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Career Resources October 2026 |
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Closing the Fulfillment Gap: How to Design the Work Life You Want
by Helen Krug Von Nidda
Available as an eBook on Libby. USA Today bestseller An evidence-based guide for those ready to stop feeling stuck in their careers and start feeling greater fulfillment in their work and lives. You've checked all the boxes: the degree, the promotions, the hard work--but you're not happy. You feel stuck, undervalued, and bored. Change is essential, but you don't know where to start or if you even have the bandwidth to do what it takes. Closing the Fulfillment Gap offers a new path forward. Drawing on twenty years of coaching women across the globe and from her own research conducted at Columbia University, executive coach Dr. Helen Krug von Nidda introduces the MOVE framework (Motivation, Opportunities, Vision, Encouraging Community), a proven model to help identify what's holding you back and design strategic next steps that align with your life goals. Inside, you'll discover: How to pinpoint your core motivations and leverage the skills that energize you Strategies to identify opportunities already within reach (even in your current job) Tools to craft a clear vision for who you are becoming and an actionable path to get there Ways to build an encouraging community that supports your growth Closing the Fulfillment Gap isn't about remodeling your life or finding one grand purpose. It's about making intentional moves, big or small, that close the gap between the work life you have and the fulfilling one you deserve.
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The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn from Bad Bosses
by Mita Mallick
Must read exposé of the 13 types of bad bosses to help you become a better leader In The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses, Mita Mallick shares how bad bosses aren't born. Bad bosses are made. They are a product of their circumstances. She shares hilarious and heartbreaking stories of the 13 bad bosses she once endured and survived, even including when she was a bad boss in her career. She challenges us both current and aspiring leaders to avoid the pitfalls of bad boss behavior. With powerful storytelling and practical advice, she covers bad behaviors like: Never having time for our teams (except at midnight) Micromanaging and re-doing all of the team's work Being completely disengaged, and disinterested in leading Ruling with fear in hopes of driving business results Loving the spotlight and taking credit for all of the work and much, much more The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses is a must read guide on how not to become that bad boss for anyone on their journey to be a better leader. Mita reminds us that a good leader can be the difference maker: ensuring we are recognized and valued for our contributions in our organizations. So remember that the devil emails at midnight. Let's make sure that devil doesn't become you.
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Effective: How to Do Great Work in a Fast-Changing World
by Melissa Swift
Available as an eBook on Libby. Navigate the weird, chaotic world of modern work, no matter your position While there's no shortage of advice on being amazing or avoiding burnout, what if you simply want to get things done in a workplace that feels increasingly impossible? Effective is here to help you get your job done well without losing your mind. Drawing from up-to-date research and provocative interviews with employees across industries and levels, renowned people consultant Melissa Swift offers a positive, well-illuminated path through the dark forest of destabilizing workplace changes. Effective provides readers with: Strategies to triumph amid four trends making work tough today: work intensification, emotional inflection, hyper-transparency, and sheer chaos Practical, research-backed approaches to improve their daily work life, from entry-level employees to CEOs Tips for maintaining competence in a working world seemingly designed to make you feel incompetent Insights on how to make sure your personal sources of effectiveness don't get disrupted by technological change Lessons to be learned from jobs where you simply cannot screw up, such as firefighters and air traffic controllers, and how to apply them to a corporate environment Effective delivers useful content for every level of seniority, teaching readers a new paradigm-shifting approach to thrive in the modern world of work.
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In Focus:
| Workplace Memoirs OR What is it like to be a... ? Part 1 |
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Trash!: A Garbageman's Story
by Simon Pare-Poupart
Raffish and spirited . . . a nonconformist cri de coeur . . . Usually, comparisons to Bourdain are fatuous. This time it's accurate . . . It's been a long time since I've read so good and rowdy a memoir about blue-collar work. -- Dwight Garner, The New York Times AN INDIE BESTSELLER A Montreal garbageman's sharp and funny memoir/expos , in which he attempts to convince people to stop imagining that your garbage magically disappears . . . This fascinating no-bullshit account of twenty years in waste management paints a vivid portrait of the heroic labor, anarchic spirit, and violent conditions of the people who keep our cities clean. Par -Poupart's story is atypical: he started working as a garbageman to pay for school, and after earning graduate degrees and working in more respectable fields, he is still on a truck -- out of love for the physical rush, for his rough-and-tumble colleagues, and for an honesty and freedom that no other job has yet given him. Includes eight black and white photographs of the author on the job. His sociology background informs his inquiry into our collective wastefulness and individual failure to confront the trash we produce. Every abstract observation comes with hilarious and hair-raising stories from the collection route to his days off spent hunting down furniture and toys for family and friends, as a committed freegan. Trash -- the French edition of which is a runaway bestseller in Canada -- explains and questions efforts to clean up a business with longstanding conventions of its own, a last bastion of well-paid employment for people who cannot fit in anywhere else. Aligned with great books about work from Zola to Orwell to Lucia Berlin, and in dialogue with societal critiques like How To Do Nothing, Trash will change how you think about your waste and the people who handle it.
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The Nutcracker Chronicles: A Fairytale Memoir
by Janine Kovac
Perfect for The Nutcracker holiday market and fans of work/life balance books, this memoir of a ballet dancer-turned-literary curator shares the real-life journey of a dancer, wife, and mother.--Provided by publisher.
