Books and Good Stuff
I love books and art —the way that they both can show us new possibilities.
The reading lists below will help you see your work, your organization and your community in an entirely new way. And the art …well, showing your love for the places you care about has never been easier!
Economic Development & Urban Planning
The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived: What’s Changed and How You Can Help | Della Rucker
Della’s first book, updated in 2021, provides a personal, story-filled guide to the Undercurrents, the Implications, and the Secret Weapons that shape our lives, businesses and communities as we come out of the Industrial Era. Fun, relatable and touching, The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived gives you an easy introduction to the opportunities and challenges of becoming Future Ready.
Crowdsourcing Wisdom: a guide to doing public meetings that actually make your community better (and won’t make them wish they hadn’t come) | Della Rucker
This book had a simple purpose: make public meetings of all kinds better. Better as in more productive, more meaningful, less toxic and less confrontational. Crowdsourcing Wisdom turns the conventional public meeting inside out, demonstrates how the routine approaches make everything worse instead of better, and proposes a different approach that offers more opportunities for the community to grow together, instead of cultivating more distrust.
Foxconned: Imaginary Jobs, Bulldozed Homes, and the Sacking of Local Government | Lawrence Tabak
The best-written and most compelling book you have ever read about local government, economic impact studies, local and state politics and bad decisions. Absolutely critical for every citizen of a place that does economic development, and required reading for anyone who works in local or state economic development… even though it will make you squirm more than once.
Written by the founders of the Post-Crash Economics Society at the University of Manchester, this book gives the lie to many of the basic assumptions that underlay most of our assumptions about how economies work - and shows us how unreflective acceptance of neoclassical economics means that we have government advisors who don’t actually know how local economies work. Written for a U.K. audience, but insightful for anyone who wonders why economists get so many things wrong.
The econocracy: The perils of leaving economics to the experts | Joe Earle , Cahal Moran, Zach Ward-Perkins
Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond | Marc Lamont Hill
This book could have been in the Allies section below, but its importance has to do with the powerful and irrefutable way that is draws a direct line through the physical, geographic impacts of structural racism - a line that runs directly to the heart of some of the most horrific acts of police brutality in recent memory. Hill provides a level of scholarship combined with powerful storytelling that shows us exactly how the decisions we have made about the built environment - and the people who live in those spaces - has created the abuses that shame us today.
Storefront Mastery & Main Street Mavericks, by Jaime Izurieta
I will never claim to be a designer (I got banned from trimming foam core for presentations because of my lack of ability to do straight lines). But I really like Jaime Izurieta’s approach to understanding both the visual and the experiential elements of successful downtown businesses. Storefront Mastery allows every small business owner to improve the invitation and the experience that a storefront creates without having to hire a professional, and Main Street Mavericks makes sense of the business and buyer experience in a way that leads to small businesses that visitors not only love, but call home. Jaime is drawing in part on his family’s experience with one of the most successful businesses in Quito, Ecuador.
The Local Economy Solution: How Innovative, Self-Financing Pollinator Enterprises Can Grow Jobs and Prosperity | Michael Shuman
Michael is arguably the sage of local economics and alternative models of local spending and investment, and despite its age, this book delivers an eye-opening level of insight and some of the most practical assessments of how money moves through a community that you have every heard from an economist – or most others, for that matter. Michael also puts out a weekly newsletter that is packed with information - it’s one of my go-tos for discovering the ways that people in every corner of North American are creating a more effective, local-focused and meaningful economy.
Future Ready Organizations and Businesses
Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness | Frederic Laloux
The former director of the Downtown Project in Las Vegas introduced this book to me, and it changed my thinking. It can be dense, but it builds a framework for understanding why different management systems create different, often undesired results – and points us toward a more holistic, more human-centered model of organizational management. Anyone who doesn’t want to just parrot outdated assumptions needs to read this.
Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World | Brian J. Robertson
The former director of the Downtown Project in Las Vegas introduced this book to me, and it changed my thinking. It can be dense, but it builds a framework for understanding why different management systems create different, often undesired results – and points us toward a more holistic, more human-centered model of organizational management. Anyone who doesn’t want to just parrot outdated assumptions needs to read this.
An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization | Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
This book introduces you to a half dozen businesses that are completely thinking what it means to create a company that equips every member to make their highest possible contribution to the business and the world — one of the most crucial skills for Future Ready businesses to develop today. Compelling and incredibly detailed.
Future Ready Me
Why This Work Matters: Wisdom from the People Who Are Making Communities Better | Della Rucker, Ed.
