Nine great books to read this summer

How Will You Measure Your Life? (2012). By Clayton M Christensen, James Allworth and Karen Dillon

Recommended by Stefano Turconi, Teaching Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship Many books are worth reading. Some are worth lending. How Will You Measure Your Life? belongs to an even rarer category: books that are lent, loved and almost never returned. I've yet to keep a copy for very long.

The late Clayton Christensen and his co-authors begin with a disarmingly simple question: why do some of the world's brightest and most accomplished people end up deeply unhappy -- or, in some cases, even in jail? Their central proposition is as original as it is compelling: if strategy frameworks help organisations make better decisions, why not apply the same thinking to our own lives?

Blending theory with relatable stories and uncommon candour, Christensen invites readers to treat life as their most important strategic challenge. Do we have a clear sense of purpose? Are we allocating our scarcest resources (time, attention and energy) to what truly matters? Which commitments deserve our direct involvement, and which can safely be delegated, deferred or abandoned?

The book's genius lies in making familiar management concepts feel deeply personal. Without patronising or oversimplifying, Christensen offers a practical framework for navigating the decisions that define a life rather than merely a career.

Businesses become what they ultimately choose to measure. Perhaps our lives should be no different.

The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip (2025). By Stephen Witt

Recommended by Dr Linda Yueh, Adjunct Professor of Economics

This was a fascinating biography of the founder and CEO of one of the most notable companies in the AI era. But it was not an easy one to write.

Witt writes in the preface: “I found Huang to be an elusive subject, in some ways the most difficult I’ve ever reported on. He hates talking about himself and once responded to one of my questions by physically running away.

“Before this book was commissioned, I had written a magazine profile of Huang for The New Yorker. Huang told me he hadn’t read it, and had no intention of ever doing so. Informed that I was writing a biography of him, he responded, ‘I hope I die before it comes out.’” Still, Huang offered me access to a great number of people to report this book.

It’s a fascinating read about innovation, execution and even what drives the AI revolution. What comes through strongly, though, is the importance of leadership. Witt relays Huang’s performance review from his previous employer: “Jensen is an excellent employee. I look forward to working for him some day.”

Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working (2025). By Dan Heath

Recommended by Costas Markides, Robert P Bauman Chair in Strategic Leadership; Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Dan Heath has a gift for turning insights from behavioural science into practical management advice, and Reset is among his most useful books.

Its central argument is simple: organisations often struggle not because people lack motivation, but because “systems” (such as a firm’s organisational environment) contain frictions and obstacles that prevent people from performing at their best. Significant improvements often come from identifying and removing these hidden obstacles. Our key challenge, therefore, is not motivating people to work harder, but redesigning systems so that success becomes easier.

Through a series of engaging case studies drawn from business, healthcare and public services, Heath shows how leaders can achieve outsized results by identifying bottlenecks in the system that can be removed and by simplifying processes. The emphasis is on diagnosis rather than grand transformation – a welcome corrective to the management world’s fascination with sweeping change programmes.

As with many business books, the examples are weighted towards success stories, and some readers may wish for a deeper treatment of situations where organisational constraints are more entrenched. Yet Heath’s writing is clear, practical and consistently insightful.

Reset is an intelligent reminder that improving performance often requires less inspiration and more attention to how work actually gets done. For managers seeking actionable ideas rather than lofty theory, it is a worthwhile read.

Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes (1980) by William Bridges

Recommended by Luigia Ingianni, LBS Women In Leadership Executive Programme 2019, Commissioner of the Employment Standards Office, Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) Authority; Adjunct Professor, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, College of Law

William Bridges’ Transitions is one of those rare books that has remained relevant over the years, across different stages of my personal and professional journey.

Through a combination of psychology and practical experience, the author’s powerful distinction between change, which happens around us, “externally” (and is often imposed upon us), and transition, the internal psychological process through which people adapt and find new meanings, enabled me literally “to make sense” of what I was facing many years ago during a complex organisational change.

What made this book compelling was the often-overlooked “neutral zone” – that uncomfortable period between the ending of what I was used to and a new beginning, characterised by uncertainty, confusion, reflection and growth.

The reason I regularly go back to Bridges’ timeless wisdom is because I am constantly exposed to changes (in my personal and professional life) and, to me, successful change is about navigating “our own human dimension”. Transitions is a thoughtful and reassuring reminder that growth begins not with change itself, but with how we move through it.

