Author: Allen Cheng

Difficult conversations are a constant throughout life, at work, at home, and in the world. We never outgrow them, or get a promotion that saves us from them, or meet a person who’s so perfect for us we never have to have them.

But difficult conversations, if we engage in them successfully, are the mark of a healthy relationship. In fact, the success and survival of any relationship, business or personal, depends on the ability of those involved to master difficult conversations. _Difficult Conversations_ will help you ask for that raise, bring up issues with your spouse, understand your kids better, and get to the bottom of your feud with your neighbor.

_Born a Crime_ is the story of a strong-willed black mother and her mixed-race child as they traverse life in South Africa during apartheid. When comedian Trevor Noah was born in the mid-1980s, his birth was a crime under the laws of apartheid, forbade whites and blacks from mixing and procreating. Growing up during and after apartheid, Noah struggled to understand where he belonged in this racially divided environment.

Through anecdotes from Noah and his mother’s life and details regarding the elements and consequences of apartheid, Noah provides an insider’s perspective of racism, survival, abuse, love, and the importance of heritage in a society built on difference and oppression.

In _The 48 Laws of Power_, Robert Greene asserts that whether you like it or not, you’re part of a never-ending game of power. You’re either striving for and wielding power, or you’re a pawn being played by someone more powerful than you. You choose your role.

This book is for those who prefer to be players rather than pawns. To turn you from an amateur into a master player, Greene has codified 48 laws of power based on historical examples of people who’ve excelled or failed at wielding power, with glorious or bloody results (or both). Some key principles you’ll learn: use your enemies, keep others dependent on you, say as little as possible, take credit for others’ work, and don’t get your hands dirty. You can choose to apply or dismiss these rules – but you can’t escape them.

Is your company focused on the right things? Do you really understand what goals will move your company forward, and how to measure them? OKRs can help. _Measure What Matters_ shows you how to use the OKR management system to identify your priorities, set ambitious goals, clearly measure and track them, and motivate and align everyone on your team.

This is the system that helped Larry Page and Sergey Brin turn a small startup called Google into one of the most ambitious and innovative companies in the world. Whether your business is large or small, OKRs are invaluable tools. Learn to implement the same management system used by Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Disney, Twitter, and Spotify.

Self-deception—our tendency to see the world around us in a distorted way—is a common personal and organizational problem. _Leadership and Self-Deception_ explains how self-deception derails personal relationships and keeps organizations and leaders from achieving the results they want. Instead of focusing on producing results, many leaders are trapped “in the box” of distorted thinking—they blame others to justify their own failures and can’t see how they themselves are a problem. They create the “people” problems that plague many organizations. Through a business fable, this book tells leaders how to get “out of the box”—but you don’t have to be a leader to use the principles to change your life and workplace.

_Hidden Figures_ tells the story of a group of African-American women who, over a period of over 25 years, made major contributions to the US space program. Working in the American South during the Civil Rights Era, they overcame both race- and gender-based discrimination to launch brilliant and storied careers as mathematicians and engineers. These women were the unsung protagonists who shaped America’s destiny, playing a major role in the great drama of the nation’s history.

Do you feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day? That you’re constantly checking things off your to-do list but still don’t have enough time for the important things? **Your problem might be that you’re working efficiently, but not effectively.**

In _First Things First, _Stephen R. Covey, author of _The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, _presents a time-management approach that focuses on priorities, or “first things.” This approach teaches you to use your time effectively, meaning you focus more on _what_ you’re spending your time on than _how much time_ your spending. Learn how to identify your priorities; schedule your time at the daily and weekly levels; and find win-win opportunities among people.

_Educated: A Memoir_ is Tara Westover’s autobiography. In it, she shows us her transformation from being the daughter of survivalist, fundamentalist, anti-science, anti-medicine, and anti-education parents, to becoming a Cambridge-educated historian. Westover gains the strength to break free from the ideological chains of her youth and discovers the agency to make her own choices about how she sees and experiences the world.

While it is about one individual’s journey, _Educated_ speaks to universal themes of self-liberation, the power of education, the perils of extreme ideology, and the trauma of domestic abuse.

In _David and Goliath_, Malcolm Gladwell argues that what we often think of as disadvantages may actually be advantages, and that advantages of goliaths may turn into disadvantages. Gladwell shows us that underdog victories are less miraculous (and more achievable) than they seem, and sheds light on how we can reinterpret our own weaknesses to locate new sources of power.

At the age of 24, _New York Post_ reporter Susannah Cahalan is stricken with a terrible disease. In a matter of weeks, it morphs from paranoia into hallucinations, seizures, and psychosis. It resists diagnosis even by the most prestigious doctors in the US. Only when Susannah becomes catatonic, staring death in the face, do two brilliant neurologists discover the problem: Susannah is suffering from an autoimmune disease that’s causing her antibodies to attack her own brain.

Cahalan’s harrowing portrait shows how frail disease makes us, ready to accept any diagnosis, even when we know it’s wrong; how the US healthcare system serves some patients better than others; and how maintaining a positive attitude is critical to recovery.