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Service Ready: A Story of Love, Restaurants, and the Power of Hospitality
by Molly Irani
Molly Irani, the visionary cofounder of the James Beard Award-winning restaurant Chai Pani, shares the story--part memoir, part love story, part leadership guide, from the queen of hospitality herself (Garden & Gun)--of building a thriving business that puts people first. Growing up in the restaurant business, Molly understood the power of service but also had a keen understanding of the industry's challenges. When her husband Meherwan wanted to open an Indian restaurant in their small mountain town, Molly thought he was crazy. And yet, the couple turned this unlikely dream into a vibrant reality. Chai Pani would eventually win the James Beard Award for Most Outstanding Restaurant in America, and be named one of 50 Favorite Restaurants in America by The New York Times. In Service Ready, Molly takes readers on their inspirational (The Wall Street Journal) journey to the heights of culinary and professional success. While she and her husband learned their way into running a business, Molly shaped their work culture. They have fostered a loyal team and legions of fans, and have since launched multiple Chai Pani locations, the fast-growing spin-off, Botiwalla, and the popular spice business, Spicewalla. Molly shares the ten core principles that have shaped their path, offering essential lessons for any industry. She opens up about the challenges and rewards of being business partners with your life partner and shares how she and Meherwan learned to merge their strengths. Her story celebrates the power of female leadership in a traditionally male-dominated field. A must-read for all future restaurateurs--and current ones, too (Kerry Diamond, Cherry Bombe) Molly offers lessons in resilience and innovation that can apply to any business.
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A Course Called Home: Adventures of an Accidental Golf Course Owner
by Tom Coyne
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Globe-trotting golf writer Tom Coyne is ready to put down roots. For a fanatic like Coyne, that means living out every golfer's dream--or nightmare?--and buying his very own golf course. It also involves Bill Murray and Jason Kelce, for some reason. Tom Coyne, the New York Times bestselling author of A Course Called America and numerous other contemporary classics of golf literature, has spent his career traveling the world and playing legendary courses from St. Andrews to Shinnecock. One day, at the urging of a course superintendent who is hoping to save his local nine-hole gem from shuttering just shy of its one hundredth anniversary, Coyne pays a visit to Sullivan County Golf & Country Club in upstate New York. When he arrives, the course is buried under ice and snow; what he can see of the clubhouse is falling apart. By the time he leaves, all he can see is his next adventure: discovering how owning a course is vastly different from playing one. A Course Called Home is Coyne's most personal and profound book yet: a heartfelt and often humorous chronicle of restoration, resilience, and finding purpose in unexpected places. It's a story about digging in--literally and figuratively--as Coyne trades tee times for mower hours, learning how to contour a fairway, water a green, and revive a course rich in history but fading from memory. The Sullivan golf community that Coyne joins is unlike the pristine, manicured version of the game you see on TV, played by millionaires in matching polos. The course is run by a tight-knit crew of groundskeepers who work long hours--not for prestige but for pride. It's frequented by lifelong regulars who pay in cash and play in jeans, and it's welcoming to visitors and first-timers who quickly become part of the fold. Sullivan's crew becomes more like a family, united in their affection for this scrappy, enduring place. Yet decades of declining tourism and economic downturn have left the club struggling to survive, and fighting for its future will require an unprecedented team effort. Coyne rallies the golfing faithful to uplift this course that represents how the game can bring generations together. Players from around the world answer the call, purchasing memberships for a tiny Catskills course they may never visit. Companies offer steeply discounted mowers and carts. Friends swoop in to help dig bunkers, plant flowers, and cut holes. And, yes, some of those helpful friends have names like Bill Murray, Jason Kelce, and Mike Madden. In the tradition of his beloved golf travel trilogy, Coyne again taps into what makes the game timeless and transformative. But this round, he doesn't have to travel far: just down the road from Woodstock, to a century-old nine-holer that embraces all comers. A Course Called Home is a love letter to golf, to community, and to the places that still matter.
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Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register
by Ann Larson
In the tradition of bestselling classics such as Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Benjamin Lorr's The Secret Life of Groceries comes a character-driven exploration of the modern supermarket, unpacking what works and what doesn't, and delivering a blueprint for a better way to shop.Grocery stores may all seem the same. But the supermarket as an institution is anything but ordinary or one-dimensional. At the supermarket where I worked, I found a microcosm of society: a place of brutality and violence as well as solidarity and the promise of change. Unemployed and looking for work during the pandemic, journalist and activist Ann Larson found a job as a cashier at a supermarket in Utah. Though she had written about low-wage work for years, nothing could have prepared her for what she experienced. Informed by her time behind the register, Cleanup on Aisle Five is Larson's deep dive into supermarkets and how they operate from the inside out: from the low-wage workers stocking the shelves and the customers coming through at all hours, to the communities these stores serve and the larger capitalist forces and corporate interests at play that control how we shop for food. In the process, she chronicles the evolution of the grocery store, unpacks the political implications of the battles between shoppers and staff, and invites us to imagine grocery stores as places where one can foster community and even equity--if we can separate food distribution from profit motive. Deeply reported and refreshingly insightful, Larson follows the interactions between the workers, including Stanley who can't afford a sandwich, Nick who doesn't have health insurance, and Scarlet who is all out of patience, and customers, including the old lady who finds comfort in tidying the shelves to the one homeless guy who only comes in to use the facilities. From the unforgettable characters to the common challenges we face when it comes to food, Cleanup in Aisle Five will forever change the way we look at grocery stores.
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