Knowledge is power

150 (Anni di) Invenzioni Italiane

Vittorio Marchis

The history of Italy through the patents filed by our fellow citizens: an original choice from which emerges the portrait of a vital, industrious and ingenious nation, the picture that no history textbook will ever be able to restore. 

^{Picked by Enrico D.}

21 Lessons from the 21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari 

Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus looked to the future. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century explores the present.

How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children?

^{Picked by Salma M.}

A Lei da Bala, do Boi e da Biblia

Adriane Sanctis de Brito, Luciana Silva Reis, Ana Silva Rosa

In the midst of an international scenario of democratic erosion, four researchers from the Centre for the Analysis of Freedom and Authoritarianism (LAUT) set out to investigate how the legal discourse of conservative and reactionary groups in Brazil has been constructed in recent decades.

^{Picked by Fabio A.}

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.

^{Picked by Ingrid M.}

A More Beautiful Question

Warren Berger

In his groundbreaking A More Beautiful Question, now updated throughout, innovation expert Warren Berger proves that one of the most powerful tools for spurring change is also the most under-appreciated. Questioning-deeply, imaginatively, “beautifully”-can help us identify and solve problems, come up with ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. But in an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers, questioning isn't encouraged-and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.

^{Picked by Gavin C.}

A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning

Lemony Snicket

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent children. They are charming, and resourceful, and have pleasant facial features. Unfortunately, they are exceptionally unlucky.

In what is agreed upon by all to be a very bad beginning to the rest of their lives, these three youngsters not only learn that their parents have died and that they've become orphans overnight, but also that a one Count Olaf will be their caretaker.

^{Picked by Daniela V.}

Advanced Microeconomic Theory

Felix Muñoz-Garcia

An introduction to advanced topics in microeconomics that emphasizes the intuition behind assumptions and results, providing examples that show how to apply theory to practice.
This textbook offers an introduction to advanced microeconomic theory that emphasizes the intuition behind mathematical assumptions, providing step-by-step examples that show how to apply theoretical models. It covers standard topics such as preference relations, demand theory and applications, producer theory, choice under uncertainty, partial and general equilibrium, monopoly, game theory and imperfect competition, externalities and public goods, and contract theory.

^{Picked by David Z.}

All the Light We Cannot See

Antony Doerr

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

^{Picked by Vimi E.}

All-In on AI: How Smart Companies Win Big With Artificial Intelligence

Thomas H. Davenport, Nitin Mittal

Though most organizations are placing modest bets on artificial intelligence, there is a world-class group of companies that are going all-in on the technology and radically transforming their products, processes, strategies, customer relationships, and cultures.

^{Picked by Alexandre P.}

Backstage Leadership

Charlie Galunic

Most of us would recognize a star leader by their charisma, emotional intelligence and public communication prowess. What is truly impressive but often overlooked is the silent work of leadership that garners real results. Exercising influence in a complex and global organization – whilst also shaping and executing strategies across borders in a disruptive age – is the true mark of success as a leader. Backstage Leadership takes a comprehensive look at the background processes that leaders must master in order to shape the culture, direction and capability of a successful company.

^{Picked by Charlie G.}

Baptêmes de Poupées

Christiane Soukdéo

An autobiography: My mother abandoned me to my father when I was two and a half months old; my alcoholic father, unable to bring me up, in turn left me to my grandparents when I was four months old. They despised me and, at their side, I experienced hunger, cold, shame, pain and also... doll baptisms: a variant of dînette, a game that boys aged 10 to 15 shared with little girls...

^{Picked by Steevy Z.}

Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth Without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs

Renée Mauborgne, W. Chan Kim

Disruption dominates innovation theory and practice. But disruption, for all its power, is destructive—displacing jobs, companies, and even entire industries. Are we missing an alternative approach to innovation and growth?
With three decades of research, the #1 global bestselling authors of Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, reveal another way to innovate and grow.

^{Picked by Estelle L.}

Beyond Happiness: How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact

Jenn Lim

Drawing on a deep understanding of the science of happiness, Jenn shows how bringing your whole self to work allows you to do your best work every day - no matter what role you play at your company or what crisis might come at you next. She explains how true happiness comes from living your true purpose, and offers case studies to show how companies can help individuals align their purpose with the company mission. This innovation in organizational design and company culture is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s the future of work, and it’s here now.

^{Picked by Mohammed S.}

Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing - Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth

Renée Mauborgne, W. Chan Kim

Blue Ocean Shift is packed with all-new research and examples of how leaders in diverse industries and organizations made the shift and created new markets by applying the process and tools outlined in the book. Whether you are a cash-strapped startup or a large, established company, nonprofit or national government, you will learn how to move from red to blue oceans in a way that builds your people's confidence so that they own and drive the process.
With battle-tested lessons learned from successes and failures in the field, Blue Ocean Shift is critical listening for leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs alike.

^{Picked by Magalie N.}

Build, Borrow, or Buy: Solving the Growth Dilemma

Laurence Capron, Will Mitchell 

How should you grow your organization?

It’s one of the most challenging questions an executive team faces—and the wrong answer can break your firm.
The problem is most firms’ growth strategies emphasize just one type of growth—some focus on organic growth, others on M&A. When these strategies falter, the common response is simply to try harder—but firms falling into this “implementation trap” usually end up losing out to a competitor whose approach is more inclusive.

^{Picked by Laurence C. & Manahil C.}

Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into Your Company’s DNA

Ben M. Bensaou

It’s no secret that continuous innovation is the key to seizing and maintaining the competitive edge in today’s increasingly challenging business environment. Unfortunately, the process for achieving this holy grail of business has been a mystery—until now.
Built to Innovate delivers a proven system for building relentless innovation into your company’s DNA. Professor and former Dean of Executive Education at INSEAD and business innovation thought leader Ben M. Bensaou explores the essential practices of many of the world’s most innovative organizations―including BASF, AkzoNobel, Sabanci Group, Recruit Holdings, Ecocem, Starwood Hotels, Domino’s Pizza, Bayer, Marvel Studios, Allianz, and Fiskars―and demonstrates how you can leverage them in your own company.

^{Picked by Ben M. B.}

Business Transformation in China

Henri-Claude de Bettignies

This book, first published in 1996, provides an in-depth examination of China’s changing business environment as it continues to develop its business infrastructure. Leading experts from Asia and Europe present their research into developments in China. Issues include political evolution, foreign trade expansion, foreign direct investment, the distribution system, economic reform, industrial relations and HR, economic growth and the market entry strategies of foreign manufacturers.

^{Picked by Henri-Claude D. B.}

Chroniques Martiennes

Ray Bradbury

In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America’s preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor— of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a vanished, devastated civilization. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. In this classic work of fiction, Bradbury exposes our ambitions, weaknesses, and ignorance in a strange and breathtaking world where man does not belong.