Leonardo da Vinci: The biography (2017). By Walter Isaacson Recommended by Nader Tavassoli, Professor of Marketing

Walter Isaacson's biography draws more on Leonardo da Vinci's surviving 7,200 pages of sketches and ideas than on the paintings. It connects art to science, arguing for example that dissecting corpses and studying muscles let Leonardo paint the Mona Lisa's smile.

This biography resists the lone genius narrative, placing him inside a system: the Bottega del Verrocchio in Florence, the Milanese court, and the Renaissance itself.

That system supported his mix of practical and fantastical inventions, from flying machines proven to work centuries later to anticipations of Galileo and Newton. But it also let him leave troves of unfinished work, from paintings to machines, where perfectionism and the pull of the next idea got in the way.

For business the lesson is to build cross-disciplinary and collaborative conditions for innovation, but with a defined purpose and an output that does not demand perfection.

The Art of Action (2021). By Stephen Bungay Recommended by Marcus Alexander, Adjunct Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

This summer, I have returned to this book, originally published in 2011, for reasons I will explain in a moment. The author, Stephen Bungay, did his doctorate in German Philosophy at Oxford and Tübingen, joined the Boston Consulting Group on the same day I did.

After becoming a partner at BCG he went on to be CEO of an insurance company. He had always been fascinated by military history and had already written insightful and engaging books about the Battle of Britain and Alamein. We worked together again at the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre, founded by two ex-consultants who had run a research centre at London Business School focused on group-level strategy.

The Art of Action brings together all these strands of Stephen’s polymath career and was lauded equally by company CEOs, academics, consultants and military experts. It is a fascinating cross-over unearthing fundamentals of practical strategy and proving increasingly useful in our accelerating world of required agility.

Very sadly, Stephen died in May after a long struggle with cancer. Rereading this excellent book reminds me what a brilliantly insightful scholar we have lost.

Good People (2026). By Patmeena Sabit

Recommended by Müge Mentes, LBS Women In Leadership Executive Programme 2019, former investment banker

The story opens after the death of Zorah, the teenage daughter of an Afghan American family who emigrated to the US. As first-generation immigrants, the Sharaf family work tirelessly to build a new life while holding fast to their cultural values and traditions under the relentless gaze of a close-knit immigrant community.

Zorah is caught between two worlds, bearing the weight of her family’s expectations while embracing the freedoms of the country in which she grew up. Those competing forces prove impossible to reconcile, and the American dream leads to tragedy.

The novel unfolds through interviews with neighbours, friends, teachers, police officers and members of both the Afghan and wider American communities. Everyone has an opinion shaped by their own experiences, assumptions and cultural beliefs.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It challenged me to think more deeply about identity and belonging, while exploring prejudice, grief and the complex realities of the immigrant experience across generations.

Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination (2026). By Karen Hao Recommended by Ioannis Ioannou, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Karen Hao’s Empire of AI is one of the most important books I have read on artificial intelligence, because it treats AI as a question of power, governance and accountability rather than simply technology.

Through the story of OpenAI, Hao shows how narratives about progress, inevitability and existential risk can shape public debate, attract capital and justify extraordinary concentration of influence.

The book is especially valuable for leaders because it asks hard questions about what happens when mission, governance and commercial ambition start pulling in different directions. It also reminds us that AI is built on human choices, with real consequences for workers, communities and democratic oversight.

For anyone trying to understand the AI race beyond the hype, this is a timely and deeply unsettling read.

Streetwise: getting to and through Goldman Sachs (2026). By Lloyd Blankfein

Recommended by Xinying Liu, LBS Women In Leadership Executive Programme 2019, Managing Director, Origination (Europe), Eliant Trade Finance LP, based in The Netherlands

On an otherwise unremarkable winter day in February, I got an email from the Goldman Sachs alumni network, being invited to dial into a session of Talk at GS. It featured none other than the former CEO and the current senior chairman of Goldman Sachs – Lloyd Blankfein.

Lloyd had just published his memoir. On stage, the conversation with David Solomon, the current CEO, was delightful, witty and candid. Lloyd had the same infectious laughter as seen on some of the pictures in his book. Together they walked down memory lane to Lloyd's time at J Aron, where his career in Goldman started.

Coming from humble beginnings, Lloyd's path into Goldman is a Cinderella story and the exposure to this new world of great expectations is vividly retold 60 years later. This includes many personal anecdotes from Lloyd’s friends and colleagues who were instrumental in the transformation of Goldman into the greatest financial institution of our time.

It's apparent that Lloyd still feels fortunate and has stayed humble without taking his success for granted. This humility provides a human aspect to his inspiring life story, and I can strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in leadership, banking or trading.