I still love this little book - and in many ways it feels more relevant now than ever. I recruited 11 of my friends and colleagues who work in different aspects of caring for communities – federal employees, Main Street managers, economic developers, planners, and more – and asked them to answer a simple question: you get a lot of grief from people who don’t like what you do. And none of it is easy. What keeps you doing it? The answers are powerful, funny, sometimes very moving, and always encouraging. And these people - none of whom write for a living - show off some serious literary chops.
The Next American Revolution, by Grace Lee Boggs
Whatever claim I might have to being progressive goes right out the window when you put me next to Grace Lee Boggs. One of the unsung heroes of virtually every progressive movement in the U.S. in the mid-20th century, this combination memoir and encouragement helped change how I think about building toward constructive change. TL:DR: it takes a whole lot longer than I ever expected. This book showed me a great deal about the perspective and the patience that I need to have if I intend to make a difference.
The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times | Jane Goodall & Douglas Abrams
I can’t imagine anyone doesn’t know about Jane Goodall, but the simple framework this book gives for maintaining hope in the face of setbacks - even huge, climate-threatening setbacks - will give you a whole new reason for optimism, and a better sense of where to look for the reasons for hope. Pro tip: listen to the audiobooks. Goodall reads her parts of the narrative herself, and there’s something about her gentle voice and soft accent that will make you feel like it’s all going to be OK.
The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force | Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley
A former co-founder pointed me to this book when he got frustrated with how his old lady collaborator (me) kept falling back into old behaviors that he didn’t find helpful. This book is close to 20 years old, and it’s definitely written by a scientist, but it explains in very clear detail why we find it so hard to break old habits (especially as we get older) and how we can actually do that. Spoiler alert: it’s not super easy, but it can be done. I can testify to both of those.
Mastering Resilience | Christina Aldan
Christina is my friend, and she amazes me. She has survived more, done more, discovered more in herself and others, than most people do in a lifetime, and I think she’s just getting started. Mastering Resilience is one of the most accessible, direct and easy to read volumes that I know of when it comes to understanding why and how we develop the ability to recover from setbacks - without sugarcoating, and with honesty, clarity and a deep compassion. I did a podcast with Christina about resilience from 2021, and I’ll do an update with her when she takes a break from teaching at conferences all over the world.
The Art of Possibility, by Rosamund Stone Zander and Ben Zander
This is a super old book by the standards of this genre, and it’s hard to imagine it being written by anyone other than a couple of relatively privileged white people in the U.S around 2000. But the insights that the Zanders outline, and the very accessible way in which they do it, definitely shift your perspective, or at least open up some additional avenues. I think a lot anymore about how I may “be the board” for my frustrations and anger at others. Hm.
Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Ecosystem Building
Everybody Innovates Here: Accelerating Innovation and Entrepreneurship Across Your Entire Community | Della Rucker
I wrote this book to counter the idea that “collisions” would magically create innovation, entrepreneurship and small business, which was the belief that has driven so much of our public and private investment in “ecosystems” across the country. I wanted to propose a model that was more intentional, less left to the whims of whoever wanted whatever new shiny thing, and that did a better job of actively including people who were being (often unintentionally) excluded from these opportunities. The first part of the book examines the roles that certain common types of organizations tend to play in an innovation or entrepreneurship ecosystem, and how the idea of an ecosystem often falls apart when you watch them in practice. The second part outlines the typical operations of a single player in that ecosystem, and how those practices could be changed to make them actually more inclusive, which would make them more innovative.
Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers | Geoffrey A. Moore
A former client required all of his business’s leaders to read this book, which is one of few that I know of that addresses the challenge so many small business owners face of moving from a small operation to a larger operation. Crossing the Chasm not only makes sense of the reasons why so few small businesses actually make that leap, but it outlines processes and structures that help you get there.
Who Owns the Ice House? Eight Life Lessons From an Unlikely Entrepreneur | Gary G. Schoeniger and Clifton L. Taulbert
This book forms the foundation of the Ice House Entrepreneurship program, but you don’t have to be doing a class to get a lot out of it. The book primarily focuses on the story of a Black child in 1950s Mississippi. Every Black person in the community is a sharecropper, with the exception of the boy’s uncle, who owns the ice house - an essential and important business for everyone in town. The author, who later went on to invent the Stairmaster, was adopted by his uncle and basically raised in the business, which gave him a front row seat in understanding how his uncle’s behavior and choices different from others around him, both white and Black. The book can be a little clunky - the co author clearly added some “instructional” text to the chapters - but the story and the insights are powerful for anyone.