^{Picked by Sabrina G.}

Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions

Akshat Rathi

Our age will be defined by the climate emergency. Contrary to the doomist narrative that's taken hold about the climate emergency, the world has already begun deploying the solutions needed to deal with it. On a journey across five continents, Climate Capitalism tracks the unlikely heroes driving the fight against climate change. From the Chinese bureaucrat who did more to make electric cars a reality than Elon Musk, to the Danish students who helped to build the world's longest-operating wind turbine, or the American oil executive building the technology that can reverse climate damages, we meet the people working to scale technologies that are finally able to bend the emissions curve.

^{Picked by Utkarsh S.}

Cloudstreet

Tim Winton

After two separate catastrophes, two very different families leave the country for the bright lights of Perth. The Lambs are industrious, united, and—until God seems to turn His back on their boy Fish—religious. The Pickleses are gamblers, boozers, fractious, and unlikely landlords. Change, hardship, and the war force them to swallow their dignity and share a great, breathing, shuddering house called Cloudstreet. Over the next twenty years, they struggle and strive, laugh and curse, come apart and pull together under the same roof, and try as they can to make their lives.

^{Picked by Eva L.}
 

Conversation avec Claude Askolovitch

Patrick Bruel, Claude Askolovitch

For the first time, renowned French singer Patrick Bruel has decided to talk to Claude Askolovitch about his life, his choices and his commitments.

^{Picked by Emilie P.}

Couples that Work: How To Thrive in Love and at Work 

Jennifer L. Petriglieri

In Couples that Work, Professor Jennifer Petriglieri shifts away from the language of sacrifice and trade-offs and focuses on how couples can successfully tackle the challenges they will face throughout their lives--together. The book explores key questions like:
- Can you and your partner have equally important careers or must you prioritise one over the other?
- How can you juggle children or family commitments without sacrificing your work?
- Does every decision require compromise or can you find solutions that benefit you both?

Identifying common triggers and traps, and presenting engaging exercises to help you avoid and overcome them, this book will help every couple design their own unique way to combine love and work at every stage of their journey.

^{Picked by Jennifer & Gianpiero P.}

Cut Throat Dog

Joshua Sobol

An enigmatic Israeli who calls himself Shakespeare – because he’s got a way with words – finds himself jolted on a sidewalk in Manhattan: Is that who I think it is, he wonders, or am I crazy?
Who he thinks it is, is one of the world’s premier terrorists. Someone who murdered his partner. Someone he blames for the fog of despair that’s overcome him. And most shockingly, someone Shakespeare’s mysterious associates in Tel Aviv tell him had been killed in the desert.

So is Shakespeare cracking up, or cracking the case of a lifetime?

^{Picked by Tony S.}

Dance With Chance: Making Luck Work for You

Spyros Makridakis, Robin Hogarth, Anil Gaba

A gripping tale of how even experts misread the role of chance - from the stock market to doctors' surgeries - "Dance With Chance" argues that we all fall foul of the 'The Illusion of Control', meaning that we underestimate the role of luck in our lives. The authors argue that by understanding how uncertainty operates, we can make palpable improvements to our health, wealth, happiness and careers.

^{Picked by Isabelle R.}

De Bach à Nos Jours

Charles Herve, Jacqueline Pouillard

Piano partitions, includes: Bach: Prélude BWV 939 - Bach W.F.: Menuet - Bartok: Danse des paysans slovaques - Jeu - Jeu d'enfants - Pour les enfants n°2 - Pour les enfants n°15 - Beethoven: Ecossaise - Sonatine en Sol Majeur - Chostakovitch: Histoire gaie - Valse - Clementi: Rondo Op.36 n° 2 - Sonatine en Ut Majeur Op.36 n° 1 - Gretchaninov: Chevaux de bois - Que ne suis-je grand ! - Sur le pré - Gurlitt: Novelette - Haydn: Allegro - Danse allemande n°1 en Ré - Danse allemande n°2 en Fa - Final - Menuet Hob. XVI 8 - Kabalevski: Clowns - Prélude - Valse - Khatchatourian: Andantino - Lutoslawski: Il y a un petit sentier - Mozart: Ariette - Menuet KV 7 - Valse favorite - Papp: Valse - Prokofiev: Historiette - Rossignol: La Planète où dansent les fourmis bleues - Schumann: Marche militaire - Mélodie - Le Petit cavalier - Petite pièce - Premier chagrin - Steibelt: Ländler - Tchaïkovski: Vieille chanson française - Telemann: Menuet

^{Picked by Florencia D.}

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World 

Cal Newport

"Deep work" is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. Coined by author and professor Cal Newport on his popular blog Study Hacks, deep work will make you better at what you do, let you achieve more in less time and provide the sense of true fulfilment that comes from the mastery of a skill. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive economy.

^{Picked by David L.}

Destined for War

Graham Allison

China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants.

The reason, argues Harvard scholar Graham Allison in this razor-sharp analysis, is Thucydides's Trap. This phenomenon, as old as history itself, is named for the Greek historian's assessment of why the Peloponnesian War broke out: a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one.
Over the past 500 years, such a struggle has occurred between major powers just sixteen times. In twelve cases, it resulted in war.

^{Picked by Jasbir S.}

Developing a Plan for the Planet: A Business Plan for Sustainable Living

Ian Chambers, John Humble

The world struggles with increasing threats to global sustainability, caused by population growth, overuse of fresh water resources, depletion of biodiversity, and reliance on non-renewable energy sources. There is an urgent need for an overall plan to address these challenges in a coordinated and effective manner. Whether in government, business, community or as an individual, we need to begin acting a lot smarter, faster and more collaboratively if we are going to avert the potential devastating impacts on this planet.

^{Picked by Nuraziz M.}

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence

Betty Edwards

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world's most widely used drawing instruction book. Whether you are a professional, a student, or enjoy art as a hobby, Betty Edwards' practical step-by-step guide will give you greater confidence in your ability, deepen your artistic perception and provide a new way to appreciate how you perceive the world around you.

^{Picked by Cynthia B.S.}

Entrepreneurial Finance: The Art and Science of Growing Ventures

Luisa Alemany, Job J. Andreoli

Academics and practitioners from a range of institutions across Europe provide a cutting-edge, practical, and comprehensive review on the financing of entrepreneurial ventures. From sourcing and obtaining funds, to financial tools for growing and managing the financial challenges and opportunities of the startup, Entrepreneurial Finance: The Art and Science of Growing Ventures is an engaging text that will equip entrepreneurs, students and early-stage investors to make sound financial decisions at every stage of a business' life.

