10+ Book Recommendations by Alexia Bonatsos
The Denial of Death
Ernest Becker
Drawing from religion and the human sciences, particularly psychology after Freud, the author attempts to demonstrate that the fear of death is man's central concern@pmarca All four cases are a "denial of death," ancestor worship and identitarianism are micro, and nature and environmentalism are macro. https://t.co/MBw4DFervb
Backable
Suneel Gupta
A groundbreaking book that boldly claims the key to success in business is not talent, connections, or ideas, but the ability to persuade people to take a chance on potential. No one ever makes it alone. But how come some people can get investors to believe in their ideas while others-sometimes with even better ideas-fall flat? What is it about certain people that make us want to take a bet on them? What is it that makes them backable? As it turns out, it's not what you think. Backability is not driven by having the best experience, the finest pedigree, or the most innovative ideas. In fact, many highly successful people are backed long before they are qualified. We tend to view these people as lucky. But the decision to back them is neither an accident nor a mistake, and rarely the result of good luck. Drawing from his own business experience, countless interviews with some of tech's biggest innovators, and compelling case studies of classic success stories like Howard Schultz and Elon Musk, Gupta breaks down the six qualities of backable people that get others to take a bet on them. Backable pulls back the curtain on the illusive x factor that some people just seem to have and instead offers concrete tools like crafting the right pitch and appropriately scaling a project's vision. Anyone from aspiring entrepreneurs to start up stars can master these skills and jumpstart their next big idea.For my birthday, please check out my friend @suneel's book 'Backable,' about what makes people take a risk on you https://t.co/ndZBz9y2xx A lot of people have given me a chance over the years, and I'm grateful for every single one of them.
A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn
In this Second Edition of this radical social history of America from Columbus to the present, Howard Zinn includes substantial coverage of the Carter, Reagan and Bush years and an Afterword on the Clinton presidency. Its commitment and vigorous style mean it will be compelling reading for under-graduate and post-graduate students and scholars in American social history and American studies, as well as the general reader.In honor of Indigenous People’s Day, a good book to put on your reading list https://t.co/ceKOB0v8mX
Severance
Ling Ma
https://t.co/qDdkUrIbX9 https://t.co/TY5cGHHzx1
It's About Damn Time
Arlan Hamilton
Stacy Abrams did the blurb for @arlanwashere's book: “A hero's tale of what’s possible when we unlock our potential, continue the search for knowledge, and draw on our lived experiences to guide us through the darkest moments.” https://t.co/hKfbCm4jrn https://t.co/prhE0GbXii
No Filter
Sarah Frier
Award-winning reporter Sarah Frier reveals an inside, never-before-told, behind-the-scenes look at how Instagram defied the odds to become one of the most culturally defining apps of the decade. Since its creation in 2010, Instagram’s fun and simple interface has captured our collective imagination, swiftly becoming a way of life. In No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, technology reporter Sarah Frier explains how Instagram’s founders married art and technology to overcome skeptics and to hook the public on visual storytelling. At first, Instagram initially attracted artisans, but then the platform exploded in popularity among the masses, creating an entire industry of digital influencers that’s now worth tens of billions of dollars. Eighteen months after Instagram’s launch and explosive growth, the founders—Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger—made the gut-wrenching decision to sell the company to Facebook. For most companies, that would be the end of the story; but for Instagram, it was only the beginning. Instagram borrowed some lessons from Facebook and rejected others, until eventually its success stirred tension with Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, just as Facebook became embroiled in a string of public crises. Frier unearths the details that led to the cofounders’ departure, bringing to light dramatic moments unknown to the public until now. At its heart, No Filter draws on unprecedented exclusive access—from the founders of Instagram, as well as employees, executives, and competitors; hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio; Anna Wintour of Vogue; Kris Jenner of the Kardashian-Jenner empire; and a plethora of influencers, from fashionistas with millions of followers to owners of famous dogs worldwide—to show how Instagram has fundamentally changed the way we communicate, shop, eat, and travel. The book brings readers inside users’ strategies to craft their personal image and fame, explaining how the company’s product decisions have affected the structure of our society. From teenagers to the pope, No Filter tells the captivating story of how Instagram not only created a new industry but also changed our lives.Talking with @sarahfrier about her excellent Instagram book ‘No Filter’ at 11am PT. Sign up to watch here https://t.co/Y1P1ubFBXP And buy the book here https://t.co/4b3aJ7dQdT
It's About Damn Time
Arlan Hamilton
"A hero's tale of what's possible when we unlock our potential, continue the search for knowledge, and draw on our lived experiences to guide us through the darkest moments."