Values: Building a Better World for All
Mark Carney

McClelland & Stewart
March 2021, $39.95

Our world is full of fault lines—growing inequality in income and opportunity, systemic racism, health and economic crises from a global pandemic, mistrust of experts, the existential threat of climate change, and deep threats to employment in a digital economy with robotics on the rise. These fundamental problems and others like them, argues economist and former bank governor Mark Carney, stem from a common crisis in values. Drawing on the turmoil of the past decade, Carney shows how market economies have evolved into market societies where price determines the value of everything.

When we think about what we, as individuals, value most highly, we might list fairness, health, the protection of our rights, economic security from poverty, the preservation of natural diversity, resources, and beauty. The tragedy is, these things that we hold dearest are too often the casualties of our 21st-century world, where they ought to be our bedrock.

In this profoundly important new book, Mark Carney offers a vision of a more humane society and a practical manifesto for getting there. How we reform our infrastructure to make things better and fairer is at the heart of every chapter, with outlines of wholly new ideas that can restructure society and enshrine our human values at the core of all that we build for our children and grandchildren.

Values is a bold and urgent argument by Carney on the radical, foundational change that is required if we are to build an economy and society based not on market values but on human values.

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
Kevin Roose

Random House
March 2021, $36.00

The machines are here. After decades of sci-fi fantasies and hype, artificial intelligence has leapt out of research labs and Silicon Valley engineering departments and into the centre of our lives. Algorithms shape everything around us, from the news we see to the products we buy and the relationships we form. And while the debate over whether automation will destroy jobs rages on, a much more important question is being ignored: What does it mean to be a human in a world that is increasingly built by and for machines?

In Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose lays out a hopeful, pragmatic vision of how people can succeed in the machine age by making themselves irreplaceably human. He shares the secrets of people and organizations that have survived technological change, and explains how we can protect our own futures, with lessons like:

– Do work that is surprising, social, and scarce (the types of work machines can’t do)

– Demote your phone

– Work near other people

– Treat AI like an army of chimpanzees

– Add more friction to your life

Roose rejects the conventional wisdom that, to compete with machines, we must become more like them—hyper-efficient, data-driven, code-writing workhorses. Instead, he says, we should let machines be machines, and focus on doing the kinds of creative, inspiring, and meaningful things only humans can do.

Toxic: A Guide to Rebuilding Respect and Tolerance in a Hostile Workplace
Clive Lewis

Bloomsbury Business
April 2021, $39.99

The workplace has become a hotbed of social toxicity—from the #MeToo movement to WeWork, it’s clear that abusive bosses and entrenched cultures of discrimination have become more prevalent than ever. Such behaviour is not only simply wrong and damaging to its victims—it also results in reduced productivity and higher employee turnover, and can often leave a stain upon the wider reputation of an organization.

In Toxic, Clive Lewis draws upon his decades of experience in HR and mediation to distil the problems and underlying causes of toxic workplaces before tackling the issue head on. He draws upon first-hand case studies from an eclectic array of workplaces (from corporate offices to hospitals) to demonstrate how toxicity can be both prevented and resolved. This is a practical guide for business leaders and HR professionals looking to preserve a peaceful workplace, while also providing tips for employees looking to remain productive and focused when working with troublesome colleagues in difficult environments.

Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World

Dan Davies

Scribner
March 2021, $37.00

The way most white-collar crime works is by manipulating institutional psychology. That means creating something that looks as much as possible like a normal set of transactions. The drama comes later, when it all unwinds.

Financial crime seems horribly complicated, but there are only so many ways you can con someone out of what’s theirs. In Lying for Money, veteran regulatory economist and market analyst Dan Davies tells the story of fraud through a genealogy of financial malfeasance, including the Great Salad Oil Swindle, the Pigeon King International fraud, the fictional British colony of Poyais in South America, the Boston Ladies’ Deposit Company, the Portuguese Banknote Affair, Theranos, and the Bre-X scam. Davies brings new insights into these schemes and shows how all frauds, current and historical, belong to one of four categories (“long firm,” counterfeiting, control fraud, and market crimes) and operate on the same basic principles. The only elements that change are the victims, the scammers, and the terminology.

Davies has years of experience picking the bones out of some of the most famous frauds of the modern age. Now he reveals the big picture that emerges from their labyrinths of deceit and explains how fraud has shaped the entire development of the modern world economy.

Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work

Colleen Ammerman, Boris Groysberg

Harvard Business Review Press
April 2021, $38.95

Women have made up roughly half of the college-educated workforce for years, and before the onset of the economic crisis of 2020, the gap between the percentage of women and the percentage of men in the labour force was the lowest on record. But women remain underrepresented in positions of power and status. The gender pay gap, for example, shows little movement, largely because high-paying jobs are the most gender-imbalanced. Even in areas where there are roughly equal numbers of men and women, or where women make up the majority, leadership ranks remain male-dominated.

The endurance of these inequalities begs the question: Why haven’t we made more progress? A 2020 analysis by a team of sociologists affirms that progress, as measured by rates of women’s employment, earnings, and the types of fields and jobs they work in, has either stalled completely or slowed.

With 50 years of sweeping reforms in educational and corporate policy, it’s tempting to think that any remaining gender imbalances reflect differences in individual merit or behaviour, not organizational barriers. Much of the popular media supports this idea, with countless books and articles offering advice on what women should do to overcome challenges: lean in, speak up, do power poses, stop apologizing, and delegate more.