^{Picked by Weiyu P.}

Escaping the Growth Curse: The Path to Stronger Corporate Strategy

Yves Doz, Keeley Wilson

As companies mature, their underlying growth naturally slows—this is called the ‘growth curse’. It’s a pervasive problem that plagues companies, CEOs, and board members alike. In order to safeguard a company’s future, a strategic form of governance in which the board plays a more active role on behalf of all stakeholders, must be activated.

^{Picked by Yves D.}

Fanny Stevenson.
Muse, Adventuress & Romantic Enigma.

Alexandra Lapierre

Providing a clear, accurate picture of the woman behind the genius, an incisive biography of the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson traces Fanny Stevenson's life from her early years in America to her days after his death. 

^{Picked by Laura E.}

For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do and Who We Want to Be

Marcus Collins

In For the Culture, Marcus Collins argues that true cultural engagement is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behavior. If you want to get people to move, you must first understand the underlying cultural forces that make them tick.
Collins uses stories from his own work as an award-winning marketer—from spearheading digital strategy for Beyoncé, to working on Apple and Nike collaborations, to the successful launch of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team—to break down the ways in which culture influences behavior and how readers can do the same.

^{Picked by Meredith M.}

Get Weird! 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work

John Putzier 

"How can companies recruit, retain, train, motivate, and reward great employees--especially in a tight labor market? How can they win new customers and boost sales? The secret is to lighten up and get a little weird! Creativity and productivity can go hand in hand, as this chock-full-of-ideas book amply shows. Like a Christmas stocking crammed with treasures, Get Weird! overflows with irresistible techniques for innovating and problem-solving.

^{Picked by Julien L.}

Global Strategic Management

Philippe Lasserre, L. Felipe Monteiro

Seamlessly blending academic rigour and practicality, this textbook provides an introduction to global business strategy. Assuming a born global perspective, Global Strategic Management is supported by ample pedagogical features, including numerous case studies and examples featuring both established multinationals and unknown SMEs from across the globe.
The book takes an applied approach to global business strategy, emphasising functional parts of international business (managing marketing, operations, HR and finance). The text has been widely updated to incorporate the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, such as work from anywhere and deglobalization. New to this fifth edition is increased material on sustainability and corporate social responsibility, including discussion of climate change, NGOs and sustainable development goals.

^{Picked by Anne-Marie C. & Felipe M.}

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Other's Don't

Jim Collins

To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.

^{Picked by Guy D. H. & Jyotbir S.}

Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

Elinor Ostrom

The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.

^{Picked by Ilze K.}

How to Practice Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method

Howard E. Book

This clinically based manual takes readers through the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) which is the basis of a specific form of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy (BPP). The CCRT method is research-supported and easily operationalized.

^{Picked by Sabrina M.}

How to See Yourself As You Really Are

Dalai Lama

According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we each possess the ability to achieve happiness and a meaningful life, but the key to realizing that goal is self-knowledge. In How to See Yourself As You Really Are, the world's foremost Buddhist leader and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize shows readers how to recognize and dispel misguided notions of self and embrace the world from a more realistic - and loving - perspective. Through illuminating explanations and step-by-step exercises, His Holiness helps readers to see the world as it actually exists, and explains how, through the interconnection of meditative concentration and love, true altruistic enlightenment is attained.

^{Picked by Jean L.}

Intégrale Le Seigneur des Anneaux 

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 

Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.

^{Picked by Loic S.}

Jusqu'ici Tout Va Bien

Marie Colot

Twenty-four breathless hours in the life and mind of a delinquent teenager, in love and ready for anything.
Jozef is a petty thief: pickpocketing, drug dealing. He will do anything to take control of his life and get out of the social misery in which his hard-working parents live. To do that, he doesn't hesitate to take risks, like dealing in the territory of the local kingpin.

^{Picked by Damien D.}

La Nuit des Temps

René Barjavel

When a French expedition in Antarctica reveals ruins of a 900,000 year old civilization, scientists from all over the world flock to the site to help explore & understand. The entire planet watches via global satellite tv, mesmerized, as they uncover a chamber in which a man & a woman have been in suspended animation since, as the French title suggests, 'the night of time'. The woman, Eléa, is awakened. Thru a translating machine she tells the story of her world, herself & her husband Paikan & how war destroyed her civilization. She also hints at an incredibly advanced knowledge her still-dormant companion possesses, knowledge that could give energy & food to all humans at no cost. But the superpowers of the world are not ready to let Eléa's secrets spread, & show that, 900,000 years & an apocalypse later, humankind has not grown up & is ready to make the same mistakes again.

^{Picked by Marine B.}

La Sublime Communauté

Emmanuelle Han

The paths of the three Transplants are about to converge. Ashoka, Ekian and Tupà will take command of the resistance, combining their powers to force the passage of the Six Worlds.

^{Picked by Zeki D.}

Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back

Shel Silverstein

"You don't have to shoot me," says the young lion. "I will be your rug and I will lie in front of your fireplace and I won't move a muscle and you can sit on me and toast all the marshmallows you want. I love marshmallows." 
But the hunter will not listen to reason, so what is there for a young lion to do? After eating up the hunter, Lafcadio takes the gun home and practices and practices until he becomes the world's greatest sharp-shooter.
Now dressed in starched collars and fancy suits, and enjoying all the marshmallows he wants, Lafcadio is pampered and admired wherever he goes. But is a famous, successful, and admired lion a happy lion? Or is he a lion at all?

^{Picked by Nancy H.}

Lawendowy Pokoj

Nina George

In his bookshop - with the much-talked-about name ‘Literary Pharmacy’ - Jean Perdu sells books like a pharmacist sells medicines. He is skilful at recognising what someone carries in their heart and proposes a suitable plot for a particular problem. However, he is unable to cure his own suffering, which began one night many years ago when his beloved woman left him.

^{Picked by Agata C.}

Le Maître et Marguerite

Mikhaïl Bulgakov 

The underground masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian fiction, this classic novel was written during Stalin’s regime and could not be published until many years after its author’s death.
When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a psychiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. 

^{Picked by Nadir K.}

Le Parfum

Patrick Süskind 

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the “ultimate perfume”—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. 

^{Picked by Myriam D.}

Le Petit Prince 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

The Little Prince is a poetic tale, with illustrations by the author, in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. The story is philosophical and includes social criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world. It was written during a period when Saint-Exupery fled to North America subsequent to the Fall of France during the Second World War, witnessed first hand by the author and captured in his memoir Flight to Arras. The adult fable, according to one review, is actually "...an allegory of Saint-Exupery's own life—his search for childhood certainties and interior peace, his mysticism, his belief in human courage and brotherhood, and his deep love for his wife Consuelo but also an allusion to the tortured nature of their relationship."

^{Picked by Minami R.}

Le Théâtre de la Cour Impériale à Fontainebleau

Vincent Cochet, Vincent Droguet, Patrick Ponsot

From the Valois to the “series” of the Second Empire, theatrical performances were – along with hunting – among the favourite entertainments offered during court visits to Fontainebleau. In 1725, the palace was the first of the princely residences to be provided with a special performance hall. Restored during the First Empire and again during the July monarchy, it welcomed the stars of the time, who were called to perform for the guests of the Emperor and the King of the French. 

