Innovative problem-solvers aren’t always young, behoodied visionaries. The authors of the below starred titles have spent years within their fields honing, developing, and organizing their ideas, and now their debuts are ready for readers. These three editor’s picks tackle big topics—climate collapse, people-centric management styles, and designing everyday digital systems—and offer their solutions based on both original thinking and experience.
Complete climate collapse seems inevitable, particularly with the Trump administration’s drill-baby-drill attitude and developed nations’ woefully inadequate response to climate change. But in his debut, Climate Opportunities Knocking at Your Door, William Mebane suggests ways to make an impact. His book, a collection of pieces previously published in Wall Street International Magazine, tells a “story of transformation—a story that proves that even in the face of daunting challenges, the power of human ingenuity and collaboration is essential.” Our starred review says, “Readers skeptical of the industrialized world’s ability to reach ‘net zero’ goals by target dates like 2050 will emerge from this book not only immeasurably better informed about every aspect of the challenge, but also invigorated to take it on.…A knowledgeable and ultimately upbeat look at mitigating climate change.”
Ideas about leadership have shifted in tone from the social Darwinism of the 1980s. Co-authors Judith M. von Seldeneck and Aileen K. Alexander compare and contrast their management styles in their debut, Deliberately Different: Fifty Years. Two Generations. Leading in a Changing World. The work, a conversation between the two authors, outlines their evolving management styles. Our starred review says, “Von Seldeneck…lived through the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement; Alexander was on active duty in the United States Army during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and entered a very different corporate world than that of her co-writer, one in which many glass ceilings for women had already been shattered. ‘If our stories prove anything,’ they write, ‘it’s that there is no single right way to lead,’ and yet the two authors agree on many commonalities of good leadership. ‘If you don’t leverage your position and power to do the maximum amount of good for the maximum number of people…you’re ignoring one of your greatest assets—and a crucial component of true leadership.’”
While a more accurate title might be Digital Design Systems That Scale rather than Design That Scales, author Dan Mall makes a great case for designing not only better, more user-friendly digital systems, but designing them to be as lean and adaptable as possible. Mall also provides a blueprint for creating and implementing such systems. He points to one of the most recognizable examples in the world—Google—and notes how it’s able to perform multiple tasks, like searches, email, and documents, consistently and at scale. “Mall describes the ways such system designs are typically constructed and how they usually go awry,” says our starred review. “He grounds his discussions of the various design system expressions in both annotated research and real-world examples.…A lively and paradigm-challenging evaluation of what makes good system designs work at any scale.”
Chaya Schechner is the president of Kirkus Indie.
