Our career advisors have put together a list of book and podcast recommendations.
Books
*Descriptions by goodreads.com
All The Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers?
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Patrick Lencioni
Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech’s CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray, that it threatens to bring down the entire company.
We Can All Do Better
Bill Bradley
In We Can All Do Better, for the first time since the financial meltdown and since the worst of the intensifying political gridlock, Bradley offers his own concise, powerful, and highly personal review of the state of the nation.
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”–the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells taken without her knowledge became one of the most important tools in medicine.
Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Whether we’re 20, 40, 60 or older, many of us are still looking for an answer to that perennial question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ In Designing Your Life, Silicon Valley design innovators Bill Burnett and Dave Evans use their expertise to help you work out what you want – and how to get it.
The Healthcare Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the US Health Care System
Elisabeth Askin, M.D., and Nathan Moore, M.D.
The Handbook is the one-stop guide to the people, organizations and industries that make up the U.S. health care system and major issues the system faces today.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Anne Fadiman
Lia Lee was born in 1982 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, over-medication, and culture clash: “What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance.”
Being Mortal
Atul Gawande
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
A profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question ‘What makes a life worth living?’
The Emperor of All Maladies
Siddhartha Mukherjee
A magnificent, profoundly humane biography of cancer – from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.
My Own Country
Abraham Verghese
Nestled in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, the town of Johnson City had always seemed exempt from the anxieties of modern American life. But when the local hospital treated its first AIDS patient, a crisis that had once seemed an urban problem had arrived in the town to stay.
Teeth: Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America
Mary Otto
Show me your teeth, the great naturalist Georges Cuvier is credited with saying, and I will tell you who you are. In this shattering new work, veteran health journalist Mary Otto looks inside Americas mouth, revealing unsettling truths about our unequal society.
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States
Seth Holmes, M.D., Ph.D.
This book provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants in our contemporary food system. An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Greg McKeown
Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin? Do you simultaneously feel overworked and underutilized? Are you often busy but not productive? Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas? If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the Essentialist.
Podcasts
NPR’s Life Kit
This podcast covers a wide variety of topics for young (and not so young) adults with advice on life, or as they say, “tools to help you get it together.” Most episodes are 15-20 minutes. Recent career-related episodes worth a listen include:
- Advice for Dealing with Uncertainty
- How to Harness the Power of Emotions in the Workplace
- College Students: How to Make Office Hours Less Scary
- How to Find a Mentor and Make it Work
- Want to Quit Your Job? Here’s How to Do it Well
NPR’s Planet Money
For business majors and non-business majors, this podcast covers topics about economics and business in an informative, easy to understand, and short (usually 15 minute) format.