^{Picked by Valentine R. B.} 

Leadership Team Alignment: From Conflict to Collaboration

Frédéric Godart, Jacques Neatby

Debunking much of the received wisdom regarding the sources of leadership team dysfunctionality, Leadership Team Alignment presents a targeted strategy for building and managing a top executive team to gain competitive advantage. Frédéric Godart and Jacques Neatby bring a wealth of practical experience and in-depth knowledge, with over eight hundred hours of direct observation with more than fifty leadership teams across the globe and thousands of hours working with executives. With this book, they offer solutions to manage conflict and create environments that effectively address misalignments in organizations.

^{Picked by Frédéric G.}

Les Lois de la Nature Humaine

Robert Greene

We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose.

^{Picked by Vanessa C.}

Les Refuges

Jérôme Loubry

Where to hide when there's nowhere left to run?
Sandrine is asked to empty her late grandmother's house on a small island near the Normandy coast. She soon discovers that its elderly inhabitants haven't left the island since their arrival as children during World War II.
Sandrine can tell they are terrified of someone, or something. Yet, they refuse to leave the island.
What happened to the children from the holiday camp which was suddenly shut down in 1949?

^{Picked by Emilie T.}

Lettre d'une Inconnue

Stefan Zweig

Written in 1920s, Stefan Zweig tells the story of a woman who is unrecognised and unrequited lover in Letter From Unknown Woman. This nameless young woman reached her unaware lover with this long letter by telling their memories from first day. As reader, while appreciating the patience of life long silence and hiding we don't know this woman as her lover who read the letter never recognised her too. With Zweig's literary talent this book has an unforgetable importance in our literature by emotion of being effaced that derived from never known; based on depth psychological side and human's love feeling we can find out darker sides and obsessions of people via this short but impressive book. 

^{Picked by Séverine G.}

L'Homme Qui Prenait Sa Femme Pour un Chapeau

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. 

^{Picked by Christ-Hervé K.}

Life’s Amazing Secrets: How to Find Balance and Purpose in Your Life

Gaur Gopal Das 

While navigating their way through Mumbai's horrendous traffic, Gaur Gopal Das and his wealthy young friend, Harry, get talking, delving into concepts ranging from the human condition to finding one's purpose in life and the key to lasting happiness.
Whether you are looking at strengthening your relationships, discovering your true potential, understanding how to do well at work, or even how you can give back to the world, Gaur Gopal Das takes us on an unforgettable journey with his precious insights on these areas of life.

^{Picked by Shefali S.}

Lonely Planet Africa

Simon Richmond

The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet Africa is your passport to all the most relevant and up-to-date advice on what to see, what to skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Take a refreshing dip at Victoria Falls, explore the ancient pyramids of Egypt, or take a walking safari in South Luangwa National Park; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Africa and begin your journey now!

^{Picked by Clarisse K.}

Lonely Planet Australia

Charles Rawlings-Way

Discover popular and off the beaten track experiences from surfing the waves on Byron Bay's iconic beaches to watching little penguins waddle ashore at the famous Penguin Parade, and touring the famous rock art sites of Kakadu National Park with an Aboriginal guide.

^{Picked by Maria C.}

Lonely Planet Brazil

Regis St.Louis, John Noble, Kevin Raub

Tropical islands, lush rainforests, marvellous cities and picture-perfect beaches set the scene for the great Brazilian adventure.

^{Picked by Elenie M.}

Lonely Planet Canada

Karla Zimmerman

Experience the grandeur of the Rockies, marvel at the totem pole carvings of the Haida people, or hit the powdery slopes on the outskirts of Vancouver; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Canada and begin your journey now!

^{Picked by Marie P.}

Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

Irvin D. Yalom

Irvin D. Yalom gives detailed and deeply affecting accounts of his work with these and seven other patients. Deep down, all of them were suffering from the basic human anxieties—isolation, fear of death or freedom, a sense of the meaninglessness of life—that none of us can escape completely. And yet, as the case histories make touchingly clear, it is only by facing such anxieties head on that we can hope to come to terms with them and develop. Throughout, Dr. Yalom remains refreshingly frank about his own errors and prejudices; his book provides a rare glimpse into the consulting room of a master therapist.

^{Picked by Derek D.}

Ma vie Sans Gravité

Thomas Pesquet

How do you become the youngest Frenchman to set off for the space station? How did he get from his native Normandy to the launch pads at Baikonur and Cape Canaveral? For the first time, Thomas Pesquet tells us all about himself, in a highly personal account that's as funny as it is surprising. He takes us from behind the scenes at astronaut school to the thrill of lift-off, sharing the daily routine of his 396 days aboard the ISS and the wonder of discovering our fragile planet.

^{Picked by Jean-Nicolas L.}

Man's Search For Meaning: The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust

Viktor E. Frankl

A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that he and other inmates coped with the experience of being in Auschwitz. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest - and who offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances.

^{Picked by Juan A.}

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler

Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans--predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth--and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.
Traditional economics assumes rational actors. Early in his research, Thaler realized these Spock-like automatons were nothing like real people. Whether buying a clock radio, selling basketball tickets, or applying for a mortgage, we all succumb to biases and make decisions that deviate from the standards of rationality assumed by economists. In other words, we misbehave. More importantly, our misbehavior has serious consequences. 

^{Picked by Lily F.}

Moby Dick

Herman Melville

Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.

^{Picked by Cécile M.}

Moderato Cantabile

Marguerite Duras

A piano lesson, a stubborn child, a loving mother: no simpler expression of the quiet life of a provincial town. But a sudden cry tears the plot apart, revealing beneath the restraint of this seemingly classical tale a tension that grows in the silence until the final paroxysm.
"Even so, says Anne Desbaresdes, you might remember it once and for all. Moderato means moderate, and cantabile means singing, so it's easy.

^{Picked by Azhar G. C.} 

Mohamed Ali

Claude Boli 

Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr on January 17, 1942, is an extraordinary character. The first boxer to become a three-time heavyweight champion of the world, he is as much known for his unique fighting style, embodied in his famous slogan “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, as he is for his outspoken statements. Adulated and then vilified after refusing to serve in the US Army during the Vietnam War and converting to Islam alongside Malcolm X, he was stripped of his world title, but was eventually rehabilitated and awarded the Otto Hahn Peace Medal on behalf of the United Nations “for his commitment to the American movement against segregation and for the cultural emancipation of Blacks worldwide”.

