Harvard Online’s Reading List

Updated December 12, 2024

Pair your holiday reading with a course in Harvard Online style with our recommended list of books written by our faculty and course protagonists. Whether you’re looking to explore a new topic or strengthen your knowledge in your field, there’s a book for every interest on this list.

Image

If you’re particularly interested in your chosen read, you can dive deeper into the topics by enrolling in the author’s Harvard Online course where you’ll study the topic in depth and learn how to apply the concepts within your own life.

Our Recommended Reads:

Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

By Amy Edmondson

In her latest book, Professor Amy Edmondson (Innovations in Teamwork for Health Care) provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely. Outlining the three archetypes of failure—basic, complex, and intelligent—Edmondson showcases how to minimize unproductive failure while maximizing what we gain from flubs of all stripes. She illustrates how we and our organizations can embrace our human fallibility, learn exactly when failure is our friend, and prevent most of it when it is not. This is the key to pursuing smart risks and preventing avoidable harm.

READ: Right Kind of Wrong 
APPLY: Innovations in Teamwork for Health Care

The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change

By Bharat N. Anand

Digital change means that everyone today can reach and interact with others directly: we are all in the content business. But that comes with risks that Professor Bharat Anand, faculty for the new Digital Strategy course and Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, teaches us how to recognize and navigate. Filled with conversations with key players and in-depth dispatches from the front lines of digital change, this book is an essential new playbook for navigating the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves.

READ: The Content Trap
SIGN UP TO LEARN MORE: Digital Strategy

Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

By Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey

In Build the Life You Want, Arthur C. Brooks (Managing Happiness) and Oprah Winfrey invite you to begin a journey toward greater happiness no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of helping people translate ideas into action, they show you how to improve your life right now instead of waiting for the outside world to change.

READ: Build the Life You Want
ENROLL: Managing Happiness

Bold Move: A 3-Step Plan to Transform Anxiety into Power

By Dr. Luana Marques

Turn your anxiety into strength with Harvard-based psychotherapist and Building Personal Resilience course Professor Dr. Luana Marques’ 3-step method to living boldly—her clinically-proven approach inspires her clients from CEOs to at-risk teens and echoes lessons learned growing up in challenging circumstances in Brazil. This book is invaluable for people looking to jumpstart their dreams and for clinicians working with a diverse client community.

READ: Bold Move
ENROLL: Building Personal Resilience: Managing Anxiety and Mental Health

Uncertain Futures: How to Unlock the Climate Impasse

By Alexander F. Gazmararian and Dustin Tingley (Data Science Principles)

Uncertain Futures proposes solutions to make more credible promises that build support for the energy transition. It examines the perspectives of workers, communities, and companies, arguing that the climate impasse is best understood by viewing the problem from the ground up. Featuring voices on the front lines, this book contends that making economic transitions work means making promises credible.

READ: Uncertain Futures
ENROLL: Data Science Principles

Open Talent: Leveraging the Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges

By John Winsor and Jin H. Paik (guests in Open Innovation course)

In this eye-opening, essential guidebook, John Winsor and Jin Paik, with their work at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, show how the massive reset of the pandemic allowed talented workers everywhere to exit their jobs without leaving the workforce. Now many are freelancing for multiple companies or are starting small businesses, challenging hiring managers as never before amidst a transformed workforce. What's more, talent has more power than ever using platforms such as Freelancer.com, Fiverr, and Upwork, setting their own terms for work: what, where, when, and at what price.

READ: Open Talent
ENROLL: Open Innovation

Confronting Cyber Risk: An Embedded Endurance Strategy for Cybersecurity

By Gregory Falco and Eric Rosenbach

Co-written by Harvard Online Professor Eric Rosenbach (Strategy Execution for Public Leadership), this book is an adaptive and practical cyber risk management guide for leaders. In this book, you’ll learn a new strategy for improving organizational cybersecurity and mitigating cyber risk. For CEOs and cyber newcomers alike, you’ll get concrete guidance on how to implement a cutting-edge strategy to mitigate an organization's overall risk to malicious cyberattacks in an evolving cyber risk landscape.

READ: Confronting Cyber Risk
ENROLL: Strategy Execution for Public Leadership

Everyone Wins!: The Evidence for Family-School Partnerships and Implications for Practice

By Karen L. Mapp, Anne T. Henderson, Stephany Cuevas, Martha C. Franco, and Suzanna Ewart

Engaging families in education not only improves student achievement, but also strengthens families, boosts teacher effectiveness, and builds community. Everyone wins! In this easy-to-use guide, a Harvard-based team, including Harvard Online Professor Karen L. Mapp (Introduction to Family Engagement in Education), uses the latest research to help teachers, administrators, and FACE coordinators design and implement programs wisely and with confidence that all students will benefit.

READ: Everyone Wins!: The Evidence for Family-School Partnerships and Implications for Practice
ENROLL: Introduction to Family Engagement in Education

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere

By Tsedal Neeley

Harvard Online Professor and leading expert in virtual and global work Tsedal Neeley (Remote Work Revolution for Everyone) reveals how to thrive in remote and hybrid organizations. Providing evidence-based answers to these and other pressing issues, key takeaways, and an interactive action guide, this book will help leaders and team members quickly develop an actionable plan and deliver results previously out of reach. This book is essential reading for navigating the enduring challenges teams and managers face in remote and hybrid work.

READ: Remote Work Revolution
ENROLL: Remote Work Revolution for Everyone

Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, From Homemade to Haute Cuisine

By Michael Brenner, Pia Sörensen, and David Weitz

Based on our popular Science of Cooking Harvard Online courses, Science and Cooking explores the scientific basis of why recipes work. Why do we knead bread? What determines the temperature at which we cook a steak, or the amount of time our chocolate chip cookies spend in the oven? This book answers these questions and more through hands-on experiments and recipes from renowned chefs such as Christina Tosi, Joanne Chang, and Wylie Dufresne.

READ: Science and Cooking
ENROLL: Professional Certificate in The Science of Cooking

What book are you picking up on the list? Share it with us on Instagram by tagging @HarvardOnline and you could be featured in one of our upcoming IG Stories. Happy reading! 📖