10 books like The Square and the Tower

For me, Montaigne’s thoughts on life and human foibles compare favorably with those of St. Augustine. His insights on the human condition are valuable to anyone inclined to self-reflection on one’s own frailties. Montaigne’s advice on coping with one’s mortality is worth heeding. He counsels that in order to deny death its sting, “…let us deprive death of its strangeness; let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more in our mind than death.” Yet our mortality is only one of many issues he discusses. Montaigne offers up wisdom on everything from fear, prayer and solitude, to the virtues of social intercourse, avoiding unwanted relationships, and educating children.

Shipler’s book is as timely today as when written nearly 25 years ago. Slavery is our nation’s founding sin and was responsible for racism being written into America’s DNA. I spent years researching my book The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City. Shipler’s research was an invaluable aid in understanding where we are today regarding race relations. In everything from pay differentials, education and housing, to healthcare, drug addiction, and death at the hands of police, the chasm between whites and many black Americans is virtually intractable. Shipler does a yeoman’s job of putting race and racism into perspective, making sense of a complex and disturbing issue.

Technology adoption is one of the central struggles for humankind.

For me, this Pulitzer Prize winner is the ultimate adoption story. It seeks to determine why history unfolded differently on different continents.

The book explains historical narratives beyond rote biological and racial differences. It delves into linguistics, epidemiology, agricultural sciences, and war. It’s one of the few books that doesn’t have a European-centric view of world history.

This book opened my eyes to technology adoption and how it has always played a role, maybe one of the central roles, in world history. The lessons it teaches help me to keep looking deeper for true motivations and determinants of success.

Loewen’s book, updated since its original publication, explodes some of the many myths and falsehoods contained in textbooks on American history. Whether stories of the first Thanksgiving or America and the Vietnam War, the book challenges interpretations presented as facts and facts that are contested. The result is an indispensable argument for trying to get the facts right when discussing American history.

While friends are important in many ways, so are “weak ties” within our networks. In this non-fiction book, sociologist Mario Luis Small analyzes interviews with a group of graduate students, investigating who they turn to for support about a range of topics, including love, depression, and finances. Because of the obligations that close friends and family entail, Small finds that people often avoid turning to these close ties and instead rely on the convenience of people in their orbits. I’m drawn to this book because it contradicts what we think we know about who we talk to about important matters and because it’s such a rich investigation of people’s social ties and under what circumstances they actually turn to the people closest to them.

If we could just teach about the evils of climate change, people would surely change their behaviors.

I knew this idea was not born up by the facts and was searching for an alternative. This book showed me that if I wanted to get people to eat climate-friendly foods or become a climate advocate, I needed to think about social connections—in particular, what people see their friends and family doing.

Not only do the authors describe how we influence each other’s health, voting, and even happiness—they also argue that social networks provide a middle ground between individual destiny vs structural determinism.

In my work, Network Climate Action is similarly a middle ground between individual behavior change vs government policy in addressing the climate crisis. 

At first I thought that spreading plant-rich diet or other climate-friendly behaviors would be easy—all my students and I had to do was post photos of enticing meals on Instagram, and hundreds if not thousands would rush to their kitchens.

Then I read Centola’s book and realized that measles spread rapidly with minimal effort, but complex behaviors spread only through repeated exposure in tight networks—through multiple messages from multiple messengers.

Host vegan meals for close friends and family and you might see more plant-rich options when you get invited back. 

Before even thinking about collaborations and alliances with other firms, executives should consider whether their firm is collaborative enough. Surprisingly, the answer is often “no” because the structure and processes have not been established with an eye towards building a network that spreads information and facilitates collaboration. This book provides very helpful advice on how to improve firms through internal network building.

Give and Take presents the literature on pro-social behavior in organizations in a reader-friendly format.

Grant combines storytelling with evidence-based insights in a way that few other social scientists can. The analysis largely focuses on the individual – that is what you can expect as a “giver”, “taker” or “matcher”. However, the insights also say a lot about what organizations can do to create cultures that promote helping and, no less importantly, help-seeking. 

As one who studies interpersonal relations at work, this book was a wake up call about the need to present evidence-based research on critical workplace issues in a manner that is accessible and interesting to all.

Bill Bratton had the original insight that crime is a city problem, not just a cop problem. In this book, he discusses how collaboration between city, state, and federal agencies is essential to reduce murder and violent felonies. How easy is it to get government agencies to cooperate? Like herding cats, you say? More like herding rabid lions and tigers. You’re dealing with bureaucrats who imbibed the subtleties of the double and triple cross with their mothers’ milk!