^{Picked by Abbassia A.}

Monetizing Data: A Practical Roadmap for Framing, Pricing & Selling Your B2B Digital Offers

Stephan M. Liozu, Wolfgang Ulaga

The Digital revolution promises trillions of dollars in created value by 2030. Consultants and researchers are projecting massive and disruptive disruption in entire industrial sectors. As a results, PwC reports in their DigitalIQ report that 73% of executives say that they are investing in internet of things (IoT) and 54% in artificial intelligence. ABB predicts that 33 billion things or objects will be connected to the internet by 2020. So we are experiencing a deluge of digital investments, programs, and large-scale transformations.

^{Picked by Wolfgang U.}

Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion

Joshua D. Angrist, Jörn-Steffen Pischke

Shows how the basic tools of applied econometrics allow the data to speak. This book covers regression-discontinuity designs and quantile regression - as well as how to get standard errors right. It is suitable for various areas in contemporary social science.

^{Picked by Doudou Z.}

Music: The Business

Ann Harrison

Drawing on her extensive experience as a media lawyer, Ann Harrison offers a unique, expert opinion on the deals, the contracts and the business as a whole. She examines in detail the changing face of the music industry and provides absorbing and up-to-date case studies.
Whether you're a recording artist, songwriter, music business manager, industry executive, publisher, journalist, media student, accountant or lawyer, this practical and comprehensive guide is indispensable reading.

^{Picked by Elsa J.}

My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

Indra Nooyi

The first woman of colour and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company - and one of the foremost strategic thinkers of our time - Indra Nooyi redefined what it means to be an exceptional leader. She transformed PepsiCo with a unique vision, a vigorous pursuit of excellence and a deep sense of purpose.
In this intimate and powerful memoir, Nooyi takes us through the events that shaped her and offers an inside look at PepsiCo, and her thinking as she steered the iconic company toward healthier products and reinvented its environmental profile, despite resistance at every turn.

^{Picked by Sun Sun Y.}

Next

Michael Crichton

Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blonds becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only four hundred genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There’s a new genetic cure for drug addiction—is it worse than the disease?

^{Picked by Adriano P.}

Noise: A Flow in Human Judgement

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients—or that two judges in the same courthouse give markedly different sentences to people who have committed the same crime. Suppose that different interviewers at the same firm make different decisions about indistinguishable job applicants—or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to answer the phone. Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same interviewer, or the same customer service agent makes different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.

^{Picked by Annet A.}

Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism

John Updike

To complement his work as a fiction writer, John Updike accepted any number of odd jobs—book reviews and introductions, speeches and tributes, a “few paragraphs” on baseball or beauty or Borges—and saw each as “an opportunity to learn something, or to extract from within some unsuspected wisdom.” In this, his largest collection of assorted prose, he brings generosity and insight to the works and lives of William Dean Howells, George Bernard Shaw, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and dozens more. Novels from outposts of postmodernism like Turkey, Albania, Israel, and Nigeria are reviewed, as are biographies of Cleopatra and Dorothy Parker. The more than a hundred considerations of books are flanked, on one side, by short stories, a playlet, and personal essays, and, on the other, by essays on his own oeuvre. Updike's odd jobs would be any other writer's chief work.

^{Picked by Dan B.}

Open: an Autobiography

Andre Agassi

Andre Agassi had his life mapped out for him before he left the crib. Groomed to be a tennis champion by his moody and demanding father, by the age of twenty-two Agassi had won the first of his eight grand slams and achieved wealth, celebrity, and the game’s highest honors. But as he reveals in this searching autobiography, off the court he was often unhappy and confused, unfulfilled by his great achievements in a sport he had come to resent. Agassi writes candidly about his early success and his uncomfortable relationship with fame, his marriage to Brooke Shields, his growing interest in philanthropy, and—described in haunting, point-by-point detail—the highs and lows of his celebrated career.

^{Picked by Sven B.}

 흥겨운: 우리 가락 / Our Lively Melodies

Shin Hye-Rin

Korean baby song book.

^{Picked by Una R.}

Paris: The Memoir

Paris Hilton

Paris rose to prominence as an heiress to the Hilton hotel empire but cultivated her fame and fortune as the IT Girl of the aughts, a time marked by the burgeoning 24-hour entertainment news cycle and the advent of the celebrity blog. Using her celebrity brand, Paris set in motion her innovative business ventures, while being the constant target of tabloid culture that dismissively wrote her off as “famous for being famous.” With tenacity, sharp business acumen and grit, she built a global empire and, in the process, became a truly modern icon beloved around the world.
Now, with courage, honesty, and humour, Paris Hilton is ready to take stock, place it all in context and share her story with the world.

^{Picked by Lili S.}

Passagère du Silence : Dix Ans d'Initiation en Chine

Fabienne Verdier

Leave everything behind overnight and go off alone to the depths of Communist China in search of the forgotten secrets of ancient Chinese art? Fabienne Verdier didn't ask herself this question: in the early 1980s, the brilliant young Beaux-Arts student was magnetized by the desire to learn the art of painting and calligraphy, which had been devastated by the Cultural Revolution. And when, a foreigner lost in Sichuan province, she found herself in a Party-run art school, she was determined to overcome all obstacles: the language and the mistrust of the Chinese, but also the unbearable promiscuity, the misery and filth, the sickness and the inquisitorial system of the administration... In total oblivion of the West, she became the pupil of great artists, despised and marginalized, who initiated her into the secrets and codes of a thousand-year-old teaching.

^{Picked by Marine B.}

Performance & Progress: Essays on Capitalism, Business, and Society

Subramanian Rangan

The prevailing aspiration of business is performance, while that of society is progress. Capitalism, both the paradigm and practice, sits at the intersection of these dual aspirations, and the essays in this volume explore its fraught status there.
Contributions to this volume address questions such as what's the problem with capitalism?; is the problem just with the practice or with the very paradigm?; what is progress and who is responsible for it?; what evolution is required at the individual, system, and paradigm level so that enterprises and the executives who lead them may better integrate performance with progress?; and whither consumers, employees, and investors in this evolution?

^{Picked by Subi R.}

Pessoa: An Experimental Life

Richard Zenith

Richard Zenith's Pessoa at last allows us to understand this extraordinary figure. Some eighty-five years after his premature death in Lisbon, where he left over 25,000 manuscript sheets in a wooden trunk, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) can now be celebrated as one of the great modern poets. Setting the story of his life against the nationalistic currents of European history, Zenith charts the heights of Pessoa's explosive imagination and literary genius.

^{Picked by Francisco V.}

Plus Rien Ne Pourra Me Blesser [Can't Hurt Me]

David Goggins

For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare - poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him "The Fittest (Real) Man in America".

^{Picked by Jean-Jacques E.}

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson

A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear. Progress is not automatic but depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.

