Each year the National Women’s History Alliance designates a theme for Women’s History Month, and this year’s theme, “Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations,” celebrates the “collective strength, equality, and influence of women who have dedicated their lives to education, mentorship, and leadership, shaping the minds and futures of all generations.”
With that in mind, we put together a short list of books about money, capitalism, businesses, and leadership that were written by women to create our very own Women’s History Month reading list.
CAPITALISM AND MONEY
Taming the street: The old guard, the new deal, and FDR’s fight to regulate American capitalism
By Diana B. Henriques
This book describes how President Franklin D. Roosevelt battled to regulate Wall Street in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and how those fights shaped the way “other people’s money” is managed today. The book raises an urgent question as we once again see inequity rising to the same 1929 levels: What does capitalism owe to the common good?
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Give people money: How a universal basic income would end poverty, revolutionize work, and remake the world
By Annie Lowry
Lowry examines the universal basic income movement from a variety of perspectives and travels around the world to see how the concept has actually played out in studies and experiments for real people. The author explores the challenges the movement faces and why the potential to uplift lives is worth the effort.
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Vulture capitalism: Corporate crimes, backdoor bailouts, and the death of freedom
By Grace Blakeley
This book exposes the mythology of the free-market we have been sold and highlights how corporate interests have been slowly pushing governments away from democracy toward oligarchy and monopoly for over a century and leaving everyday people behind.
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BUSINESS PROFILES
No filter: The inside story of Instagram
By Sarah Frier
With interviews from the founders, employees, executives, and influences around the world, this book examines our society’s relationship with technology and the way we eat, travel, and communicate with one another. The author explains the influence and power Instagram wields in society and how many of its business decisions had cultural consequences for not just its users, but everyday people.
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An ugly truth: Inside Facebook’s battle for domination
By Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang
The writers show how Facebook’s missteps were not an anomaly but an inevitability as that was how the company was built to perform. This book details how Facebook was mishandling users’ data, spreading misinformation and amplifying polarizing views while claiming to be connecting the world.
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The Everything War: Amazon’s ruthless quest to own the world and remake corporate power
By Dana Mattioli
This book is a hard-hitting analysis of Amazon’s endless and by-all-means-necessary pursuit of total domination. Despite the company’s stated focus on customer satisfaction, The Everything War shows the exploitative and abusive methods Amazon used to stay on top and how it did so for many years without scrutiny across the globe.
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Mood machine: The rise of Spotify and the costs of the perfect playlist
By Liz Pelly
Pelly examines the creation and evolution of Spotify and how its opaque business model has consequences for both musicians and listeners. The author takes a unique approach to examining the business of streaming music that will change the way readers think about their own consumption habits and how they view music.
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The devil’s playbook: Big tobacco, Juul, and the addiction of a new generation
By Lauren Etter
Etter outlines how Juul’s greed and ambition to disrupt the tobacco industry ended up co-opting its deceptive practices. The result wreaked havoc on American health, especially underage consumers, who were deceived and gaslit while the company put profits ahead of principles.
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The lost bank: The story of Washington Mutual – The biggest bank failure in American history
By Kirsten Grind
This book highlights the rise and collapse of a single institution that impacted trust, fortunes, and the marketplace for risk around the world. The author’s reporting details how one of America’s most respected banks was transformed into a weapon of mass financial destruction by gamblers in suits.
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WOMEN IN THE BUSINESS WORLD
The Authority Gap: Why women are still taken less seriously than men, and what we can do about it
By Mary Ann Sieghart
This book provides a startling perspective on the unseen bias women experience at work every day by using a wealth of data and interviews. The author outlines key ways to address and counteract systemic sexism in a way that benefits everyone. As the summary states, this book will make you angry, but it will also inspire you.
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Invisible women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men
By Caroline Criado Perez
Invisible Women brings together a range of case studies, stories, and new research from all over the world that show the multitude of ways women are excluded from the foundation of the world we live in and exposes the gender data gap. Biased data that excludes women impacts government policy, technology, urban planning, the workplace, and so many more aspects of our lives.
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Fair shake: Women and the fight to build a just economy
By Naomi Cahn, June Carbone and Nancy Levi
The authors look at why women’s progress has stalled in the workplace and how, despite more women in the workforce, wage gaps continue and women are still punished for employing the same tactics as men. As the publisher’s summary states, this is not a “fix the woman” book, it’s a “fix the system” book.
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Pay up: The future of women and work (and why it’s different than you think)
By Reshma Saujani
Saujani confronts corporate feminism and lays out key steps for creating lasting change to redefine the workplace with women in mind. The author dismantles the myth of “having it all” and argues for a sweeping cultural shift as the costs of inaction have become too great to ignore.
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Right kind of wrong: The science of failing well
By Amy Edmondson
Created out of decades of research that will transform your relationship with failure, this book illustrates how to know when failure is your friend and when it can be harmful by using vivid, real-life stories that can help readers replace shame and blame with curiosity and personal growth.
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How to be successful without hurting men’s feelings: Non-threatening leadership strategies for women
By Sarah Cooper
A comedic and lighthearted way of calling out the double standards and everyday sexism women experience in the workplace. Filled with satire and wit, this book illustrates how women can become leaders and succeed, without harming the fragile male ego along the way. If all else fails, the book comes with a set of mustaches women can use to appear more man-like.
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