Whether you’re looking for business insights, inspiring biographies, or memorable fiction, our 2023 summer reading guide reveals what’s on the bookshelves of leaders from around the world. And on Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, we’re celebrating some of our favorite women authors from this year’s selections. McKinsey senior partner and chief marketing officer Tracy Francis is reading Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, “the perfect mix of history, art and humanity.” Don’t miss our other recommendations below.
There’s Nothing Micro about a Billion Women: Making Finance Work for Women by Mary Ellen Iskenderian
Recommended by: Zubaida Bai, President and CEO, Grameen Foundation
Prep, Push, Pivot: Essential Career Strategies for Underrepresented Women by Octavia Goredema
Recommended by: Henry Timms, President and CEO, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
The Solutionists: How Businesses Can Fix the Future by Solitaire Townsend
Recommended by: Mads Nipper, President and CEO, Ørsted
Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building by Claire Hughes Johnson
Recommended by: Nicholas Thompson, CEO, Atlantic
Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World by Ginni Rometty
Recommended by: Jenny Abramson, Founder and managing partner, Rethink Impact
Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F. Kuang
Recommended by: Homayoun Hatami, Senior partner and managing partner, global client capabilities, McKinsey
Permission to Come Home: Reclaiming Mental Health as Asian Americans by Jenny T. Wang, PhD
Recommended by: Sisi Wei, Editor in chief, The Markup
Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media by Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Recommended by: Stephan Scholl, CEO, Alight
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Recommended by: Tracy Francis, Senior partner and chief marketing officer, McKinsey
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Recommended by: Alisa Miller, Cofounder and CEO, Pluralytics)