Lockwood’s List: 10 Books to Read this Holiday Season

Like many other people, I often find myself rushing from place to place without much time to stop, reflect, and think. The Holidays provide a welcome respite. During those few days of downtime, I make a point of reading on a wide variety of disparate subjects to stay fresh and expand my thinking on diverse topics. If you have a few spare moments this holiday season, I highly recommend these 10 books to help you grow wherever you are at in your career.

1.     Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. Thomas Friedman.

The world is changing at a faster pace than at any point in human history, leading many people across the globe to feel anxious and off balance. Tom Friedman tackles the question of what it means to be a worker and citizen in this era of rapid advancement. Friedman begins by showing how three “great accelerations” in information technology, economic globalization, and climate change are reshaping the fabric of the world’s economy and social interactions, with profound consequences on the operations of families, governments, corporations, health care and other institutions. By taking the reader through a wealth of historical, scientific, economic, sociologic and narrative evidence, Friedman makes the compelling case that to thrive in the age of accelerations, every person must be a lifelong learner—that is, everyone should pursue opportunities to better themselves and develop new skill sets. Each of us should be lifelong learners, constantly seeking to expand our knowledge and further our career goals.   

2.     Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Angela Duckworth.

Have you ever wondered what separates the highest achievers from everyone else? Contrary to popular opinion, Angela Duckworth argues that the key to success is not a person’s level of talent, but their level of grit. Duckworth walks the reader through the latest social-scientific research on success and grit, using instructive anecdotes to illuminate the importance of passion, perseverance, and dogged determination. Duckworth finds that gritty people are exceptionally hardworking and resilient; they actively seek out demanding gritty environments and they know what they want in a deep way. This book is a great resource for any person looking to unlock their potential and learn what they can do to improve their individual and organizational grit. 

3.     The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others. Tali Sharot.

Each of us is an influencer—in our day to day life as parents, friends, citizens, employees or employers we influence and are influenced by hundreds of people. Yet many of us never consider whether our efforts to influence others is likely to be successful based on scientific principles. In this book, Dr. Sharot draws on her background as a cognitive neuroscientist to examine the nature and causes of influence. Employing clinical studies as well as memorable examples to illustrate her ideas, Sharot shows that successful efforts to influence result not from data, facts and figures, but from addressing the person as a social and emotional being. The fastest way to a person’s head is through their heart. By nature, we are more responsive to encouragement, imitation, and positive feedback than we are to empirical evidence or fear and criticism. Let us remember this truth in our everyday interactions with each other, our fellow employees, stakeholders, students, and patients. Each of us should take time to consciously consider the way we communicate so we can build stronger and more long-lasting relationships. 

4.     How Doctors Think. Jerome Groopman. 

As an organization committed to excellence in health education, research and clinical care, USF Health and its employees are ceaselessly confronted with tough challenges that demand strong cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills. In such an environment, the ability to quickly and accurately identify underlying problems and their remedies is absolutely crucial. Jerome Groopman takes a candid look at the unique way doctors think, analyzing their cognitive shortcuts and shortcomings when confronted with complex issues. He finds that while relying on intuition and experience is the most efficient way to think, it often leads doctors to neglect other possibilities. In addition to intuition and experience, Groopman recommends a person consider all available evidence, question their presumptions, listen intently to others, and learn from their mistakes. While this book is invaluable for anyone who wants to better understand the particular perspective of health professionals, it is also of considerable general use for each person in analyzing their own habits, routines, and thought-processes to maximize their efficiency and limit their cognitive errors. 

5.     The Undoing Project. A Friendship that Changed Our Mind. Michael Lewis.

Faulty judgement is a fundamental part of being human. We are quick to form impressions and categorize situations, and this in turn affects the way we make decisions. While we sometimes get it right, far too often our rationality fails us. Why? This is the question pursued by Michael Lewis in The Undoing Project, a book tracing the remarkable lives of two Israeli psychologists, Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky, on their journey to understand the human mind. Through their collaboration, they overturned generations of research on cognitive neuroscience, highlighting the evolutionarily honed, error-stricken, biased, and often illogical heuristics (cognitive short cuts) of human thinking and decision making. Although ostensibly about psychology and behavioral economics, Lewis’ book is never esoteric. He is a master storyteller, seamlessly recounting the fascinating lives of Kahneman and Tversky to demonstrate how their powerful partnership and unique friendship revolutionized the way we understand the mind. I highly recommend this book as both a way to appreciate the creation of scientific knowledge and as a practical guide to identifying where our reason fails us and how we can form better judgements.   

6.     Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind. Yuval Noah Harari.

