The Next Big Idea Club’s November 2022 Nominees
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The Next Big Idea Club’s November 2022 Nominees

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The Next Big Idea Club’s November 2022 Nominees

I’m pleased to share what I consider the most promising, must-read nonfiction titles scheduled for release in November of 2022. These titles make up our first group of nominees for Season 20 of the Next Big Idea Club.

All nominated books will be shared with our Next Big Idea Club curators—Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, and Daniel Pink—who will narrow the list down to a handful of finalists and, ultimately, two official season selections.

Authors will also be invited to create a “Book Bite”, a 15-minute audio self-recording that features 5 big ideas from their book. It’s kind of like chatting with a stranger at a party—only that person just happened to write a fascinating nonfiction book!

And now, the November 2022 titles are…

Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants By James Vincent

Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants

By James Vincent
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

Beyond Measure reveals how measurement is not only deeply entwined with our experience of the world, but also how its history encompasses and shapes the human quest for knowledge. View on Amazon

Art Is Life: Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night By Jerry Saltz

Art Is Life: Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night

By Jerry Saltz
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

From the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of How to Be an Artist, a deliciously readable survey of the art world in turbulent times. View on Amazon

Hangry: A Start Up Journey By Mike Evans

Hangry: A Start Up Journey

By Mike Evans
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

A humorous, rags-to-riches, cautionary tale about the Silicon Valley upstart who founded the company in his basement and expanded it into the multi-billion dollar online food delivery colossus, even as it played havoc with his life. Not only does vision matter, but a personal vision matters. View on Amazon

The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World By Brian Wong

The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World

By Brian Wong
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

From a long-time Alibaba executive and former special assistant to Jack Ma, this is the first book to articulate how Alibaba’s unique culture and “tai chi” management principles are providing a business and economic development model for the rest of the world. View on Amazon

What Makes Us Human: An Artificial Intelligence Answers Life's Biggest Questions By Iain Thomas & Jasmine Wang

What Makes Us Human: An Artificial Intelligence Answers Life’s Biggest Questions

By Iain Thomas & Jasmine Wang
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

International bestselling poet Iain S. Thomas and prodigious researcher and innovator Jasmine Wang collaborated with OpenAI’s GPT-3, an advanced artificial intelligence. Wang and Thomas prompted GPT-3 with thousands of humanity’s greatest texts, and then asked GPT-3 our most pressing questions. Contained in this book are the conversations and exchanges that followed. View on Amazon

Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live By Kennon Sheldon

Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live

By Kennon Sheldon
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

Drawing on decades of his own groundbreaking empirical research into motivation and goal setting, Sheldon shows us that embracing the ability to choose our path in life makes us happier, healthier, and more fulfilled. He also shows that this insight can help us choose better goals—ones that are concordant with our values and that, critically, we’re more likely to actually see through. View on Amazon

Start More Than You Can Finish: A Creative Permission Slip to Unleash Your Best Ideas By Becky Blades

Start More Than You Can Finish: A Creative Permission Slip to Unleash Your Best Ideas

By Becky Blades
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

In Start More Than You Can Finish, writer, artist, and entrepreneur Becky Blades offers a powerful new mindset for our modern world: acting on more ideas makes us happier – and reveals our highest creativity. She empowers readers to become “stARTists”– initiators with a bias for action and the courage to ignite ideas – and introduces the concept of “stARTistry,” spotlighting the 4-step changemaking process we all use to subconsciously start. View on Amazon

The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth By Jeremy Rifkin

The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth

By Jeremy Rifkin
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

A wide-ranging look at the political, economic and cultural effects of the global shift from an economy based on efficiency to one based on resilience. View on Amazon

Pretty Sure You're Fine: The Health and Wellness Guide for Hypochondriacs, Overthinkers, and Worrywarts By David Vienna

Pretty Sure You’re Fine: The Health and Wellness Guide for Hypochondriacs, Overthinkers, and Worrywarts

By David Vienna
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

Packed with amusing yet comforting advice on topics from physical fitness and nutrition to motivation and work-life balance, this is the place to turn for anyone who needs to quit worrying about the little stuff (and some medium stuff, too). With input from real experts in mental and physical health fields, the advice in this book is silly, snarky, and actually reassuring. View on Amazon

Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work By Heidi Gardner & Ivan Matviak

Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work

By Heidi Gardner & Ivan Matviak
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

