Camille Fournier’s The Manager's Path is an essential practical guide and reference manual for leaders navigating the unique intersection of "engineering" and "management." Crafted for everyone who works in or around software engineering, its primary focus is on engineering managers at all levels, from those just starting out to seasoned leaders. Rather than offering generic advice, it answers the fundamental questions managers face by structuring its guidance along the typical career path of an engineer.

The book’s authority is forged in the crucible of high-growth tech leadership. Fournier draws directly from her journey at Rent the Runway, where her role scaled from managing a small team to running all of engineering as CTO. The book is the direct result of her documenting everything she learned while succeeding and struggling in this environment, effectively creating a field manual for technical leadership. This crucible of hands-on experience forms the foundation of the book's core themes, providing a clear roadmap for leaders at every level.

Serhii Plokhy’s The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History presents the full-scale 2022 invasion not as an isolated event, but as the violent culmination of a conflict initiated in 2014. The book’s fundamental argument frames the war as an old-fashioned imperial conflict, driven by Russia's deep-seated historical ambitions, against which Ukraine is fighting a definitive war of independence.

Plokhy’s work is aimed at an audience seeking a longue durée historical perspective to understand the conflict's origins far beyond contemporary headlines. The author poses the book's central questions directly: "What made such a war of aggression possible? What made the Ukrainians resist as they did...? Finally, what will be the most important consequences of the war for Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and the world?"

As a Harvard historian of Ukrainian origin, Plokhy is a preeminent authority on the subject. His analysis provides an indispensable framework for policymakers, journalists, and strategists, dismantling the Kremlin's historical justifications and offering the definitive long-view needed to navigate the geopolitical fallout of this conflict, which he terms "the return of history" to Europe.

Its core value proposition is its function as an authoritative historical record, positioning it to capture the market of politically engaged audiences seeking an alternative to partisan memoirs and ephemeral journalism. The book’s central premise is a critical analysis that seeks to answer fundamental questions, chief among them: *“How did Johnson squander a great landslide election victory within little more than two years?”* Its target audience comprises educated readers with a keen interest in modern British political history and leadership analysis.The authority of authors Sir Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell is a primary marketing asset. Seldon, Chair of the National Archives Trust, has a prolific portfolio of over forty books, establishing him as a household name in contemporary history. Newell, a contemporary historian trained at Oxford, ensures the work’s scholarly rigour. Their previous collaboration on *May at 10* creates a pre-existing audience and critical benchmark for success. Understanding the book's core thematic pillars is the next step in crafting a targeted media strategy.

AI-Powered Developer presents the central argument that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot are transformative partners in the software development lifecycle, serving as a practical guide for integrating these tools to enhance productivity, creativity, and efficiency. The primary audience of professional developers and tech enthusiasts will find immense value in the book's structure, which is designed to answer the industry's most pressing questions that arise from this new AI partnership: How can developers use AI to accelerate development from design to deployment? What are the best practices for integrating tools like ChatGPT and Copilot into a professional workflow? And critically, when is it appropriate—and inappropriate—to use generative AI? Author Nathan B. Crocker grounds the book's insights in expert, real-world application, bringing significant authority as the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Checker, an API-first solution that connects the traditional capital markets infrastructure to the blockchain ecosystem.

In The Struggle for Taiwan, Sulmaan Wasif Khan delivers a trenchant historical corrective to the dangerous narratives shaping the U.S.-China-Taiwan standoff. Drawing on his authority as an Associate Professor of International History and Chinese Foreign Relations at Tufts University’s Fletcher School and author of Haunted by Chaos, Khan systematically dismantles the "bizarre mix of lies, amnesia, and half-truths" employed by both Beijing and Washington. He argues this distorted history fosters a perilous faith in deterrence, demonstrating across 80 years of history that past standoffs were averted less by strategy than by sheer luck—a crucial lesson lost on today’s policymakers. The book challenges readers to confront the crisis beyond the headlines: Why are common historical justifications so misleading? What pivotal “roads not taken” might have secured a different fate for the island? And most urgently, how is a deep understanding of this past essential to averting a catastrophic future?

