’Tis the season to set aside that beachy novel and dive into the latest slate of business books and tell-alls. This fall will see a slew of releases by big-name authors hitting the shelves, from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign memoir to Richard Branson’s new autobiography. Here, 10 of the most hotly anticipated titles of the season.
Forged in Crisis
By Nancy Koehn
A historian at Harvard Business School, Koehn mines accounts of pivotal moments in the lives of five famous figures, including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, to deliver broader insights about what leadership should look like. Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg are among the book’s early acolytes.
World Without Mind
By Franklin Foer
Foer, formerly the editor of The New Republic, sets out to examine how the Internet’s biggest players (Facebook, Amazon, Google) have radically altered the way we access and spread information—or misinformation. Spoiler alert: He’s not a fan.
What Happened
By Hillary Rodham Clinton
It’s a question pundits will be puzzling over for a long time. In her new book, Clinton rehashes the 2016 presidential election, easily the most bizarre in recent memory. The release is shaping up to be a return to the public stage for the onetime candidate. She’s planning a national tour around the launch. (This time, she’ll go to Wisconsin.)
Reset
By Ellen Pao
In 2012, Pao sued venerable VC firm Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination. She lost the case but helped touch off what would become a series of revelations about Silicon Valley’s sexist, systematically exclusionary underbelly. Now, in her debut book, Pao opens up about why she took Kleiner Perkins to court—and outlines strategies for how the tech industry can (finally) start to fix its gender problem.
A World of Three Zeros
By Muhammad Yunus
Yunus pioneered the concept of microcredit in the 1970s and 1980s and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Since then he’s come to believe that capitalism today is broken. In his new book, Yunus makes the case for a new system, based on serving human needs, not maximizing profit, that should take its place.
Finding My Virginity
By Richard Branson
Branson doesn’t really need an introduction, but here’s one anyway: Founder of the Virgin Group, the billionaire serial entrepreneur and investor has become an inspirational figure. Now, two decades after his memoir Losing My Virginity, he’s back with a sequel reflecting on the lessons learned over 50 years in business.
Hit Refresh
By Satya Nadella
Part memoir, part business story, Microsoft CEO Nadella’s new book interweaves personal memories (including stories from his childhood in India) with his strategy for reclaiming Microsoft’s position as a cutting-edge leader in the tech industry.
The Startup Way
By Eric Ries
In his follow-up to Lean Startup, a manual for
early-stage founders, Ries examines how the GEs, Amazons, and Toyotas of the world can use entrepreneurial management to drive growth.
The Four Tendencies
By Gretchen Rubin
Our Founding Fathers understood that the pursuit of happiness is right up there with life and liberty as an inalienable right. Rubin made a name and career for herself helping Americans get there with a series of books on human nature, most notably The Happiness Project. Her latest delves into a new set of personality profiles (à la Myers-Briggs) meant to help readers understand and harness their strengths and weaknesses for contentment in and out of the office.
Unleashing the Innovators
By Jim Stengel
How do you infuse startup DNA into a Fortune 500 company? The question isn’t new, and yet few corporations are able to crack the code. In his second book, Stengel, the former marketing chief of Procter & Gamble, lays out how legacy companies can inject speed, innovation, and new technology into their operations.
A version of this article appears in the Sept. 15, 2017 issue of Fortune with the headline “Your Back-to-Work Reading List.” We’ve included affiliate links in this article. Click here to learn what those are.
