Planning for summer vacation often includes gathering the perfect set of books to read during the unwinding process. If your priorities include personal growth and enriching your family legacy for generations to come, here is a list of recommended reading from Pendleton Square.
How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (2023), David Brooks
David Brooks offers insight on how to make people feel deeply known, heard, and seen. He explores the art of truly understanding someone and challenges his readers to look deeper than the surface when engaging with others.
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (2018), Priya Parker
Priya Parker shares that gatherings should always have a purpose, and that they are powerful tools for social transformation. Instead of just hosting family over for dinner, she suggests asking meaningful questions or playing a game to get to know each other better. Most of us are gathering in some form every day, and we must recognize the power and beauty of being together.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024), Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt delves into the 4 main ways smartphones affect our youngest generation, causing new stress and anxiety, and disrupting brain development. Haidt uses research and stories to explain this new phenomenon, and he offers useful advice to parents that he has found beneficial in his own family.
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World (2019), John Mark Comer
John Mark Comer gives practical advice and thought-provoking questions on almost every page. His book is full of insights on how to slow down and truly rest in a fast-moving culture and world. While it includes a spiritual message, the book presents many secular ideas applicable to any reader, encouraging them to recognize the busyness of their lives, and providing ways to slow down.
Order out of Chaos: Win Every Negotiation, Thrive in Adversity, and Become a World-Class Communicator (2024), Scott Walker
Scott Walker’s expertise and decades of research help him explain how you can become a world-class negotiator, by using his applicable principles and strategies. Whether it be a small conflict or a high-risk scenario, this book will help you make wise decisions, communicate clearly, and achieve your desired outcomes.
Engaged Healthy, Wealthy, & Wise: Lessons from Inheritors and Their Significant Others on How They Have Navigated Love and Family Wealth and Forged Their Own Joint Path (2023), Coventry Edwards-Pitt
Coventry Edwards-Pitt provides readers with a clear roadmap for how to navigate all the different stages of a family and inherit and grant wealth with wisdom. She explores how to include your significant other in the journey of wealth, while truly making it your own experience.
For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story (2022) Rabbi Steve Leder
Rabbi Steve Leder asks meaningful questions and teaches readers how to write an ethical will by using stories and reflections from one’s past. Leder encourages readers to thoughtfully examine their past and write down stories, so they can articulate the wisdom they want to pass on to future generations.
Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect (2022), Will Guidara
Will Guidara writes in Unreasonable Hospitality about the power of exceeding people’s expectations, as he uses insights from personal stories and various leaders in the hospitality industry. This book explains how to transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences.
The 10×10 Learning Roadmap: Advancing Flourishing in Families of Wealth (2024), Stephen Goldbart, PhD, Stacy Alfred, MST, Joan DiFuria, MFT
This book weaves knowledge from many different fields, including estate planning, neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science to help families effectively navigate their wealth. The 10×10 Learning Roadmap offers a holistic approach to learning, acting as a roadmap to guide families but leaving room for self-authorship, so that readers can incorporate their own values and goals into the process.