In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan—the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics and author of seminal works like The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy—delivers a stark diagnosis of our global condition. His harrowing analogy is that the world has become "one big Weimar": a system "connected enough for one part to mortally influence the other parts, yet not connected enough to be politically coherent." This structural fragility, Kaplan argues, has plunged the globe into a state of "permanent crisis."

This predicament compels an urgent inquiry into the defining questions of our era: Why does our technologically advanced world fragment under the pressure of cascading instability? What lessons can historical parallels, from the fall of empires to the Russian Revolution, offer about the perils ahead? Kaplan provides a vital guide for navigating the treacherous geopolitical landscape of the 21st century—a global "Waste Land" where anything is possible.

For the millions who read Get Out of Your Head, bestselling author and IF:Gathering founder Jennie Allen delivers the necessary next step in Untangle Your Emotions. Drawing from her journey away from being a self-described "fixer," Allen reveals that many of us are emotionally tangled up in knots, experiencing disproportionate reactions to daily life due to unaddressed pain. The book invites readers to finally ask: Why do I have such overwhelming reactions to small triggers? What are my buried emotions trying to tell me? At its core is a liberating truth and paradigm shift: "feelings were never meant to be fixed; feelings are meant to be felt." Writing for everyone on the emotional spectrum—from the numb to the overwhelmed—Allen provides a biblically-grounded path to embrace feelings as God-given tools. This is a journey to untangle the knots that hold us back, unlocking the abundant, whole life found through deeper connection with God, others, and ourselves.

From globally recognized Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, the bestselling author of The Universal Christ, comes a profound reinterpretation of the Hebrew prophets for our modern “age of outrage.” In The Tears of Things, Rohr argues that the prophets are not angry predictors of doom but mystical guides who model a transformative spiritual path. This journey moves from righteous anger at injustice to a deep, empathetic sadness—what Rohr calls the prophetic “way of tears.” He reveals how true spiritual evolution requires embracing “holy disorder,” a necessary disruption of a failing status quo that ultimately leads to a “reorder” of higher consciousness, grace, and compassion. This book is essential for spiritual seekers, including those disillusioned with institutional religion, who are grappling with contemporary polarization and searching for a way to effect change from within. It powerfully answers the urgent question of how we can move beyond a religion of rules and scapegoating toward one of unconditional love and universal sympathy.

In The Eurasian Century, Hal Brands mounts a powerful case that the struggle for control over the Eurasian landmass and its surrounding waters has been the defining feature of modern global politics. As the planet’s “strategic center of the world”—home to 70% of the population and the bulk of its industrial and military potential—Eurasia has been the stage for a recurring conflict. This conflict pits ambitious continental autocracies seeking hegemony against offshore democracies like the United Kingdom and United States, which, in concert with continental allies, have fought to keep the supercontinent divided to preserve a world where freedom can flourish. Brands explores why Eurasia became the “engine of history” for the 20th century’s greatest hot wars, cold wars, and proxy wars, resolving the core paradox of how an era of “unmatched carnage” produced a system “more peaceful, prosperous, and democratic than anything humanity had known before.” Positioning America’s rivalries with China and Russia as the “next round in this geopolitical game,” the book asks what lessons the past offers for the upheaval ahead. A Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Brands grounds this sweeping narrative in extensive research from the “papers and archives of many countries.”

In a post-Christian West grappling with a profound crisis of discipleship—where 63 percent of Americans identify as Christian yet only 4 percent live as active apprentices—John Mark Comer offers a timely and necessary intervention. Drawing from decades spent working out what it means to follow Jesus, the New York Times bestselling author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry issues a compelling call to re-evaluate the very essence of faith. Comer’s central thesis is a provocative re-centering of the faith: Jesus’s primary invitation was not to a belief system called "Christianity," but to a life of apprenticeship. The book’s central challenge is its sharp distinction between the modern, often passive identity of a "Christian" and the active, intentional life of an "apprentice," arguing that genuine transformation is possible when we arrange our lives around the same practices and rhythms that Jesus himself followed.

