With the holiday season rapidly approaching, we polled the ALiEM team on favorite books to buy for yourself or a fellow healthcare provider. Many of us try to make time to read in our busy schedules to learn, be entertained, understand, process, and grow. As Truman stated, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” View our top 7 recommendations below.
1. Tricks of the Trade in Emergency Medicine
We are biased, but we believe that the Tricks of the Trade book would make a lovely coffee table gift for you or your colleague. The hardbound, color print book concisely describes 50 tricks, applicable in one’s Emergency Department practice. Bonus: All proceeds go to help support the ALiEM team continue to teach.
2. Steal Like an Artist
We are fans of Austin Kleon, who publishes uniquely creative (and short) books about creativity. Steal Like an Artist is a perennial favorite as a graduation gift for emergency medicine residents as well.
3. Keep Going
Although Keep Going seems to be a lesser known work compared to Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, many of our team members actually like this book more. The subtitle is “10 ways to stay creative in good times and bad.” With the pandemic throwing a wrench in everyone’s personal and professional lives, his tips and examples especially spoke to us.
4. How Stella Saved the Farm
Although How Stella Saved the Farm seems a simple parable about a farm in trouble, it has resonated across various sectors and organizations to teach about the mindset of innovation. Leading change initiatives are fraught with obstacles and conflicts, but can be predicted based on the 8 lessons provided.
5. Digital Minimalism
During the pandemic, it has been tempting to be consumed within digital tools and platforms. Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism book is like the Marie Kondo guide for your digital technology life so that you are more intentional and how you spend your time.
6. Big Potential
Emergency physicians are no strangers to the “we over me” movement. But have you ever wondered just how to convince everyone around you that we can be greater than the sum of our parts? The book Big Potential uses some of the author’s advanced research in happiness and team dynamics to help offer a way forward for your team or organization and to reframe what makes us happy and just how grand it could all be.
7. The Splendid and the Vile
Ever feel like we have been stuck inside for ages, with danger lurking just outside your door? Two years into the pandemic, and it can feel like the world is ending. However, we are not alone, and people have been through similar experiences before (most notably the Blitz of London). This book, Splendid and the Vile, offers a strung-together narrative from first-hand accounts of that experience as only Erik Larson can.
Check out our other holiday gift lists (coming soon):
- Top 7 Favorite Level-Up Gear
- Top 7 Favorite Tech Tools
Disclosure: Although we do not have an official partnership with Amazon, we belong to their Amazon Affiliates program which allows us to be paid a few pennies with books purchased from our links.
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