Developing as an Ally, Advocate and Accomplice
There are hundreds of incredibly insightful and powerful books in this category, and I personally think that we should read all of them. Unfortunately, I can’t count on living to 250, which is about what it would take. You will find lots of great book recommendations from Black-, LGBTQIA+ and minority-owned bookstores – here’s a search that will help you get started. These are a few that I have found personally powerful and insightful.
The Fire Next Time | James Baldwin
Maybe I am just a junkie for a good writer, but if people ask me about an author who can articulate to a white person the struggles and triumphs of living as a Black American, I point back again and again to James Baldwin. Even though this book’s contents are over 50 years old, Baldwin puts his finger on the fundamental character of racism and structural racism in a way that few can match. Any of Balwin’s writings, including his one play and his dozens of 1970s and 80s appearances on YouTube, are more than worth your time
How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That’s Rigged, by Kimberly Jones
I don’t think anyone has made sense of the pocketbook, down-to-earth implications of structural racism and the legacy of oppression that has marked the Black experience in the United States the way Kimberly Jones did in this book. It’s a masterwork and a blueprint for buiding economic power that actually benefits the people who live in a community. Especially the ones that need that power the most.
Gospel of Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Struggle That Changed a Nation | Jonathan Rieder
You might have read this short piece by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in high school. You should read it again. Nothing you can read will show you more directly the pain and damage that “lukewarm” support for the rights of all people does. The letter is a classic, but between that and this excellent setting in context, you will never think about your beliefs, your political action, or your comfort the same way again.
Brown: The Last Discovery of America by Richard Rodriguez
Hanif Abdurraquib is hands-down my favorite contemporary author, and one of my top two or three of all time. And that’s not just because he’s an Ohio native. This book is particularly on point for me because it focuses on stories of Black musical and theater performers, from the 19th century to contemporary hip hop artists. Trying to describe Abdurraquib’s text is a losing proposition. You’ll just have to read it and see his brilliance for himself.
A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance | Hanif Abdurraqib
This is one of my favorite books of all time. Actually, anything by Rodriguez is one of my favorite books of all time. Brown is 20 years old, and sometimes it shows it, but I can’t imagine anyone taking on the subject of the Hispanic experience in the United States the way he has. It is stunningly insightful, and stunningly beautiful. Pound for pound the best book you never heard of.
Conundrum, by Jan Morris
For anyone who thinks that transgender people are some new “woke” invention, I give you Jan Morris, travel writer, historian, journalist on the first ascent of Mount Everest and widely acknowledged “man’s man” of the mid-20th century. Except that she was Jim Morris when she did all that. As she tells us in this memoir, she knew from the age of three that she was a girl who lived in a boy’s body. Morris is very much an English writer of her generation, using a style which may not appeal to some readers, and some of her terms for her own experience and her take on non-western cultures are not the ones that we would use today. But if you had any questions about what it means to be trans, and how intrinsic that experience is to the soul of the person who lives that experience, Morris will show you her reality.
Dear White Friend | Melvin J. Gravely, III
Most non-Black people cannot fully envision how it feels to live as a Black person in America. And far too many of us are too scared to try. Dr. Melvin Gravely does us an incredible service in this book by reaching across that divide to tell us (through letters to a childhood white friend) exactly what the experiences of his life have looked and felt like. It’s as close to looking through another person’s eyes as you’re likely to find, and what he conveys has never been more important for the rest of us to hear.
Unforgettable Art for the Places that Matter to You
I’ve never seen art about cities that captures why people love their community the way SmallTower Prints do.
And that’s not just because the artist is my brother.
Barry Gott is an incredible illustrator with a style that combines whimsy, reality, fantasy and love in a way that no other does, in my book. And having grown up with him, I can attest that his architecture nerd gene runs long and deep.
SmallTower Prints come in two styles: charming cartoon-style drawings that capture your favorite local landmarks…drinking coffee, throwing footballs, eating your local pizza and doing all the other things that make you say, “Aw hell yah, that’s us.” And a second series shows your city’s layout, but unlike you’ve ever seen it, in rich deep colors that show the beauty of how our community is structured.
Great for offices and homes, ideal for gifts. All images come in high quality prints, and some can be purchased as high quality digital downloads as well. Lots of different cities available in both styles.
When you purchase a Small Tower print, you are not only supporting a small business, but a young adult who is nonbinary and a young adult who is on the autistic spectrum as well.