The path Comer outlines is the core curriculum of this apprenticeship, structured around the three driving goals of a first-century disciple: to be with Jesus, become like him, and do as he did. This framework is designed to resonate with a broad readership, from those new to faith and counting the cost, to existing Christians seeking greater intentionality, and even to longtime followers who feel spiritually stagnant, offering each a tangible pathway beyond passive belief toward intentional formation. Practicing the Way ultimately addresses the perennial questions of discipleship: How does one bridge the gap between intellectual belief and embodied practice? And in a culture of relentless hurry, what does it truly mean to be intentionally formed by Jesus rather than unintentionally manipulated by the liturgies of digital distraction?

In Lighter, Yung Pueblo (Diego Perez) offers not a theoretical treatise, but a guide to healing forged in the crucible of profound personal experience. His credibility stems from a transformative journey that began at a "rock bottom" of drug abuse—a painful deviation from his past as a youth activist and the selfless sacrifices of his immigrant parents. Through radical honesty and meditation, Perez navigated his way back to his purpose. The book's central thesis is the inextricable link between personal and global transformation. Pueblo argues this path is a deliberate shedding of conditioned human habit—reactive patterns rooted in fear—to reclaim our authentic human nature, a state of innate clarity and love.

Lighter demystifies this process for seekers weighed down by suffering, compellingly exploring how to make healing an actionable practice, the link between self-love and emotional maturity, and how individual change ripples outward to create a more compassionate world. It is a hopeful and practical manual for becoming not just lighter, but freer.

In How Tyrants Fall And How Nations Survive, Dr. Marcel Dirsus explores the profound paradox that the world’s most powerful tyrants are condemned to live in constant fear. Drawing on his expertise in regime instability and political violence—credentials honed advising organizations like NATO—Dirsus dissects the core vulnerabilities of authoritarian rule. To explain this vulnerability, Dirsus introduces two core concepts: the "Golden Gun paradox," which analyzes why a despot's power is often useless when needed most, and the "Dictator's Treadmill," the perilous trade-off that makes relinquishing power more hazardous than clinging to it. This relentless struggle for survival raises the book's critical questions: Why are the seemingly insane actions of dictators often rational strategies for survival? What are a regime’s key weaknesses? And, ultimately, how can they be brought down? Dirsus provides an essential guide for anyone, from diplomats to citizens, seeking to understand the mechanics of modern authoritarianism, framing it as a crucial resource for those who wish to "constrain them at home or limit their threat abroad."

Few authors are as uniquely equipped to navigate life's beautiful, terrible contradictions as Kate Bowler. A Duke University professor with a PhD and the New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason, her academic authority is sharpened by a Stage IV cancer diagnosis. In this collection of blessings and reflections, Bowler confronts the easy promises of the self-help industry—the relentless calls to “Try harder!” or “Change your mindset.” Instead, she offers a theology of “precarity,” a term whose Latin root signifies a state “obtained by entreaty or prayer,” revealing our necessary reliance on God and neighbor. For anyone feeling overwhelmed or in pain, the book provides language for wrestling with how to be both faithful and afraid. It offers solace not through platitudes, but through the profound comfort of acknowledging our shared fragility and interdependence.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History, Anne Applebaum dismantles the 20th-century image of the lone dictator to unmask a far more menacing 21st-century reality: a transnational network she terms ‘Autocracy, Inc.’ She reveals a global alliance of strongmen from Russia, China, Venezuela, and Iran operating not as an ideological bloc but as an agglomeration of companies. Bound by a brutally pragmatic goal—preserving the opulent personal wealth their 20th-century predecessors hid while depriving their citizens of any public voice—they collaborate to survive. Exchanging financial support, the tools of repression like surveillance technology, and propaganda, they ensure mutual regime survival and grant one another impunity on the world stage. This chilling success prompts the book’s pivotal investigation: where did the autocrats’ belief that they are winning originate, how did the democratic world inadvertently consolidate it, and how can democracies now unite to defeat this challenge? Dedicated ‘For the optimists,’ the book is a call to action for those unwilling to concede the future of global freedom.

Hello and welcome to our deep dive into Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey. This is a practical, science-based guide built on a powerful premise: you are not helpless against life's tides and can actively build a happier life by managing your emotions and focusing on what truly matters. It speaks directly to those who have a good life "on paper" but still find themselves struggling for happiness.

