📚 Summer Book Recommendations from Switchboard Leaders

10+ Top Reads for the Beach and Beyond

There’s something about summer and reading, perhaps it’s assigned school reading lists and library rewards programs. As a time to intentionally slow down, summer is a chance to dive into a good book by the pool, by your couch or perhaps at

Silent Book Club

(learn about their story).

I’m looking forward to finishing Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential. I reached out to leaders featured on The Switchboard to ask what’s on their reading list. The books range from fiction, new releases top the list, to non-fiction, including sports, communications, history, innovation, and more. I also included book recommendations from newsletter writers I admire. What’s on your reading list? Let us know below.

📚 Brooke Kruger

As I look at my boys’ summer reading lists from their schools, I love to make my own. I am looking forward to reading Real Americans by Rachel Khong, Very Bad Company by Emma Rosenblum and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. I am also excited to listen to Charles Duhigg's Supercommunicators.

📕 Michelle Lee

Up to Speed By Christine Yu. This book explores what it means to be a female athlete in a world that is informed by research that has primarily been focused on men. I’ve never been a hardcore athlete or really even a casual one, but my teenage daughter plays multiple sports, and I’ve been fascinated to understand the current state of women’s sports science and how that affects a woman’s ability to perform at her best.

📘 Ben Lang

The Genius of Israel by Saul Singer and Dan Senor

📗 Lorraine K. Lee

Think Faster, Talk Smarter by Matt Abrahams. Matt is my go-to expert for all things communications. He provides so many stories, frameworks, and examples in an easy digestible way. I'm lucky to call him a mentor.

📕 Adrian J. Hopkins

Erica Keswin’s Retention Revolution is definitely my handbook as I strategize employee experience plans for the second half of the year.

📖 Chase Warner

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. From the book jacket, “A brilliantly constructed study of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is a mesmerizing, unflinching consideration of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.”

📗 Katia Verresen

Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan

📘 Kursat Ozenc

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow is at the top of my summer reading list. It challenges the status quo regarding the Western perspective of history with the most recent findings in archeology and other disciplines. I also loved their insight into ritual play as one of the key vehicles of evolution and innovation.

From Newsletter Writers I Admire

📗

Molly Graham

, Lessons

How Big Things Get Done: I am currently obsessed with this book. It’s about the patterns that tend to make the biggest, most complex projects in the world successful (on time, under budget, etc) or unsuccessful (long, slow, 18x as expensive as forecast, etc). I’m bad at reading non-fiction but this book has me hooked because it’s so interesting!

📚

Adam Grant

,

Granted

Cultures of Growth by Mary Murphy. A psychologist examines how to build learning organizations, highlighting that it’s not enough to have growth mindsets in our heads—we need to embed it in the practices of our schools and workplaces.

The Year of Living Constitutionally by AJ Jacobs. A hilarious and illuminating adventure with a human guinea pig, who spent a year following the literal principles of the U.S. Constitution.

From the Archive

☎️ “Grace Banker and Her Hello Girls Answer the Call" | A Conversation with Author Claudia Friddell

⛵ Set Sail on a Summer of Learning

🧸 What Children's Literature Teaches us about Communications and Community

Happy Reading! Shout out to Jessica Kleiman for being a top referral for The Switchboard. Thank you for sharing. If you enjoyed what you read, consider forwarding an edition to a friend or posting on LinkedIn for a chance to be featured in a future newsletter.