^{Picked by Chieh Yu L.}

Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of General Electric

William D. Cohan

Perhaps no company reflects American ingenuity, innovation, and industrial fortunes as well as the iconic General Electric Company. Producing storied leaders and almost every product imaginable, GE built a cult of success that hid cracks in its foundation. In this masterful history, William D. Cohan, one of America's most pre-eminent financial journalists, argues that GE's legacy is both a paragon and a cautionary tale through which to understand twentieth-century America.

^{Picked by Samuel U.}

Price Theory and Applications

B. Peter Pashigian 

Focusing on price theory and applications, this edition discusses: "intuitive" consumer surplus; "correct" formal derivation of consumer surplus with indifference curves; and the effect of taxes, trade limitations and market restrictions on total surplus.

^{Picked by Yuhan T.}

Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization

Inge Kaul, Pedro Conceiçao, Katell Le Goulven

This text addresses the issue of how to adjust the concept of public goods to contemporary economic and political realities. It examines a series of managerial and political challenges that pertain to the design and implementation of product strategies as well as the monitoring and evaluation of global public goods provision. Suggestions are presented on a number of policy reforms, and recommendations are made on how to move in a more feasible and systematic way towards a fairer process of globalization that works in the interests of all.

^{Picked by Katell L. G.}

PS, I Love You

Cecelia Ahern

Some people wait their whole lives to find their soul mates. But not Holly and Gerry. Childhood sweethearts, no one could imagine them without each other.
Until the unthinkable happens. Gerry's death devastates Holly. But Gerry has left her a bundle of notes, one for each of the months after his death, guiding Holly into her new life, each note signed 'PS, I Love You'.

^{Picked by Virginie F.}

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

David J. Epstein

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

^{Picked by Martin R.}

Redefining the Corporation: Stakeholder Management and Organizational Wealth

James E. Post, Lee E. Preston, Sybille Sachs

This book presents a stakeholder view of the corporation in both theoretical and practical terms. Its central proposition is that organizational wealth is created (or destroyed) through a corporation's interactions with its stakeholders. Effective stakeholder management develops and utilizes relationships between a corporation and its stakeholders for mutual benefit, thereby accomplishing the fundamental purpose of wealth creation.

^{Picked by Lite N.}

Revenue Management: A Practical Pricing Perspective

Ian Yeoman, Una McMahon-Beattie

Revenue Management Pricing is about deciding your market position whereas revenue management is the strategic and tactical decisions firms take in order to optimize revenues and profits. This book offers insights into research, theories, applications and innovations and how to makes these work in different industries.

^{Picked by Molin L.}

Running Money: Hedge Fund Honchos, Monster Markets and My Hunt for the Big Score

Andy Kessler

A quick study, Kessler gets an education in investing from some fascinating and quirky personalities. Eventually he works out his own insight into the world economy, a powerful lens that reveals to him hidden value in seemingly negative trends. Focussing on margin surplus, Kessler comes to see that current American economy, at the apex of the information revolution, is not so different from the British economy at the height of the industrial revolution. Drawing out the parallels he develops a powerful investing tool which he shares with readers. Contrarian and confident, Kessler made a fortune applying his ideas to his hedge fund. Which only proves that they may not be as crazy as they sound.

^{Picked by Connie N.}

Running on Purpose: Winning Olympic Gold, Advancing Corporate Leadership and Creating Sustainable Value

Charles H Moore Jr, James Cockerille

Charlie Moore never broke his stride after winning an Olympic gold medal in Helsinki in 1952. His professional life achievements feature notable accomplishments in business as well as successful leadership roles in college athletics, the arts, and, ultimately, in corporate philanthropy. At every twist is a consummate change-agent enjoying the moving of mountains and celebrating a freedom that comes from personal conviction and belief in others. In Running on Purpose, Moore has delivered a work that is not just a career memoir or an inspirational business book; it also champions family, resilience, persistence, the drive for results, strong communication, and other traits that can, and should, guide our personal and professional lives. 

^{Picked by Abdel M.}

San Francisco: The City's Sights and Secrets

Leah Garchik

Discover the beauty of San Francisco, its hidden charms, and its well-loved sights in this unforgettable photographic tour. Some of San Francisco's most renowned photographers, including Bill Hanapple, Richard Blair, Don Kellogg, and Tom Tracy, have captured new perspectives of the City with spectacular images of its most celebrated landmarks, from Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid to lesser-known—but equally beautiful—features, such as the flower-lined Filbert Street steps and the charming alleys of Russian Hill. In addition to the more than 150 breath-taking color photographs of the city as it is today, this distinctive volume contains historic black-and-white photographs and text documenting some of San Francisco's most notable events and monuments

^{Picked by Sabine A.}

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?
Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.

^{Picked by Li H.}

Singapore: City Guide

Insight Guides

The tropical city-state of Singapore may be small, but it packs a punch with a wealth of dazzling modern attractions, while also being a unique melting pot of Asian and Western influences.

^{Picked by Yann L.}

Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs

Gordon Fitchett

This much loved fairy tale is bought to life once more by Gordon's lively and humorous illustrations. In keeping with tradition, Gordon has used animals to portray the familiar characters of the eternal fairy tales. Snow White and her Prince are kangaroos and the seven dwarfs are koalas.

^{Picked by Remy E.}

Social and Economic Networks

Matthew O. Jackson

Networks of relationships help determine the careers that people choose, the jobs they obtain, the products they buy, and how they vote. The many aspects of our lives that are governed by social networks make it critical to understand how they impact behavior, which network structures are likely to emerge in a society, and why we organize ourselves as we do. In Social and Economic Networks, Matthew Jackson offers a comprehensive introduction to social and economic networks, drawing on the latest findings in economics, sociology, computer science, physics, and mathematics.

^{Picked by Andrea W.}

Soigner le Vide Intérieur : Guide pour un Bien-Etre Spirituel et Emotionnel

Yasmin Mogahed

Many of us have lost our way in this life. Some people end up losing hope, seeing no way out of their pain, their problems, their failures. Some people carry the burden of years of shame and self-hatred. And others live a profoundly meaningless life, despite their material success. But there is hope. There is always a way forward. Just as we can fall, we have been given the ability to rise again. Just as we bleed, we heal. 

^{Picked by Dalal F.}

South of the Border, West of the Sun

Haruki Murakami

Growing up in the suburbs in post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch.
Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting, he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.

^{Picked by Ekta A.}

Speeches That Shaped The Modern World

Alan J. Whiticker

Speeches that Shaped the Modern World is a collection of the potent and memorable speeches delivered since the beginning of the 20th Century. Memorable images bring the speaker's personality to us and make this book a fascinating journey through time. The collection includes recurring themes including: politics and diplomacy, war and peace, freedom and justice, civil rights and human rights. What they all have in common is the rhetoric: the power of persuasion. The speeches reflect historic events of one of the most cataclysmic centuries as told by its heroes, villains, martyrs and monsters.

