Two years ago, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and Founder of leanin.org, lost her husband Dave Goldberg. While the couple was on holiday in Mexico, Dave went to the resort gym one day, suffered a cardiac arrhythmia and died.
Sheryl was left to raise their two children along, struggling to deal with the overwhelming grief – both her own and that of her children. In a moving Facebook post thirty days after her husband’s death, she wrote:
I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning.
Now, in an effort to help others who are going through what her family went through to find meaning and avoid the void, Sheryl has released Option B, a book about facing adversity, building resilience, and finding joy, co-written by psychologist Adam Grant.
5 books to read this week:
1. Option B by Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant
The name Option B comes from something one of Sheryl’s friends said not long after her husband’s death. She was preparing for a father-child activity that Dave was not there to do. “I want Dave,” she cried. A friend said to her, “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.”
Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.
Option B draws on Sheryl’s personal experience with grief. The book weaves together co-author Adam Grant’s research with stories of loss from a broad range of people who have overcome challenges in their lives, and provides advice on how to speak to people dealing with grief, as well as tips for creating resilient families, communities, and workplaces.
2. The Golden Passport by Duff McDonald
In The Golden Passport financial journalist Duff McDonald explores the history of the prestigious Harvard Business School (HBS). In 1978, The New York Times declared that a degree from HBS was “the golden passport to life in the upper class”.
Is HBS complicit in the moral failings of Western capitalism?
Throughout the book, Duff details how the school began in 1908 with a goal to produce “men who will handle their current business problems in socially constructive ways”, to now, a time when students graduate believing the sole purpose of a corporation “is to maximize shareholder value”. Is HBS complicit in the moral failings of Western capitalism?
3. Startup by Doree Shafrir
The debut novel from veteran online journalist and Buzzfeed contributor Doree Shafrir, Startup is the story of Mark McAllister, a man whose mindfulness app, TakeOff, is already the hottest thing in tech.
However, as he plans to launch a new, improved version that will turn is idea into a billion dollar business. But will it all go belly-up when his bad behaviour makes TakeOff go viral for all the wrong reasons?
4. Move Fast and Break Things by Jonathan Taplin
Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy by Jonathan Taplin explains how the internet has been shaped around the values of the founders of these three monopoly firms, which now determine the future of the music, film, television, publishing and news industries.
I have no illusion that the existing business structures of cultural marketing will go away, but my hope is that we can build a parallel structure that will benefit all creators.
While more content is consumed than ever, less and less of the revenue goes to the creators. And with more people getting their news solely through Google and Facebook, Taplin posits that this poses a real threat to democracy, so it’s time to start reining in their power.
5. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Hulu’s 10-part-series based on The Handsmaid’s Tale hits the small screen on the 26th of April, so it’s the perfect time to revisit Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian classic. The novel envisages a future in which a fundamentalist Christian military dictatorship governs what used to be the US but is now the Republic of Gilead.
A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.
Under this rule, women’s rights are severely curtailed. The story follows Offred, one of the handmaids, a class of women whose role in the new regime is reproduction – to produce children for the upper classes.
