Latest news with #nonfiction
Forbes
14 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Read One Of These Books On Your Summer Vacation: Become A More Hopeful And Compassionate Leader
Trade out one trashy novel for learning about leadership. Compassionate Leadership is using your head and heart to inspire and influence others, so they can, in turn, inspire and influence others. This approach to leadership has proven to improve ROI, morale, innovation and retention. As a contributor focused on compassionate leadership, I continually scan the media for positive and hopeful stories featuring inspiring leaders. In the current swirl of war, political unrest, violence, and economic uncertainty, it can be difficult to find hope in the news media. Therefore, I have turned to books that focus on solving problems through analysis and innovation, to keep hope alive. I love nonfiction books and years ago, I read a book that spurred me on by Tom Corley, in his book Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals (2010), found in his five-year study of 177 self-made millionaires that: I have been striving to read one nonfiction book a month since and I may meet my goal this year, thanks to my efforts to reduce my news consumption. Here are three of the six I have read so far that I highly recommend, for people wanting to become better global citizens and leaders: Book #1 Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference By Rutger Bregman (2025): The author is a Dutch Philospher who argues that many bright, capable individuals—especially in fields like finance and consulting, the so-called 'Bermuda Triangle of talent'—are squandering their potential on high‑paying but low‐impact roles. He urges readers to embrace 'moral ambition', a mindset that defines success by societal impact rather than salary or prestige. It may sound boring, but he expertly makes the argument for a new professional path as the answer to many problems using historical references and present-day heroes. He has even created a school to help people transition into careers that make a difference called The School of Morale Ambition, which offers fellowships to professionals ready to work on world problems, such as food scarcity. Book #2: A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (2025): Read this raw and raw book, a master class in compassionate leadership. Travel with the author as she tells her life story from her small-town upbringing to global leadership as New Zealand's Prime Minister (2017–2023), all while raising her daughter as the second-ever elected head of government to give birth in office The memoir highlights how empathy and kindness shaped her leadership style and include her experience leading through the worst mass shooting in her country as well as her response to the the COVID‑19 pandemic. It also chronicles the story of what led her to leave public life after dealing with personal and political challenges that left her 'having nothing left in her tank'. For those of you who prefer biographies told through documentary, you can soon watch her story on Apple TV. Book #3:Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant (2023) In the introduction of his brilliant book, Grant reminds us that 'all talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not'. I read this book during our government's overzealous DEI reforms, and it gave me hope that we will return to common-sense policies that provide all our citizens with a chance at education and professional equity. He challenges the myth that talent alone determines success. Instead, he argues that growth, character, and opportunity play an even more significant role in realizing our potential. He emphasizes that: The book weaves together stories of unsung achievers, research studies, and insights from psychology and education to demonstrate that the most successful people often started from behind—and achieved success not by raw talent, but by capitalizing on overlooked opportunities. This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things and offers compassionate leaders a thoughtful roadmap for helping everyone reach their potential. I hope this helps you to escape the grind of the news cycle and find more inspiration through reading. You can find more resources about Compassionate Leadership here.
Entrepreneur
18-06-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Learn From Top Nonfiction Books Without Reading Them All With This App
Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you'll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. Nearly 60% of entrepreneurs struggle to switch off from work at the end of the day, according to data from education and career platform Zipdo. That means they're likely not settling in with a good book, which is where Headway comes in. This app offers a convenient way to work on your self-growth, with access to summaries of some of the world's best nonfiction. Right now, you can take advantage of a lifetime subscription to Headway Premium for just $47.99 (reg. $299.95) with code READ20, the lowest price ever, through July 20. Join more than 15 million people learning in their free time With Headway Premium, you can learn something new in just 15 minutes, with bite-size summaries of nonfiction books that fit into even the busiest entrepreneur's schedule. You can choose to listen to a professionally narrated audio summary, whether on your commute, at the gym, or in line at the grocery store. Or, if you'd prefer to read, there are written summaries available as well. More than 1,500 summaries are already available, with more added each month. You'll never run out of content, with plenty to peruse in categories like personal development, business strategies, health, and wellness. Aside from providing a boost of knowledge when you have a few minutes, Headway keeps you invested with a game-like approach. You can earn achievements and master new skills as you use the app. Headway's summaries give you the key ideas and principles from nonfiction books, though they aren't a substitute for reading the full version. It's a great way to discover new interests, so you can potentially dig into the whole book or dive deeper into a topic. Take advantage of this lifetime subscription to Headway Premium, now just $47.99 (reg. $299.95) with code READ20, the lowest price ever, until July 20. StackSocial prices subject to change.
