21 Books for Boss Ladies

Great managers are made, not born. That’s the core lesson of Julie Zhuo’s handbook for becoming a better boss. With personal anecdotes from her crash course in management at one of Silicon Valley’s biggest startups, plus step-by-step leadership training, Zhuo sets you up for success.

How many times have we heard—or uttered—the refrain, “I don’t know how she does it”? In this compendium, Mason Currey documents the daily obstacles and rituals of 143 women artists—painters, composers, sculptors, scientists, filmmakers, and performers—to tackle that question head-on.

Imagine what life would be like if you could accept failure, imperfections, and screw-ups. If you could choose pride over insecurity, trust your gut, and accomplish your dreams. Using her personal experience and expertise as a life coach, Cara Alwill Leyba shows you how to build your confidence and fearlessly show up in the world.

There are challenges in life that few of us expect but that we all experience: cynicism, compromise, disconnectedness, irrelevance, pride, burnout, and emptiness. Pastor Carey Nieuwhof helps you navigate these stymieing challenges, and offers guidelines for anticipating and avoiding the ones yet to come.

Transforming the mindset and culture of a company is fraught with uncertainty, tension, and too often failure. It calls for the courage to defy convention, go around corporate gatekeepers when necessary, and reinvent what’s possible. Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair and head of marketing and innovation at GE, shows you how to use creativity to spearhead change.

We need to talk about ageism in the workplace. In the era of new and shiny, a growing segment of the population is undervalued and threatened by the digital natives nipping at their heels. But Chip Conley argues that experience is on the brink of a comeback. Companies are finally waking up to the value of the humility, emotional intelligence, and wisdom that come with age.

Take control of your finances and your life with Suze Orman’s rock-solid financial empowerment plan. Her practical advice and compassionate approach to coaching equips women with financial knowledge and emotional awareness to overcome the blocks that have kept them from acting in the best interest of their money—and themselves.

Since 1973, productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages. Millions of Americans work more than one job to barely eke out a living, and middle-class jobs are slipping away. Journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell uncovers the true cost—political, economic, social, and personal—of our mounting anxiety over jobs, and what we can do to regain control over our working lives.

Leadership is not about status and power—it’s about taking responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and having the courage to develop that potential. In her latest bestseller, Brené Brown reveals how to cultivate braver, more daring leaders, by embedding the value of courage in your culture.

The modern workplace can be an emotional minefield, filled with confusing power structures and unwritten rules. This hilarious guide to effectively expressing your emotions at the office teaches you how to figure out which emotions to toss, which to keep to yourself, and which to express in order to be both happier and more effective at work. 

What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things—and we exhaust ourselves trying to close the gap between them. With the help of eye-opening science, prescriptive advice, and helpful worksheets and exercises, sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski explain what we’re up against—and show us how to fight back.

Forget everything you’ve heard about not mixing BFFs and business. Female partnerships in the office can be the most productive, progressive, and empowering, according to business partners and best friends Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur. In this book, they offer an invaluable roadmap for a feminist reimagining of the workplace. 

In 2017, Elaine Welteroth became the youngest person ever appointed editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue. She infused social consciousness into its pages and put herself on the frontlines of a movement for the next generation of changemakers. In this part-manifesto, part-memoir, she explores what it means to come into your own—on your own terms.

Think you need to put in 10,000 hours to be good at something? Think again. David Epstein researched the world’s most successful athletes, artists, inventors, and scientists and discovered that in most fields—especially complex and unpredictable ones—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. So get your dabble on.

Julian Guthrie takes readers behind the closed doors of venture capital to follow the careers of four women who were largely written out of history—until now. These women, juggling work and family, shaped the tech landscape we know today while overcoming unequal pay, betrayals, and the sexist attitudes prevalent in Silicon Valley and in male-dominated industries everywhere.

From law school to the Miss America pageant to Fox News, Shannon Bream has spent her entire adult life navigating high-pressure environments where perfection is expected and competition is the name of the game. In this behind-the-scenes memoir, she shares her journey and offers inspiration for women seeking purpose and growth.

Whether you’re deciding if you should pass up a promotion in favor of more flex time, planning when to get pregnant, or wondering what the ramifications are of being the only person in your house who ever unloads the dishwasher, The Ambition Decisions is a guide to the changes that may seem arbitrary but are actually life-defining, by women who’ve been there.

If there’s one lesson Marie Forleo wants you to learn, it’s this: everything is figureoutable. Whether you want to leave a dead-end job, break an addiction, heal a relationship, grow a business, travel the globe, or solve world hunger, this book will train your brain to think more creatively and positively—especially in the face of setbacks.

To win when the deck is stacked against you, you need to ditch the old status quo rules. Packed with strategies and solutions, as well as stories of badass Boss Ladies including Ayesha Curry, Carly Cushnie, Anne Wojcicki, and many others, this remixed rulebook will help you see the power in yourself—and double down on it.

Persuasion isn’t about facts and argument—it’s all about personal character. Through instructive and entertaining stories, Jason Harris lays out 11 habits that will guide readers to become authentically persuasive: earning respect through collaboration, becoming the person others want to be around, and practicing generosity through gestures big and small.

Charles Schwab revolutionized the investment business in the 1970s when he brought discounted stock trading to the masses. By opening shop on main street, his eponymous company became one of the leading financial services firms in the world. This personal memoir recounts his ups and downs, and offers inspiration to those who dare to dream.