Filled with rich stories and cases, new empirical research, and loads of practical tips and advice, Smarter Collaboration is essential reading for leaders and managers in today’s complex, data-rich, war-for-talent environment. View on Amazon

It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO By Felix Gillette & John Koblin

It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

By Felix Gillette & John Koblin
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

As data-driven models like Netflix have taken over streaming, HBO’s artful, instinctual, and humanistic approach to storytelling is in jeopardy. Taking readers into the boardrooms and behind the camera, It’s Not TV tells the surprising, fascinating story of HBO’s ascent, its groundbreaking influence on American business, technology, and popular culture, and its increasingly precarious position in the very market it created. View on Amazon

Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life By Emily Austin

Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life

By Emily Austin
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

A lively, jargon-free tour of Epicurean strategies for diminishing anxiety, achieving satisfaction, and relishing joys. Epicurean science was famously far ahead of its time, and Austin shows that so was its ethics and psychology. Epicureanism can help us make and keep good friends, prepare for suffering, combat imposter syndrome, build trust, recognize personal limitations, value truth, cultivate healthy attitudes towards money and success, manage political anxiety, develop gratitude, savor food, and face death. View on Amazon

The World According to Proust By Joshua Landy

The World According to Proust

By Joshua Landy
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

Landy shows why the questions Proust raises are important and exciting for all of us. View on Amazon

How Do We Know Ourselves?: Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind By David Myers

How Do We Know Ourselves?: Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind

By David Myers
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

Insight into our sometimes bewildering but ever-fascinating lives, all drawn from psychology’s latest research. Engaging and intellectually provocative, Myers brings a wealth of knowledge from more than fifty years of teaching and writing about psychology to this lively and informative collection. View on Amazon

Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal By Andreas Viestad

Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal

By Andreas Viestad
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

He uses the bread that begins his dinner to trace the origins of wheat and its role in Rome’s rise as well as its downfall. With his fried artichoke antipasto, he explains olive oil’s part in the religious conflict of sixteenth-century Europe. And, from his sorbet dessert, he recounts how lemons featured in the history of the Mafia in the nineteenth century and how the hunger for sugar fueled the slave trade. His “culinary archaeology” is a flavorful journey across the dinner table and time. View on Amazon

Closing the Confidence Gap: Boost Your Peace, Your Potential, and Your Paycheck By Kelli Thompson

Closing the Confidence Gap: Boost Your Peace, Your Potential, and Your Paycheck

By Kelli Thompson
Publication Date: November 1, 2022

To close the confidence gap and see more women showing up in their full potential at work, we need more women leaders at the top of organizations. Closing the Confidence Gap will show you how to advance with confidence, despite the systemic issues that women face every day at work. View on Amazon

The Human Side of Innovation: The Power of People in Love with People By Mauro Porcini

The Human Side of Innovation: The Power of People in Love with People

By Mauro Porcini
Publication Date: November 11, 2022

PepsiCo’s award-winning chief design officer reveals the secret to creating life-changing innovations: putting human needs at the center of any design process. View on Amazon

The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Human Sciences By Katja Guenther

The Mirror and the Mind: A History of Self-Recognition in the Human Sciences

By Katja Guenther
Publication Date: November 8, 2022

From the robotic tortoises of Grey Walter and the mark test of Beulah Amsterdam and Gordon Gallup, to anorexia research and mirror neurons, the mirror test offers a window into the emergence of such fields as biology, psychology, psychiatry, animal studies, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The Mirror and the Mind offers an intriguing history of experiments in self-awareness and the advancements of the human sciences across more than a century. View on Amazon

For Profit: A History of Corporations By William Magnuson

For Profit: A History of Corporations

By William Magnuson
Publication Date: November 8, 2022

A history of how corporate innovation has shaped society, from ancient Rome to Silicon Valley. View on Amazon

How to Be Weird: An Off-Kilter Guide to Living a One-of-a-Kind Life By Eric Wilson

How to Be Weird: An Off-Kilter Guide to Living a One-of-a-Kind Life

By Eric Wilson
Publication Date: November 8, 2022

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the often monotonous nature of our day to day–moving from one rote task to the next, only to rinse and repeat the next day. Weirdness, however, is an easily accessible antidote to these feelings of languishing. The quirky, eccentric, and peculiar can take us out of our normal habits of thought and perception, surprising us by breaking up our routines and reminding us that there’s more to life than the everyday. View on Amazon

One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential By Shanna A. Hocking