Entrepreneur
17-06-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Turn Your Professional Expertise into a Book—You Don't Even Have to Write It Yourself
All you need is Youbooks AI to generate publish-ready non-fiction manuscripts of your ideas. Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you'll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. We've all seen the stats: a huge percentage of professionals say they want to write a book. But between client calls, internal meetings, and just keeping your inbox manageable, it's no surprise that the manuscript remains a Google Doc titled "Book_Outline_FINAL_v3". That's where Youbooks comes in. It's an AI-powered non-fiction book generator built for entrepreneurs who have insights worth sharing with the world, but not 300+ hours to write them down. And unlike most tools in the productivity or publishing space, this one comes with a lifetime subscription for $49 (reg. $540)—no monthly fees and no subscription fatigue necessary. There's no need to even pick up a pen Youbooks pulls together the power of multiple AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama) and a 1,000-step production pipeline to create structured, research-backed manuscripts up to 300,000 words. It even integrates real-time online research to keep things current and customizable, down to tone and voice. The platform's credit system gives you 150,000 monthly AI credits, enough to produce dozens of full-length drafts annually. You can export in formats like PDF, EPUB, DOCX, or Markdown—and yes, you get full commercial rights to your content. That means you're free to publish, monetize, or pitch to traditional publishers without any of the usual licensing headaches. While YouBooks takes your ideas and makes them come to fruition in manuscript form, it's not a magic wand—you'll still need to edit, review, and shape your book. However, this tool handles the heavy lifting that often stops the process before it starts. If you've been sitting on an idea for a leadership guide, professional memoir, or industry handbook for fellow colleagues, this could be your easiest on-ramp to publishing. And with a one-time price tag that's lower than most online courses, it may also be one of the smartest. Good ideas shouldn't stay stuck in your notes app forever. Put your ideas into a long-form manuscript with help from this Youbooks lifetime subscription, now just $49 while supplies last. Youbooks – AI Non-Fiction Book Generator: Lifetime Subscription See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change.
The Guardian
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on the Women's prize for nonfiction: shining a light where it's badly needed
Female nonfiction writers are paid less on average, receive fewer reviews and win fewer prizes than men. Unsurprisingly, this means that women sell fewer books. So far this year, more than 60% of titles on the UK's hardback and paperback nonfiction bestseller lists have been by men. Kate Mosse wants to change this. Famously, she set up the Women's prize for fiction after there was not a single woman on the 1991 Booker shortlist. This year Ms Mosse's award celebrates its 30th anniversary. With previous winners including Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Maggie O'Farrell, it has changed the publishing landscape to the extent that some suggest it is now redundant: last year, five out of the six books on the Booker prize shortlist were by women, and the winner was Samantha Harvey. Indeed, such is the pre-eminence of female novelists that there is talk of a crisis in men's fiction, and plans for an independent publisher, Conduit Books, especially for male authors. Nonfiction publishing, however, is a strikingly different story. Hence Ms Mosse's latest project: the Women's prize for nonfiction, which aims to do for female authors of serious narrative nonfiction what has already been achieved with fiction. Last year, Naomi Klein's quasi-memoir Doppelganger, about conspiracy theories and truth in politics, was the award's first winner. Last week, The Story of a Heart, by the doctor and writer Rachel Clarke, became the second, with her moving interweaving of the story of two children connected by a heart transplant with the history of heart surgery. Nonfiction books by women are not the only ones in need of help. With a few notable exceptions (including Prince Harry's memoir Spare and James Clear's self-help bestseller Atomic Habits), the overall picture for nonfiction publishing is bleak: last year, specialist and trade nonfiction combined had their lowest sales, in money terms, since 2015. In another blow for the publishing industry, last week a National Literacy Trust report revealed that reading for enjoyment among children and young people in the UK is at its lowest level in two decades. Only a quarter of teenage boys said they read books in their free time. One understandable response to figures like these is to emphasise the value of reading per se. But who and what we read matters as well as whether we do it. Part of the imbalance in nonfiction has been a historical perception of male expertise, particularly on certain topics. As with bias in class and race, publishing has been slow to address this proactively. In her 2021 book, The Authority Gap, examining why women are still taken less seriously than men, Mary Ann Sieghart stresses the importance of encouraging boys to read books about girls, and for men to seek out women's voices. There have been many efforts to address such discrimination constructively. Women Also Know Stuff, for example, is a database of experts created with the aim of increasing female representation. 'Most women fight wars on two fronts,' Rebecca Solnit wrote in her essay Men Explain Things to Me. 'One for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value.' For the help it offers to female authors fighting such battles, as well as the attention it brings to new books, the Women's prize for nonfiction should be welcomed.