Ammerman and Groysberg focus instead on the pervasive organizational obstacles and managerial actions that create gender imbalance. Bringing to light the key findings from the latest research in psychology, sociology, and economics, Glass Half-Broken shows that along their entire career path—from entry- to mid- to senior-level positions—women get pushed out of the leadership pipeline and, at each point, for different reasons. Presenting institutional and managerial strategies designed to overcome and mitigate these barriers at each step in the career path, Glass Half-Broken is the authoritative resource that managers and leaders at all levels can use to finally shatter the glass ceiling.

Changemaker Playbook: The New Physics of Leadership in a World of Explosive Change
Henry F. De Sio, Jr.

Mobius/Nicholas Brealey Publishing
March 2021, $29.95

What would you do if the game for which you had prepared your whole life had changed?

This is the question we all face today. The world is amid a historic, dramatic shift. Our one-leader-at-a-time past based on a few people telling everyone else to execute their repetitive skill harmoniously, faster and faster, has given way to a present reality where everyone has the potential to lead in every aspect of life. Henry F. De Sio, Jr. calls this the changemaker effect, and it is the dominant driver of the explosive change we are all experiencing in our lives right now.

Our iEverything world requires a new playbook.

Everyone must be equipped to play in the new game. We all must figure out how to keep pace with and organize ourselves considering this revolutionary new transformation—from how we run our businesses, to how we manage our careers, to how we fulfill our civic responsibilities, to how we prepare our kids to flourish.

Based on De Sio’s discoveries about leading in change from front-edge innovators—business and social entrepreneurs, educators, media thought leaders, and youth changemakers—readers can apply the principles in this book to the new everyone’s-a-changemaker world.

Spite: The Upside of Your Dark Side

Simon McCarthy-Jones

Basic Books
April 2021, $35.00

Have you ever purposely slowed down while driving to punish the person tailgating you? Maybe it inconvenienced you, but didn’t it feel good? This is spite: hurting ourselves so that we can hurt someone else. Spite seems perfectly needless, evolutionarily speaking. Scientists have long struggled to understand why it exists at all. Unlike co-operation, selfishness, or altruism, spite is a zero-sum game. When Warren Buffet invested in a failing textile company, the owners attempted to squeeze him for more money. He vindictively bought the whole outfit, fired upper management, and kept the mills running for years, during which time they continued to hemorrhage money. It ultimately cost Buffett $200 billion to make his point.

The conventional way to understand spite like this is as a lapse of our better judgement. That conventional thinking is wrong. In Spite, neuropsychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones argues that spite is our primal impulse for fairness. Prioritizing the punishment of bad behaviour over our own immediate self-interests is a fundamental way that we, and all animals, promote good behaviour. Spite is nothing less than one of the natural seeds of morality. From the protest voters who swing elections, to the man who erected a giant sculpture of a middle finger next to the house he lost in his divorce, Spite offers an insightful and often delicious trip through how spite shapes our lives. When we think about what makes us human, we often look for things that make us seem noble: co-operation, foresight, creativity. But the evidence is clear: spite works. It is our innate drive for progress, the feeling that things can and ought to be different than they are.

Spite is a provocative exploration of how the origins of a good society lie in our most basic reflexes, even the ones we’re not particularly proud of.

Demanding More: Why Diversity and Inclusion Don’t Happen and What You Can Do About It
Sheree Atcheson

Kogan Page
April 2021, $26.99

Look around you. Is your workplace as diverse and accepting as it should be? From accusations of racism in high political office and award-winning actors admitting the sets they work on aren’t inclusive, to everyday occurrences of sexism, agism, racism, and more, we are far from where we need to be.

Moving beyond HR speak, this book clearly explains what diversity and inclusion are and what it means in the everyday experience of millions of people, both at work and in life. Sheree Atcheson, currently global head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Peakon, and formerly at Monzo, draws on her experience as a young woman of colour in an overly white male tech environment.

In Demanding More, she calls out the lack of awareness around privilege and unchecked and unconscious biases, and details what intersectionality does to feelings of discrimination and disadvantage.

Arguing that the best strategy for us all to adopt is allyship, where we all take ownership of the issues and stand up to bias or discrimination, this book will give us all tools and strategies for action every day, making us accountable to delivering change around us.

Seven Deadly Economic Sins: Obstacles to Prosperity and Happiness Every Citizen Should Know
James R. Otteson

Cambridge University Press
April 2021, $31.95

You have heard of the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Each is a natural human weakness that impedes happiness. In addition to these vices, however, there are economic sins. And they, too, wreak havoc on our lives and in society. They can seem intuitively compelling, yet they lead to waste, loss, and forgone prosperity. In this thoughtful and compelling book, James Otteson tells the story of seven central economic fallacies, explaining why they are fallacies, why believing in them leads to mistakes and loss, and how exorcizing them from our thinking can help us avoid costly errors and enable us to live in peace and prosperity.

Seven Deadly Economic Sins provides a comprehensive introduction, in non-specialist language, to the basic principles of economics, relates economics to our abiding moral concerns, and explores where wealth comes from and how genuine prosperity can be enabled.

Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up
Sara Horowitz

Random House
February 2021, $37.00

In Mutualism, labour lawyer, former chair of the board of the New York Federal Reserve, and MacArthur “genius” Sara Horowitz brings us a solution to the current crisis of work that’s rooted in the best of American traditions, which she calls mutualism. Horowitz shows how the future of our economic safety net rests on this approach, and demonstrates how mutualist organizations have helped us solve common problems in the past and are now quietly driving rural and urban economies alike all over the world, inspired not by for-profit corporations but by labour unions and trade associations, religious organizations and mutual aid societies, and vital social movements from women’s suffrage to civil rights.

Mutualism is for anyone who feels that the system is not working for them and is looking for a new way to build collaboratively, create the new American social contract, and prosper in the 21st century.