The book tackles essential questions, such as how we can get happier even amid suffering and what the fundamental pillars of a good life are. Guiding this journey is Arthur C. Brooks, a Harvard professor whose 'Leadership and Happiness' class is famously oversubscribed. His popular Atlantic column, How to Build a Life, stems from what he calls "me-search"—his work as a social scientist to understand a subject that is naturally hard for him. This personal struggle makes his science-backed advice both relatable and deeply credible. This book is the essential owner’s manual for anyone done waiting for the universe to change.

The book's powerful framework can be distilled into a set of core ideas and keywords essential for any successful content strategy.

Today, we're diving into the new book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, by Adam Grant. Grant is a renowned organizational psychologist and a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he became the school's youngest tenured professor.

Following his influential bestsellers like Give and Take, Originals, and Think Again, this new work challenges the conventional wisdom that greatness is an innate gift. Grant argues that potential is not about our starting point but about the distance we travel. He reveals how we can unlock our own hidden potential and that of others by developing "character skills" and creating "scaffolding"—structures that provide motivation and opportunity.

The book ultimately explores a powerful question: How can we all get better at getting better and achieve greater things, regardless of where we begin?

Greetings and welcome to our deep dive on Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Critiques, and Minding Other Folks' Business by Roxane Gay. This book brings together a decade of the author’s opinion writing, with essays on everything from police brutality to the Fast & Furious franchise. It is written for readers seeking thoughtful and provocative writing to help parse complex issues and find community in times of social upheaval.

The collection explores essential questions facing our culture today: How does a writer express outrage and bear witness in a fraught political climate? What is the connective tissue linking the major social and cultural shifts of the last ten years?

Guiding us through this landscape is Roxane Gay, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and the author of New York Times-bestselling books such as Bad Feminist and Hunger, solidifying her status as a voice not just worth hearing, but one we cannot afford to ignore.

Today, we’re exploring The Creative Act: A Way of Being, the profound new work from legendary producer Rick Rubin.

This isn’t a typical “how-to” guide. Instead, Rubin presents a philosophical meditation on creativity as a fundamental aspect of being human—a birthright for everyone. He posits that artists are translators, tuning their antennae to receive messages the universe is constantly broadcasting. This book is for anyone seeking to live a more creative life, not just those in traditional artistic fields. It grapples with essential questions: How do we tune in to the universal source of creativity? And how can we overcome blocks like self-doubt to access a more innocent, childlike state of creation?

Our guide, Rick Rubin, is uniquely qualified to explore this territory. A co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and founder of American Recordings, he has won multiple GRAMMYs, including Album of the Year and Producer of the Year. He was called "the most important producer of the last 20 years" by MTV and named to Time's 2007 list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." His unparalleled career has seen him nurture creative genius across genres, from Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Jay-Z and Adele. Understanding his philosophy isn't just inspiring; it provides a strategic framework for tuning into the universal source of creativity and producing truly resonant work.

Today, we’re diving into Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Dr. Peter Attia.

The book’s central argument is that modern medicine—"Medicine 2.0"—excels at fighting "fast death" but fails against the "slow death" of chronic disease. Attia proposes "Medicine 3.0," a proactive strategy focused on extending healthspan—the quality of our years—not just our lifespan. His audience is the lay reader in their thirties to fifties who has watched elders suffer and has no desire to reenact that fate.

The book asks: What is the plan to prevent the "Four Horsemen"—heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, or type 2 diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction—before they take root?

Dr. Attia's authority was forged in the trenches: first as a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins frustrated by treating diseases too late; then as a McKinsey risk analyst mastering quantitative systems; and finally as his own patient, when a health crisis at thirty-six forced him to apply that rigor to his own biology.

Greetings and welcome to our deep dive into 'Feel-Good Productivity' by Ali Abdaal.

Described by author Mark Manson as a "much-needed antidote to hustle culture," this book, as Cal Newport puts it, "flips the conventional narrative on productivity," arguing the secret isn't discipline, but the science-backed power of joy. Aimed at ambitious people, students, and professionals, it tackles how to beat procrastination and eradicate burnout without relying on discipline.

The author, Ali Abdaal, is a Cambridge-trained doctor, entrepreneur, and the world's most-followed productivity expert who took a break from medicine to popularize the science of human flourishing, distilling everything he's learned into this guide to sustainable success.