The titles listed and linked here are resources that faculty, staff, or other students have recommended for developing skills or perspectives relevant to doctoral students in engineering.

If you have recommendations or requests for additions to this list or the Libraries catalog, please contact ENGR Graduate Affairs. You can also request more "copies" to be made available for particular texts if they are in high use.

• The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

  • • Available in eBook; recommended by Dr. Min Wu

    • Description: The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.
      

• Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-lived, Joyful Life by William Burnett & David J. Evans

  • • Available in eBook; recommended by Dr. Min Wu

    • Description: Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home -- at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are.
      

• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

  • • Available in eBook; recommended by Dr. Min Wu

    • Description: In this must-read book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, educators, athletes, students, and business people--both seasoned and new--that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called "grit." Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, MacArthur "genius" Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success.
      

• The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

  • • Available in eBook; recommended by Dr. Min Wu

    • Description: Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities?
      

• New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World and How to Make It Work for You by Jeremy Heimans & Henry Timms

  • • Available in eBook; recommended by Christopher Bender, Assistant Dean for Communications

    • Description: In this indispensable guide to navigating the twenty-first century, two visionary thinkers reveal the unexpected ways power is changing and how "new power" is reshaping politics, business, and life. Why do some leap ahead while others fall behind in our chaotic, connected age' In New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms confront the biggest stories of our time-the rise of mega-platforms like Facebook and Uber; the out-of-nowhere victories of Obama and Trump; the unexpected emergence of movements like #MeToo-and reveal what's really behind them: the rise of "new power."

• The Outward Mindset: How to Change Lives and Transform Organizations by the Arbinger Institute

  • • Available in eBook; recommended by Dr. Min Wu

    • Description: "When faced with personal ineffectiveness or lagging organizational performance, most of us instinctively look for quick-fix behavioral band-aids, not recognizing the underlying mindset at the heart of our most persistent challenges. Through true stories and ... guidance and tools, [this book may enable] individuals and organizations to make the one change that most dramatically improves performance, sparks collaboration, and accelerates innovation--a shift to an outward mindset."
      

• Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works by Alan G. Lafley & Roger L. Martin

  • • Available in eBook; recommended by Christopher Bender, Assistant Dean for Communications

    • Description: Strategy is not complex. But it is hard. It's hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future -- something that doesn't happen in most companies. Now two of today's best-known business thinkers get to the heart of strategy--explaining what it's for, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to get it done.
      

• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek

  • • Available in eBook; recommended by Christopher Bender, Assistant Dean for Communications

    • Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty? In studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way-and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does.