BBC News
11-06-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 'amplifies female voices'
A palliative care doctor shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction says the prestigious book award "amplifies" the importance of female Rachel Clarke, from Oxford, and MP Yuan Yang, who represents Earley and Woodley in Berkshire, spoke to BBC South ahead of Thursday's award ceremony in London. Both women said they were delighted to be on the shortlist and hoped it would bring new readers to their work. "The voices of women in non-fiction are often overlooked and eclipsed by male voices," said Dr Clarke. "This prize amplifies their voices and says to girls and women that their stories matter."Dr Clarke said she was compelled to write The Story of a Heart when she read newspaper articles about nine-year-old Max who received a heart donation from a girl called Keira - also nine - who had suffered catastrophic injuries in a car said she approached Keira's family incredibly carefully. "I knew they would be entrusting an incredibly personal story to me. I wanted to honour the little girl that Keira was," Dr Clarke said. The book follows the medical journey that ultimately saved Max's life and tells the stories of those who helped along the way: doctors, nurses and paramedics. Dr Clarke, who specialises in palliative care, draws comparisons between being a good doctor and being a good author. "As a doctor you have to care about people, you have to listen to their stories and you have to communicate stories back to them," she said. "One of the saddest things is when the patient thinks the story of their life is over. Sometimes you can help people realise that life still can be worth living with a terminal illness because it absolutely can." Yuan Yang's book, Private Revolutions, Coming of Age in a New China, tells the stories of four women growing up in the '80s and '90s in a country that was rapidly changing. Ms Yang, who won her seat for Labour last year, started writing it while working in Beijing as a journalist. "Some of the women I met had stories that were so immense that they couldn't be captured in newspaper reporting," she said. "I wanted to explore what it's like to live through such a huge economic and social transformation."Ms Yang, the first Chinese-born British MP, moved to the UK when she was four. She said she often considered what her life would have been like had her parents chosen to remain in China."I'm really glad they settled down in Reading and gave me and my brother a more stable life. For many of my contemporaries in China their lives continued to be unsettled." When Ms Yang was born in 1989 the vast majority of China was agricultural. "Most people were living below the poverty line, my dad's parents included. So you had millions of migrant workers who moved to the city to work in factories and often left children behind in the village," she said, "Moving from farmland to megacities like Beijing and Shanghai is a huge acceleration. "I'm interested in what that does to people on an economic level but also in terms of their relationships with their families and their loved ones." Both women say they were "humbled" to be shortlisted for such a prestigious prize alongside fellow nominees Neneh Cherry, Helen Scales, Chloe Dalton and Clare Yang said she hoped it brought the lives of the women in her book to a greater number of readers. "It was published just before the general election was called in 2024 when my main focus was on campaigning and then setting up the office," she said. "I'm just grateful that the book found its way to readers and to these judges - and I hope it will find its way to more people." You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