--Stacey Abrams From a black, gay woman who broke into the boys' club of Silicon Valley comes an empowering guide to finding your voice, working your way into any room you want to be in, and achieving your own dreams. In 2015, Arlan Hamilton was on food stamps and sleeping on the floor of the San Francisco airport, with nothing but an old laptop and a dream of breaking into the venture capital business. She couldn't understand why people starting companies all looked the same (white and male), and she wanted the chance to invest in the ideas and people who didn't conform to this image of how a founder is supposed to look. Hamilton had no contacts or network in Silicon Valley, no background in finance--not even a college degree. What she did have was fierce determination and the will to succeed. As much as we wish it weren't so, we still live in a world where being underrepresented often means being underestimated. But as someone who makes her living investing in high-potential founders who also happen to be female, LGBTQ, or people of color, Hamilton understands that being undervalued simply means that a big upside exists. Because even if you have to work twice as hard to get to the starting line, she says, once you are on a level playing field, you will sprint ahead. Despite what society would have you believe, Hamilton argues, a privileged background, an influential network, and a fancy college degree are not prerequisites for success. Here she shares the hard-won wisdom she's picked up on her remarkable journey from food-stamp recipient to venture capitalist, with lessons like "The Best Music Comes from the Worst Breakups," "Let Someone Shorter Stand in Front of You," "The Dangers of Hustle Porn," and "Don't Let Anyone Drink Your Diet Coke." Along the way, she inspires us all to defy other people's expectations and to become the role models we've been looking for.Two books I’m buying this weekend: @sarahfrier’s ‘No Filter’ https://t.co/4b3aJ7dQdT (virtually interviewing her this Tuesday) and @ArlanWasHere’s preorder ‘It’s About Damn Time’ https://t.co/YgKFNC7JlH
Big Friendship
Aminatou Sow
A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul. Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate conversations. In this book, they bring that energy to their own friendship—its joys and its pitfalls. Aminatou and Ann define Big Friendship as a strong, significant bond that transcends life phases, geographical locations, and emotional shifts. And they should know: the two have had moments of charmed bliss and deep frustration, of profound connection and gut-wrenching alienation. They have weathered life-threatening health scares, getting fired from their dream jobs, and one unfortunate Thanksgiving dinner eaten in a car in a parking lot in Rancho Cucamonga. Through interviews with friends and experts, they have come to understand that their struggles are not unique. And that the most important part of a Big Friendship is making the decision to invest in one another again and again. An inspiring and entertaining testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship, Big Friendship will invite you to think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved. It is a call to value your friendships in all of their complexity. Actively choose them. And, sometimes, fight for them.Preorder this book now, and get it when we have to learn friendship over again post-quarantine @aminatou https://t.co/1ZFlEhXgzL https://t.co/Y8lDbst7fy
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Emil Frankl
Viennese psychiatrist tells his grim experiences in a German concentration camp which led him to logotherapy, an existential method of psychiatry.@paulg @rivatez Man’s Search For Meaning
Trick Mirror
Jia Tolentino
A breakout writer at The New Yorker examines the fractures at the center of contemporary culture with verve, deftness, and intellectual ferocity--for readers who've wondered what Susan Sontag would have been like if she had brain damage from the internet. "A whip-smart, challenging book."--Zadie Smith Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine's journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino's sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet. Advance praise for Trick Mirror "Jia Tolentino is the best young essayist at work in the United States, one I've consistently admired and learned from, and I was exhilarated to get a whole lot of her at once in Trick Mirror. In these nine essays, she rethinks troubling ingredients of modern life, from the internet to mind-altering drugs to wedding culture. All through the book, single sentences flash like lightning to show something familiar in a startling way, but she also builds extended arguments with her usual, unusual blend of lyricism and skepticism. In the end, we have a picture of America that was as missing as it was needed."--Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to MeTrick Mirror is one of those books that is so good you are jealous you didn’t write it. @jiatolentino https://t.co/ETZesyqSWG
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE/JOHN LEONARD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST BOOK THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'This is the novel of the summer . . . There is no one that this book isn't for. I can't believe it's a first novel. Pure brilliance' INDIA KNIGHT, THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Could be one of the books of my entire lifetime. I've never felt so seen' GRACE DENT, GUARDIAN 'Sharp and wicked, insightful and funny, and then suddenly so touching' DAVID NICHOLLS 'This book is a work of utter perfection' ELIZABETH GILBERT Finally free from his nightmare marriage, Toby Fleishman is ready for a life of online dating and weekend-only parental duties. But as he optimistically looks to a future that is wildly different from the one he imagined, his life turns upside-down as his ex-wife, Rachel, suddenly disappears. While Toby tries to find out what happened - juggling work, kids and his new, app-assisted sexual popularity - his tidy narrative of a spurned husband is his sole consolation. But if he ever wants to really understand where Rachel went and what really happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen it all that clearly in the first place . . . A BLISTERING SATIRICAL NOVEL ABOUT MARRIAGE, DIVORCE AND MODERN RELATIONSHIPS, BY ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING NEW VOICES IN AMERICAN FICTION 'So sharp' GUARDIAN 'The most astonishingly brilliant Trojan horse of a novel' DOLLY ALDERTON 'Wonderful. Utterly blistering . . . A wildly entertaining, moving story' MARIAN KEYES 'Brimming with wisdom and utterly of this moment . . . Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut is that rare and delicious treat: a page turner with heft' MARIA SEMPLE 'It is a Great Novel . . . It has depth, wit, nuance and life. Heartbreaking and funny' NIGELLA LAWSONHey SF Wing members and friends! @taffyakner is speaking at the SF Wing today at 6:30pm in case you are also reading her wonderful book ‘Fleishman Is In Trouble’ and want to be around her genius.
The Art of Dressing
Tziporah Salamon
A style guide for women over 50 years of age, in the vein of Advanced Style. The Art of Dressing by style icon Tziporah Salamon includes in-depth profiles of a range of stylish older women band combines inspiration with how-to instruction on how to put together beautiful stylish outfits according to every woman's individual style.@AriannaSimpson https://t.co/DwezzfW0aQ