One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential

By Shanna A. Hocking
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

No matter how small or inconsequential they may seem to others, the Bold Moves you choose bring you closer to your goals every day―and have the power to change the trajectory of your personal life and career. In the pages of this book, you’ll find the support you need, and see that the best time to start making Bold Moves is right here, right now. View on Amazon

Still Broke: Walmart's Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism By Rick Wartzman

Still Broke: Walmart’s Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism

By Rick Wartzman
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

In the richest nation on earth, how did the bar get set so low? How did America find itself relying on an army of low-wage workers without ever acknowledging their most basic needs? And if Walmart’s brand of change is the best we have, how can we ever expect to build a healthy society? View on Amazon

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World By David Sax

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World

By David Sax
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

For many people, the best parts of quarantine have been the least digital ones: baking bread, playing board games, going hiking. We used our hands and hugged our children and breathed fresh air. This book suggests that if we want a healthy future, we need to choose not convenience but community, not technology but humanity. View on Amazon

The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World's Imagination By Jens Andersen

The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination

By Jens Andersen
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

The extraordinary inside story of the LEGO company—producer of the most beloved and popular toy on the planet—based on unprecedented access to the founding family that still owns the company, chronicling the brand’s improbable journey to become the empire that it is today. It is an ancient cure that’s up to the challenge of addressing the dysfunction of our times. View on Amazon

You Are Not Expected to Understand This: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World By Torie Bosch

You Are Not Expected to Understand This: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World

By Torie Bosch
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

Torie Bosch brings together many of today’s leading technology experts to provide new perspectives on the codes that shape our lives. Contributors discuss a host of topics, such as how university databases were programmed long ago to accept only two genders, what the person who programmed the very first pop-up ad was thinking at the time, the first computer worm, the Bitcoin white paper, and perhaps the most famous seven words in Unix history: “You are not expected to understand this.” View on Amazon

Every Family Has A Story: How We Inherit Love and Loss By Julia Samuel

Every Family Has A Story: How We Inherit Love and Loss

By Julia Samuel
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

With her usual warmth and wisdom, bestselling psychotherapist Julia Samuel explores the family: what we inherit and how we can change. Revealing forgiveness and learning amidst trauma and hardship, this is an honest and compassionate meditation on what we inherit and how we can create the families we wish for. View on Amazon

Portable Magic: The History of Our Long Love Affair with Books By Emma Smith

Portable Magic: The History of Our Long Love Affair with Books

By Emma Smith
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

Smith uncovers how this composite artisanal object has, for centuries, embodied and extended relationships between readers, nations, ideologies and cultures, in signifi cant and unpredictable ways. Ultimately, Smith illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal – and more turbulent – than we tend to imagine: books do not simply refl ect but shape us in their own image. View on Amazon

The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World's Greatest Salesman By Carmine Gallo

The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman

By Carmine Gallo
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

The Amazon founder shares the traits that made Isaacson’s innovators irresistible subjects. These qualities include a passionate curiosity, fervent imagination, and a child-like sense of wonder. Bezos also has an intense “personal passion” for skills that he requires Amazonians to learn: writing, communication, and storytelling. View on Amazon

Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age By Heather Ford

Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age

By Heather Ford
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

The facts that appear on Wikipedia are often the result of protracted power struggles over how data are created and used, how history is written and by whom, and the very definition of facts in a digital age. View on Amazon

How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: A History By Samantha Cole

How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: A History

By Samantha Cole
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

Virtually every significant development that defines the Internet we know and love (and hate) today—privacy issues, online payments and online banking, dating, social media, streaming technology, mass data collection—came out the meeting of sexuality and technology. The kicker is, not only did sexuality vastly influence the Internet, but the Internet arguably changed modern human sexuality. View on Amazon

Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon By William Cohan

Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon

By William Cohan
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

Beginning with its founding, innovations, and exponential growth through acquisitions and mergers, Cohan plumbs the depths of GE’s storied management culture, its pioneering doctrine of shareholder value, and its seemingly hidden blind spots, to reveal that GE wasn’t immune from the hubris and avoidable mistakes suffered by many other corporations. View on Amazon

Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe By Brian Thomas Swimme

Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe

By Brian Thomas Swimme
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

From the host and cocreator of PBS’s Journey of the Universe, a fresh look at how the rich collision between science and spirituality has influenced contemporary consciousness. View on Amazon

Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health--and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More By Christopher Palmer

Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health–and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More

By Christopher Palmer
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

Palmer also sheds light on the new treatment pathways this theory opens up—which apply to all mental disorders, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, alcoholism, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, autism, and even schizophrenia. Brain Energy pairs cutting-edge science with practical advice and strategies to help people reclaim their mental health. View on Amazon

Wealth Habits: Six Ordinary Steps to Achieve Extraordinary Financial Freedom By Candy Valentino

Wealth Habits: Six Ordinary Steps to Achieve Extraordinary Financial Freedom

By Candy Valentino
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

Wealth Habits is not a flashy book. It’s a gritty book that will teach you how to do those ordinary things well in order to create, grow, and retain wealth over time. By following the six proven steps Valentino followed in her own ascent to wealth, you can achieve sustainable, extraordinary wealth too. View on Amazon

Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life By Jonathan Lear

Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life

By Jonathan Lear
November 15, 2022

Lear considers our bewilderment in the face of planetary catastrophe. He examines the role of the humanities in expanding our imaginative and emotional repertoire. He asks how we might live with the realization that cultures, to which we traditionally turn for solace, are themselves vulnerable. He explores how mourning can help us thrive, the role of moral exemplars in shaping our sense of the good, and the place of gratitude in human life. View on Amazon

Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe By Ian Kershaw

Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe

By Ian Kershaw
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

A masterful reckoning with how character conspired with opportunity to create the modern age’s uniquely devastating despots, Hitler—and how and why other countries found better paths. The modern era saw the emergence of individuals who had command over a terrifying array of instruments of control, persuasion and death. Whole societies were reshaped and wars were fought, often with a merciless contempt for the most basic norms. At the summit of these societies were leaders whose personalities somehow enabled them to do whatever they wished, regardless of the consequences for others. View on Amazon

The Entrepreneurs: The Relentless Quest for Value By Derek Lidow

The Entrepreneurs: The Relentless Quest for Value

By Derek Lidow
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

Telling the captivating stories of people from many different cultures over thousands of years, Lidow shows how entrepreneurs transform the world through relentless innovation. Far from being heroic lone individuals, they copy and then add to the inventions of others. By highlighting the fundamental qualities of innovation throughout history, this book provides indispensable new perspective on how it is shaping our present and future. View on Amazon

Win When They Say You Won't: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success By Daphne Jones

Win When They Say You Won’t: Break Through Barriers and Keep Leveling Up Your Success

By Daphne Jones
Publication Date: November 15, 2022

Provides the inspiration, insights, and tools you need to deconstruct any momentum that has been set against you and take your career to the next level―starting now. View on Amazon

Forgiveness: An Alternative Account By Matthew Ichihashi Potts

Forgiveness: An Alternative Account

By Matthew Ichihashi Potts
Publication Date: November 22, 2022

Explores the complex moral terrain of forgiveness, which he claims has too often served as a salve to the conscience of power rather than as an instrument of healing or justice. View on Amazon

Deliberate Calm: How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World By Jacqueline Brassey & Aaron De Smet & Michiel Kruyt

Deliberate Calm: How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World

By Jacqueline Brassey & Aaron De Smet & Michiel Kruyt
Publication Date: November 29, 2022

A trio of McKinsey & Company veterans draws from a unique combination of psychology, neuroscience, and consciousness practices plus a combined 50-plus years of international board room experience to offer a unique approach to learning and leading with awareness and intentional choice, even amidst the most challenging circumstances. View on Amazon

How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future By Maria Ressa

How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

By Maria Ressa
Publication Date: November 29, 2022

The story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts, and how social media exploded an “atom bomb” online that is killing our freedoms. Ressa maps a network of disinformation—a heinous web of cause and effect—that has netted the globe: from Duterte’s drug wars to America’s Capitol Hill; Britain’s Brexit to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare; Facebook and Silicon Valley to our own clicks and votes. Told from the frontline of this critical digital war. View on Amazon

Leading Through Inflation: And Recession and Stagflation By Ram Charan & Geri Willigan

Leading Through Inflation: And Recession and Stagflation

By Ram Charan & Geri Willigan
Publication Date: November 29, 2022

As you learn to lead through inflation, you will be better prepared for recession and stagflation as well. You will know how to protect your cash, your customers, and your capital investments. Your psychology will shift from anxiety and fear to optimism and excitement as you define the path to a reimagined future. View on Amazon

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