Books like Palaces for the People

I love this book because Rebecca Solnit dissolves the disaster movie myth that panic and chaos take over when catastrophe strikes.

Instead, she shows something I have found again in my own fieldwork: shocks often bring out extraordinary calm, generosity, and solidarity, and the very disruption that Hollywood turns into looting and stampedes actually builds social connections rather than severing them.

That is where the book's title comes from, and it captures something I have spent my career trying to prove with data. Solnit proved it with stories, and reading it felt like meeting a kindred spirit who arrived at the same truth from a completely different direction.

I love this book because Jane Jacobs refused to see cities as machines for moving people efficiently from place to place. 

Instead, she showed me that healthy cities are built around the small, unplanned collisions of everyday life: the conversations on a stoop, the wait at a bus bench, the chance run-in at a corner store.

Reading her, I started noticing how sidewalks, benches, and parks aren't just infrastructure; they're the physical architecture of trust. That idea has stayed with me throughout my own career studying resilience: the places where people bump into each other repeatedly are exactly the places that hold communities together when disaster strikes.

I love this book because Mario Small found something remarkable in a place most of us walk past without a second thought: the neighborhood daycare.

He shows how even a single parent dropping off a child each morning walks away with more than free time; they gain information, access to resources, and the beginnings of a relationship with another parent standing in the same doorway.

As someone who studies how communities build resilience, I found this quietly radical. Small proves that some of our most powerful social infrastructure is not a park or a library at all, but an overlooked, underfunded building doing exactly the work we need it to do.

I love this book because Ray Oldenburg convinced me that a society built only around homes and offices is a sick society.

He calls the cafes, coffee shops, and neighborhood bars our "third places," and once I read his argument, I could not stop seeing how much of my own sense of belonging comes from exactly these spots, not the ones where I work or sleep.

As someone who has spent years studying what holds communities together, I found in Oldenburg both a name and a theory for something I had always felt but never articulated: we need places that ask nothing of us but our presence.

It’s hard to call any David Mitchell book a “sequel” since he writes in one big interconnected universe spanning multiple time periods, but Slade House was my entry point into his wonderful world, and I haven’t looked back.

Short and eerie, the five interconnected short stories (each set 9 years apart) making up his seventh novel serve as a perfect standalone primer to Mitchell’s special brand of magical realism and recurring characters.

I feel that understanding and being able to work with all kinds of people is really the key to success in business (and honestly, in life in general). I consider myself a damn good communicator, but I still learned SO much in this book to take my leadership in that area to the next level.

It’s also not just about speaking and relationships, but taking in all of the cues in situation (verbal, visual, context, etc). This should be required reading for anyone working with people (which is most of us!). 

I spent a decade of my life working in conflict resolution, including as a Treaty negotiator defining Indigenous rights. And honestly, my earlier years as a female geologist in remote male-dominated bush camps had me learning to deal with conflict on a daily basis.

This book bravely declares what I intuited, namely that we have to take a break from the fear-driven pushing match and find the power of our ability to act out of love. It feels so courageous for him to state this. It requires a broad understanding of the nature of love, which Kahane has. He also describes how we need both powers to be successful, using inspiring stories of bringing together large groups of people to cause social change.

We are doing a great job of dismantling the glass ceiling held over our daughters and changing the way we raise girls. We tell our girls, “You can do anything,” and “Don’t let your gender hold you back!” But we are not doing the same for our sons. And that is why I love this book.

This book is written for a YA reader, but it is also great for parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, religious leaders, teachers, and coaches—really, anyone with a boy in their life. It helps all of us better understand how we should raise boys. We should teach them empathy, create caregiving opportunities for them, and teach them the words they need to express themselves. 

Deep Economy takes both macro- and micro-economics and breaks them down to their most simplest levels. Examining what we have learned over time from our expanding economy, McKibben examines all of the positive and negative impacts that have occurred during our country’s growth.

With a focus on understanding how groundbreaking innovations can disrupt numerous industries, Deep Economy takes the approach on what leaders can learn from the past and how breakthroughs can (and will) have unintended consequences whether they are positive or negative. Recognizing these patterns and incorporating them into our business decisions can only help us make better decisions.

This book was a powerful reminder of the importance of community and connection in our lives. This book made me realize how critical it is for us to show up for each other as humans, and it inspired me to be part of a future where we are deeply connected and caring for one another.

Mia teaches us how to rebuild that sense of belonging we’ve lost, guiding us to embrace vulnerability, generosity, and interdependence. Her message is right on time, especially as she challenges the isolation of the "American Dream" and invites us to lean on each other for support.

This book has truly influenced how I want to show up in the world and be a better human.