclaimed and influential books Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings, he studies leaders throughout time to answer the question: do the actions of individuals truly influence history? Or is humanity subject to larger historical, technological, cultural, geographical forces, far beyond the influence of individuals, no matter how powerful they may seem?

On 13 March 1930, a truck sped into an intersection, headed straight for another car’s right front door. The passenger of this chauffeur-driven car happened to be Adolf Hitler. If the truck had hit the door, Hitler would have been crushed and killed. But the chauffeur managed to accelerate, and Hitler survived. Would tens of millions of people have died in the Holocaust and World War Two if the chauffeur had been slower to react? Some believe Hitler was unique in his evil abilities, while others think the war was guaranteed by the harsh conditions imposed on Germany post-war.

Do leaders like Hitler, Margaret Thatcher, Genghis Khan, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Belichick, or Christ really change our world? If yes, what qualities and circumstances are required of a leader to make their mark?

Drawing on his deep study of the life and career of a diverse cast of leaders famous and obscure– from Botswana president Seretse Khama, to environmentalist Rachel Carson, to legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden–Diamond reveals how leadership effectiveness is determined by a range of complex interrelated factors. Understanding these successes and failures and the opportunities leaders did (or did not) seize illuminates the influence of today's leaders and helps us to reflect on the value of our votes, our faith, our passions, and the people who happen to steer our ship.

With the same remarkable scope of Diamond's classic bestsellers, Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings takes readers on a rich journey through the lives of humanity’s most well-known characters to reveal how time, place, and person can come together to change the course of history.

Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best by Angela Duckworth, published by Scribner

From the #1 bestselling author of Grit, a new book that reveals the hidden power of situations and how you can shape them to bring out your best.

In Angela Duckworth’s first book, she showed that a common denominator of successful strivers is a blend of passion and perseverance she dubbed “grit.” This second book springs from her deepening realization that grit, while necessary, is sometimes not sufficient. How you situate yourself to meet a challenge can be crucial.

Duckworth’s in-depth research reveals the enormous influence wielded by the objects within arm’s reach, your peers and mentors, and even your zip code. Though you’re often told to make the best of your situation, it is far, far better to make your situation better first.

In Situated, you’ll discover:

• Why your personality changes, sometimes dramatically, from one situation to another—and how you can harness that shift
  
• The secret to conquering temptation without willpower
  
• Why taking the less effortful path can feel like cheating but often solves a stubborn problem
  
• How the company you keep shapes the person you become
  
• The most effective ways to help others succeed

Highlighting four essential elements of successful situations, Duckworth shows how high performers like Taylor Swift, Michael Phelps, and Jerry Seinfeld create situations that make it easier to excel. And, with disarming honesty, she shares her own struggles with burnout and marriage—and how learning to change her situation, not herself, made all the difference. Whatever it is you want to achieve, there’s a situation that can make your journey easier.

It takes effort to make your situation your ally—but a little effort goes a long way...when you get situated.