May 28, 2024

Finding the right book at the right time can transform your life or your organization. We help you discover your next great read by showcasing four recently released titles each week.

The books are chosen by Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team: Dylan Schleicher, Gabbi Cisneros, and Jasmine Gonzalez. (Book descriptions are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted.)

This week, our choices are:

Sally’s pick: Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders: A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging by Eddie Pate and Jonathan Stutz, Berrett-Koehler Publishers 

Diversity and inclusion training and books have flooded the market, but the gap between what is promised and what is delivered is beginning to undermine the progress that has been made.

There are millions of people who strive to make a difference in workplace diversity and inclusion. And with this practical, leader-friendly framework, Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders will equip readers with the actionable tools they’ve been searching for.

Leaders will learn:

• Why they are the key to inclusion
• Insights for the lifelong journey
• Successful practices they can start today
• And more

With the era of big DEI coming to an end, leaders will make big strides through small daily changes in their processes that lead to creating an inclusive workplace culture. With this toolkit of actions, activities, and tactics leaders will become the foundation of diversity and inclusion in their organization.

Jasmine’s pick: Graciously Assertive: How Becoming a Better Human Makes You a Better Leader by Yasmin Davidds, Morehouse Publishing

Dr. Yasmin Davidds has spent most of her professional life empowering women leaders. In this new book, the award-winning entrepreneur, psychologist, speaker, and author continues her lifelong mission, offering helpful tools and strategies to people of all backgrounds who are looking to transform the way they communicate in the workplace. Breaking down what she refers to as a “Graciously Assertive” communication style, Dr. Davidds shares how being firm and direct—yet kind and respectful of the feelings and needs of others—enables professionals to flourish in their careers, as well as their personal lives.

An inspiring, compelling, and deeply informative guide designed by a businessperson for businesspeople, Graciously Assertive promises to help people everywhere learn how to hold a space for others and—in doing so—become more thoughtful and empathetic leaders.

Dylan’s pick: The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding by William Hogeland, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 

“Forgotten founder” no more, Alexander Hamilton has become a global celebrity. Millions know his name. Millions imagine knowing the man. But what did he really want for the country? What risks did he run in pursuing those vaulting ambitions? Who tried to stop him? How did they fight? It’s ironic that the Hamilton revival has obscured the man’s most dramatic battles and hardest-won achievements—as well as downplaying unsettling aspects of his legacy.

Thrilling to the romance of becoming the one-man inventor of a modern nation, our first Treasury secretary fostered growth by engineering an ingenious dynamo—banking, public debt, manufacturing—for concentrating national wealth in the hands of a government-connected elite. Seeking American prosperity, he built American oligarchy. Hence his animus and mutual sense of betrayal with Jefferson and Madison—and his career-long fight to suppress a rowdy egalitarian movement little remembered today: the eighteenth-century white working class.

Marshaling an idiosyncratic cast of insiders and outsiders, vividly dramatizing backroom intrigues and literal street fights—and sharply dissenting from recent biographies—William Hogeland’s The Hamilton Scheme brings to life Hamilton’s vision and the hard-knock struggles over democracy, wealth, and the meaning of America that drove the nation’s creation and hold enduring significance today.

Gabbi’s pick: In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic by Alexandra A. Chan, Flashpoint Books

A left-brained archaeologist and successful tiger daughter, Chan finds her logical approach to life utterly fails her in the face of this profound grief. Unable to find a way forward, she must either burn to ash or forge herself anew.

Slowly, painfully, wondrously, Chan discovers that her father and ancestors have left threads of renewal in the artifacts and stories of their lives. Through a long-lost interview conducted by Roosevelt’s Federal Writers’ Project, a basket of war letters written from the Burmese jungle, a box of photographs, her world travels, and a deepening relationship to her own art, the archaeologist and lifelong rationalist makes her greatest discovery to date: the healing power of enchantment.

In an epic story that travels from prerevolution China to the South under Jim Crow, from the Pacific theater of WWII to the black sands of Reynisfjara, Iceland, and beyond, Chan takes us on a universal journey to meaning in the wake of devastating loss, sharing the insights and tools that allowed her to rebuild her life and resurrect her spirit. Part memoir, part lyrical invitation to new ways of seeing and better ways of being in dark times, the book includes beautiful full-color original Chinese brush paintings by the author and fascinating vintage photographs of an unforgettable cast of characters. In the Garden Behind the Moon is a captivating family portrait and an urgent call to awaken to the magic and wonder of daily life.