^{Picked by Hamza B.}

Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying)

Bill Gifford

Spring Chicken is a full-throttle, high-energy ride through the latest research, popular mythology, and ancient wisdom on mankind's oldest obsession: How can we live longer? And better? In his funny, self-deprecating voice, veteran reporter Bill Gifford takes readers on a fascinating journey through the science of aging, from the obvious signs like wrinkles and baldness right down into the innermost workings of cells. We visit cutting-edge labs where scientists are working to "hack" the aging process, like purging "senescent" cells from mice to reverse the effects of aging.

^{Picked by Katya M.}

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

Bono

Bono - artist, activist and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2 - has written his autobiography: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him.

^{Picked by Aurélien D.}

Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe

Sandra Gulland

Set in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century, Josephine begins to awaken to the reality of her recent marriage to 'the Corsican' Napoleon Bonaparte, now General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy. Through Josephine's diary entries and Napoleon's impassioned - almost disturbing - love letters, an astonishing portrait of an ingenuous, compassionate woman emerges, set against one of the most tumultuous periods in European history. Written in a spare but compelling style, this beautifully crafted novel brings the amazing drama of the legendary Josephine to vibrant life.

^{Picked by Sherley D.}

Technology and Market Structure

John Sutton

John Sutton sets out a unified theory that encompasses two major approaches to studying market, while generating a series of novel predictions as to how markets evolve.
Traditionally, the field of industrial organization has relied on two unrelated theories—the cross-section theory and the growth-of-firms theory—to explain cross-industry differences in concentration and within-industry skewness. The two approaches are based on very different mathematical structures and few researchers have attempted to relate them to each other.

^{Picked by Peter Z.}

The 48 Laws of Power

Robert Greene

In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.

^{Picked by Hami A.}

The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution

Susan Hockfield 

From the former president of MIT, the story of the next technology revolution, and how it will change our lives.

A century ago, discoveries in physics came together with engineering to produce an array of astonishing new technologies: radios, telephones, televisions, aircraft, radar, nuclear power, computers, the Internet, and a host of still-evolving digital tools. These technologies so radically reshaped our world that we can no longer conceive of life without them.

^{Picked by Theos E.}

The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

William Dalrymple

The Anarchy tells one of history's most remarkable stories: how the Mughal Empire-which dominated world trade and manufacturing and possessed almost unlimited resources-fell apart and was replaced by a multinational corporation based thousands of miles overseas, and answerable to shareholders, most of whom had never even seen India and no idea about the country whose wealth was providing their dividends. Using previously untapped sources, Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before and provides a portrait of the devastating results from the abuse of corporate power.

^{Picked by Ranu C.}

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

What have the invention of the wheel, Pompeii, the Wall Street Crash, Harry Potter and the internet got in common? Why are all forecasters con-artists? Why should you never run for a train or read a newspaper?

This book is all about Black Swans: the random events that underlie our lives, from bestsellers to world disasters. Their impact is huge; they're impossible to predict; yet after they happen we always try to rationalize them.

^{Picked by Fiona M.}

The Changing C-Suite: Executive Power in Transformation

José Luis Alvarez, Silviya Svejenova

Over the last two decades, we have seen a distinct transformation of the 'C-suite'- a term denoting the most important senior executives in an organization - characterized by the proliferation of and variation in new Chief X Officer (CXO) roles, in which X stands for a specific domain such as sustainability, communication, digital, human resources, finance, or many alternatives. By exploring the emergence and evolution of these CXO positions, José Luis Alvarez and Silviya Svejenova examine the evolving ways in which power at the apex of complex organizations is structured through roles and relationships, in anticipation of and in response to diverse contingencies and interests.

^{Picked by José Luis A.}

The Complete Stories

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe's gift for the macabre influenced Baudelaire and French symbolism, Freudian analysis, the detective novel and the Hollywood film. His psychologically profound stories, which comprise this book, represent the darker side of the 19th-century American sensibility.

^{Picked by Stephen D.}

The Courage To Be Disliked 

Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

Now you can unlock your full potential and free yourself from the shackles of past traumas and societal expectations to find true personal happiness. Based on the theories of renowned psychologist Alfred Adler, this book guides you through the principles of self-forgiveness, self-care, and mind decluttering in a straightforward, easy-to-digest style that’s accessible to all.
The Courage to Be Disliked unfolds as a dialogue between a philosopher and a young man, who, over the course of five enriching conversations, realizes that each of us is in control of our life’s direction, independent of past burdens and expectations of others.

^{Picked by Yu Chieh W.}

The Culture Map

Erin Meyer

In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together. She provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business, and combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice.

^{Picked by Inès M.}

The Final Sacrament

James Forrester

September 1566. William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, lives quietly with his family in London, with a document in his possession that could destroy the state. The aged Lady Percy, Countess of Northumberland, has not given up trying to find it. Nor has she forgotten how he betrayed her and the Catholic cause - she has spent the last two years planning her revenge. But then eloquent and adventurous courtier, John Greystoke suddenly seems most concerned for Clarenceux's safety. And why, on behalf of the government, does Francis Walsingham have spies watching Clarenceux's house day and night? When his wife and his daughter go missing, Clarenceux finds himself on the run with his other young daughter, hunted by Lady Percy's agents. He knows he must finally destroy the document, even if it should cost him his life - but how can he, until he has reunited his family?

^{Picked by Flavien C.}

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox 

Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas which underline the Theory of Constraints developed by the author.

^{Picked by Ansa M. & Mademba D.}

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt

Theo Decker, aged thirteen, is left alone in the world after surviving a catastrophe that kills his only close relative - his mother - and tears him away from everything he knows. Tormented by grief, drifting from home to home, he grows increasingly obsessed with a small, enchanting work of art which dominates his imagination and ultimately draws him, as an adult, into a much darker life than he could ever have foreseen.

^{Picked by Rameen A.}

The House of Doors

Tan Twan Eng 

The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When "Willie" Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one.

^{Picked by Aileen H.}

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Brian Selznick 

Orphan, clock keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks - like the gears of the clocks he keeps - with an eccentric, bookish girl and a bitter old man who runs a toy booth in the station, Hugo's undercover life and his most precious secret are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo's dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery.

^{Picked by Paulo A.}

The Language of Kindness: A Nurse's Story

Christie Watson

Christie Watson spent twenty years as a nurse, and in this intimate, poignant, and remarkably powerful book, she opens the doors of the hospital and shares its secrets. She takes us by her side down hospital corridors to visit the wards and meet her unforgettable patients. 

In the neonatal unit, premature babies fight for their lives, hovering at the very edge of survival, like tiny Emmanuel, wrapped up in a sandwich bag. On the cancer wards, the nurses administer chemotherapy and, long after the medicine stops working, something more important--which Watson learns to recognize when her own father is dying of cancer. In the paediatric intensive care unit, the nurses wash the hair of a little girl to remove the smell of smoke from the house fire.