Every so often, you come across a book that not only challenges your basic assumptions about the world, but entertains you while doing it. Yuval Harari’s Sapiens is one of those books. In only a few hundred pages, mixing anthropology, history, sociology and psychology, Harari takes the reader through the sweeping story of the human species, from our hunter-gatherer ancestors through the founding of civilizations and to the modern age of nationalism and global capitalism. The book is divided into four sections, each corresponding to a different innovation in the history of homo sapiens: first, the Cognitive Revolution, when humans first attained the ability to communicate through language and think in advanced ways; next, the Agricultural Revolution, when humans abandoned their hunter-gatherer ways and began harvesting grain and domesticating animals, which in turn led to surplus, inequality, and the founding of cities; third, the unification of the world into one interconnected cultural world-zone; and finally the Scientific Revolution, characterized by the advancement of science, industry, global capitalism and the rise of the nation state. Throughout this journey, the reader is treated to an erudite, lively, and witty take on what it means to be human in our modern world. While I do not expect you to agree with everything Harari has to say, he will cause you to pause and think in an entirely new way.

7.     Homo Deus. A Brief History of Tomorrow. Yuval Noah Harari.

In Homo Deus, Harari switches his subject from past to future, assessing what lies ahead for humankind and its institutions. The central question underlying the book is the tension between consciousness, which is solely human, and intelligence, which is common to both humans and advanced computers. Building upon the themes of evolution, scientific rationality and big-data, Harari contends that Homo sapiens are on the verge of transforming into a different species entirely, one with god-like abilities, such as immortality, immediate skill acquisition, and enhanced data-processing—all made possible by artificial intelligence and advanced statistical algorithms. While there is some cause for excitement, there is perhaps greater cause for concern. Harari envisions a H.G. Wells-like dystopian future with a class of super-human elites ruling a large and pervasive “useless class.” Harari acknowledges that this is not an inevitable future, but it is a possible one if citizens across the world do not unite to articulate a common ethical paradigm for embracing technology. Harari forces the reader to consider the dark under-belly of modernity and technological enhancement. That alone makes it worth the read.

8.     21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Yuval Noah Harari.

After tackling the past in Sapiens and the future in Homo Deus, in his third book Harari discusses today’s most urgent issues. The book is divided into six parts. The first describes the challenges presented by technology, including the threats posed to jobs, liberty, and equality; the second discusses the concomitant political challenges of community and globalization; he then covers the big news topics of our age such as terrorism, war, justice and truth in sections three and four, before closing with comments on education, meaning and meditation. While much of this work is a conglomeration of news articles, op-eds, and other interviews, the book is packed with insightful comments and astute observations that will challenge the reader to reconsider his or her impression of reality. In particular, his discussion of the future of jobs, technology, and big data merit close consideration, as does his call for the development of a firm ethical framework to face these issues head on. I highly recommended 21 Lessons for anyone confused by our bewildering age, as it will equip you with sufficient perspective to position yourself for success in an uncertain future.

9.     The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West. David McCullough.

David McCullough, for good reason, has become among America’s most revered popular historians, and his newest project reaffirms that position. The author of towering biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman now tackles the unique story of a small group of highly literate and very resourceful New Englanders who settled Ohio and the Northwest territory between 1790 and 1840. (Full disclosure – my Lockwood ancestors settled in Ohio in 1808 from Connecticut).  His description of their efforts to establish the first city, Marietta, in the Northwest Territory is poignant and inspiring.  As the local population quickly grew, drawn by fertile soil, ample timber and navigable rivers, these pioneers spread out and quickly introduced universal primary and secondary education, founded colleges, churches, hospitals, and libraries, as well as an efficient democratic government which quickly abolished slavery.  What I found most captivating was their immense tenacity—their resilience in the face of incredible adversity such as epidemics, famine, floods, droughts, and harsh winter weather.  They were not without their flaws, including savage wars against Ohio’s indigenous people, but the reader cannot help but be impressed by their ingenuity and resolve, as well as the extraordinary elegance and sophistication of their writing captured in journals, letters and literary offerings. The stories of the pioneer physicians are particularly fascinating.  In this age of coarseness, superficiality and instant gratification, there is something to be learned from their fierce commitment to civilized values, hard work, education, and scientific study as well as their willingness to sacrifice to build a better tomorrow. 

10.  Churchill: Walking with Destiny. Andrew Roberts

There are few men who have influenced our modern world more than Winston Churchill. And while there are countless books chronicling his life, including many volumes Churchill himself wrote, Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts is rightfully being hailed as one of the best one-volume biographies of this enigmatic, complex and brilliant man. In an authoritative and accessible voice, Roberts lays bare Churchill in all his prescience and pomposity, eloquence and excess.  Beginning with his tortured but privileged childhood, education and military training through his adventuresome though courageous (and lucky) military service, to his multiple successes and failures as a statesman, his extraordinary mastery of the written and spoken English language, all culminating in his singular defiance of Nazi Germany which ultimately saved Western Civilization. While Roberts is a sympathetic biographer, he is not uncritical, and the reader is brought face to face with Churchill the man in both his moments of brilliance and his staggering lapses in judgement. He is at once seen as annoying and magnetic, pragmatic and reckless, an altruistic social reformer and a chauvinistic imperialist. Through it all, we learn how a person with so many flaws could, though grit, tenacity, courage and a voracious reading of history, become a master of the English language, a symbol of resistance to tyranny and a man of destiny.