Wharton@Work

December 2024 | 

Faculty-Recommended Reads for Business and Beyond

Faculty-Recommended Reads for Business and Beyond

Our annual list of faculty reading picks is once again filled with insights, inspiration, and invaluable guidance for business leaders, thinkers, and changemakers. This year's diverse selections range from groundbreaking research in innovation to fiction that takes the reader to new destinations, from personal narrative to essential reads on leadership and culture. In a first for this list, one faculty book was recommended three times. Dive in and discover works that will not only expand your perspective but also empower you in your professional journey.

Zeke Hernandez, author of The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), suggests a title he considers a classic: Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, by Ed Catmull (Random House, 2023). “I'm not usually a fan of pop management books, but this one is an outstanding exception,” he says. “An engineer who became a manager explains how to develop and sustain a creative culture.”

Hernandez, who is one of the most highly rated professors at Wharton and who teaches in Effective Execution of Organizational Strategy and a number of other programs, also recommends The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America by Daniel Okrent (Scribner, 2019). Hernandez describes it as “a history of how we came to accept the pseudo-science of eugenics to justify the xenophobic exclusion of Southern and Eastern European immigrants. Anyone paying attention to our current moment will see the relevance.”

Matthew Bidwell, who heads the Leading Today’s Talent: Management Strategies for an Evolving Workforce program, recommends Zeke Hernandez’s book on immigration. He says the book is not just “persuasive, thoughtful, and very well-written, but it’s having an important impact on a crucial debate.”

Bidwell also includes a couple of fiction picks: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, 2022) and The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse (Harry N. Abrams, 2000; originally published in 1938). He says the former, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is “a compelling, moving read, retelling David Copperfield in the midst of the Appalachian opioid crisis.” In the latter, “every sentence is perfection,” including the following exchange:
“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'"
"The mood will pass, sir.”

In addition to Hernandez’s book, which Mauro Guillén calls “a great book on the many benefits that (orderly) immigration brings to the host society, offering countervailing arguments that help put anti-immigration arguments in perspective,” he recommends his own The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society (St. Martin’s Press, 2023), which is a guide to “assessing if your organization is ready to take advantage of generations learning, working, and playing together.” Guillén also suggests Wharton finance professor Emilie Feldman’s Divestitures: Creating Value Through Strategy, Structure, and Implementation (McGraw-Hill, 2022), saying readers will “learn how to create value not only when investing but also when purposefully and strategically divesting assets.”

Management professor Raffi Amit founded and leads the Wharton Global Family Alliance (WGFA), which was established to enhance the marketplace advantage and the social wealth-creation contributions of enterprising families. Amit is co-academic director of two new programs: Family Wealth Management: Advanced Financial Strategies and Wharton Family Office Program: Balancing Family Harmony and Financial Prosperity. He recommends Family Wealth — Keeping It in the Family: How Family Members and Their Advisers Preserve Human, Intellectual, and Financial Assets for Generations, by James E. Hughes Jr. (Bloomberg Press, 2004), calling it “a classic and important read in family wealth.”

He also suggests Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies, by Ranjay Gulati (Harper Business, 2022). Based on extensive research, the book shows how companies can embed purpose to benefit every stakeholder, including customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities. Gulati argues that for leaders to get purpose right, they must fundamentally change not only how they execute it but also how they conceive of and relate to it.

For marketing professor Pete Fader, a recent blog post by Wharton Associate Professor of Financial Regulation and Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics Peter Conti-Brown “continues to have more lasting impact than any book I’ve read in the last year or two.” Conti-Brown’s personal narrative about finding and creating a chosen family may be found here: https://petercontibrown.substack.com/p/finding-addie.

Peter Conti-Brown, who teaches in the Advanced Corporate Finance program, is the third professor to recommend The Truth About Immigration, noting, “There are few moments in American history where immigration has been absent from the public discourse; today, of course, it is front and center. Zeke’s book provides in crisp prose and with rich documentation some key facts and context about the value proposition of our status as a country of immigrants.”

He also suggests A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland, by Troy Senik (Threshold Editions, 2023). “Cleveland is most famous perhaps as the only president — until 2024! — to serve nonconsecutive terms,” says Conti-Brown. “But his political philosophy of incorruptible public trust, his approach to tariffs and immigration, and his views on the relationship between politics and the media make for a surprisingly contemporaneous read.”

Drew Carton, who studies how leaders manage conflict and empower their employees by establishing a common purpose, recommends The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker (Penguin Books, 2012). Carton explains, “Pinker spotlights reams of data in an effort to explain why violence has declined throughout human history (although you would never know it by watching the news). It’s a beautifully written and optimistic take on our species. I find it to be a ray of hope in an era when the news media focuses almost entirely on problems rather than solutions. Although there is certainly plenty that is wrong with the world, I think it’s helpful to get an evidence-based take on what we’ve been doing well so we can do more of it. For data-driven people who are searching for reasons to be hopeful, this book provides a nice opportunity to feel better about the world without veering far from the science.”

Kartik Hosanagar, who co-directs the Generative AI and Business Transformation program, says, “AI has fast gone from something that computer scientists focus on to something that business executives, policymakers, and the civil society need to think about. In my book A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence (Penguin Books, 2020), I break down the inner workings of AI systems in an intuitive manner and explain the opportunities as well as the challenges with AI and governance approaches to manage those risks.”

Hosanagar also recommends Sal Khan’s Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing) (Viking, 2024). “AI has the potential to fundamentally reimagine education. While it poses some thorny questions such as the role of student essays and homework in an AI world, it also presents great opportunities, including personalized tutors to improve learning outcomes or to increase the reach of educational content to people who have historically not had access to high-quality, low-cost education. Sal Khan paints a wonderful picture about the exciting possibilities.”