^{Picked by Natalie C.}

The New Emerging Market Multinationals: Four Strategies for Disrupting Markets and Building Brands

Amitava Chattopadhyay, Rajeev Batra, Aysegul Ozsomer

Breakthrough strategies for emulating or competing with your newest and toughest threat: innovative companies in emerging-market nations

Western organizations are quickly losing influence to emerging market multinationals, as evidenced by such developments as Tata Motors's acquisitions of Land Rover and Jaguar; Lenovo's purchase of IBM's ThinkPad business; HTC's stature as the fourth largest global smartphone manufacturer; Haier's 5% global appliance market share; and LG, Samsung, and Hyundai rise in the automobile, appliance, and consumer electronics market.

^{Picked by Amitava C.}

The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women's Dead-End Work

Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, Laurie Weingart

The No Club started when four women who were crushed by endless to-do lists banded together over $10 bottles of wine and vowed to get their work lives under control. Running faster than ever, they nevertheless trailed behind their male colleagues. And so, they vowed to say no to requests that pulled them away from the work that mattered most to their careers. This book reveals how their over-a-decade-long journey and groundbreaking research uncovered that women everywhere are unfairly burdened with "non-promotable work", a tremendous problem we can - and must - solve.

^{Picked by Marie D.}

The Portable Plato

Plato, edited by Scott Buchanan

In this splendid collection, Scott Buchanan brings together the most important of Plato's dialogues, including Protagoras, The Symposium, with its barbed conjectures about the relation between love and madness, Phaedo and The Republic, his monumental work of political philosophy. Buchanan's learned and engaging introduction allows us to see Plato both as a commentator on his society and as a shaper of the societies that followed, who bequeathed to us a hunger for the ideal as well as a redeeming habit of humane skepticism.

^{Picked by Winston T.}

The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations

Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, Simon Bunel 

Crisis seems to follow crisis. Inequality is rising, growth is stagnant, the environment is suffering, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed every crack in the system. We hear more and more calls for radical change, even the overthrow of capitalism. But the answer to our problems is not revolution. The answer is to create a better capitalism by understanding and harnessing the power of creative destruction innovation that disrupts, but that over the past two hundred years has also lifted societies to previously unimagined prosperity.

^{Picked by Xinwei L.}

The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers to Check In Wherever They Are

Carmine Gallo

One million new users per month. Twenty-three check-ins per second. Millions of people―in every city, in every country, on every continent, and even from the Space Station―are vying to become mayors of their favorite shopping locations. What is foursquare and why has it become the hottest customer magnet ever conceived?

^{Picked by Salah J.}

The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet

Steven G. Mandis

The untold story of Real Madrid: one of the most incredible turnarounds in sports and business history.

Real Madrid is the most successful sports team on the planet. The soccer club has more trophies than any other sports team, including 11 UEFA Champions League trophies. However, the story behind the triumph goes beyond the players and coaches. Generally unnoticed, a management team consisting mostly of outsiders took the team from near bankruptcy to the most valuable sports organization in the world.

^{Picked by Teresa P.}

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands of readers to rethink their beliefs about life.
In his internationally bestselling, now classic volume, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene. 

^{Picked by Kate J.}

The Shining

Stephen King

Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote, and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.

^{Picked by Tristan M.}

The Snow Leopard 

Peter Matthiessen

In 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. As the climb proceeds, Matthiessen charts his inner path as well as his outer one, with a deepening Buddhist understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty. 

^{Picked by Nick M.}

The Sparsholt Affair

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst’s masterly novel evokes the intimate relationships of a group of friends bound together by art, literature and love across three generations. It explores the social and sexual revolutions of the most pivotal years of the past century, whose life-changing consequences are still being played out to this day.

^{Picked by Andrew B.}

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, acclaimed author Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

^{Picked by Lucie T.}

Thinking Things Through: An Introduction to Philosophical Issues and Achievements

Clark Glymour

Thinking Things Through provides a broad, historical, and rigorous introduction to the logical tradition in philosophy and to its contemporary significance. The presentation is centered around three of the most fruitful issues in Western thought: What are proofs, and why do they provide knowledge? How can experience be used to gain knowledge or to alter beliefs in a rational way? What is the nature of mind and of mental events and mental states? In a clear and lively style, Glymour describes these key philosophical problems and traces attempts to solve them, from ancient Greece to the present.

^{Picked by Felicia S.}

Thomas Pesquet : La Terre Entre Nos Mains

Thomas Pesquet

Seas, rivers, islands, deserts, mountains, cities... From April to November 2021, astronaut Thomas Pesquet photographed our planet from every angle from the International Space Station. Spectacular and fascinating images from the Alpha mission, brought together for the first time in a book, make us aware of the fragility of the Earth and the absolute necessity of protecting it.

A vibrant tribute to the wonders of nature. A masterly plea for collective awareness in the face of climate upheaval.

^{Picked by Thomas P.}

Time Is a Mother

Ocean Vuong

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother's death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Vivid, brave and propulsive, Vuong's poems contend with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the value of joy in a perennially fractured American spirit.

^{Picked by Kim P.}

Tintin: Explorers on The Moon

Hergé

Following on from the events of Destination Moon, Tintin finds himself in a rocket on a collision course with the moon. And with Snowy the dog, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus and the Thompson twins aboard, things quickly spiral further and further out of control.

^{Picked by Chloé D.}

Une Brève Histoire du Temps [A Brief History of Time]

Stephen Hawking

A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?

^{Picked by Tom P.}

Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War

Branko Milanovic 

“How do you see income distribution in your time, and how and why do you expect it to change?” That is the question Branko Milanovic imagines posing to six of history's most influential economists: François Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Vilfredo Pareto, and Simon Kuznets. Probing their works in the context of their lives, he charts the evolution of thinking about inequality, showing just how much views have varied among ages and societies. Indeed, Milanovic argues, we cannot speak of “inequality” as a general concept: any analysis of it is inextricably linked to a particular time and place.

^{Picked by Mark S.}

Weimar's Long Shadow

Richard Ned Lebow, Ludvig Norman

Weimar casts a long shadow over post-war political thought. The Weimar Republic is used to understand contemporary threats to democracy and to critique or defend modernity. It has generated a series of political lessons that are invoked whenever democracies are challenged. This book questions the historical validity of most of these lessons and their applicability to contemporary political orders. It shows how Weimar lessons are often influenced by partial and superficial readings of events, often intended to advance particular political projects.

^{Picked by Douglas W.}

Wisdom is One

B. W. Huntsman 

Wonderful collection of short sayings from the world's great religions, philosophies, and thinkers, which encompasses topics including truth, knowledge, evolution, reincarnation and karma.

^{Picked by Gene C.}