đź“š August 2025

A month’s worth of wisdom

August 31, 2025

In partnership with

It’s the last day of August, so we’re revisiting the books we featured this month.

Which Book Spotlight was your favorite?

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In case you missed any of these spotlights, here’s your August 2025 recap:

What if the key to success isn’t doing more—but becoming more?

In Elevate, entrepreneur Robert Glazer argues that the most sustainable way to grow is by expanding capacity—not just time or effort. True elevation, he says, comes from building the foundation to take on more responsibility, impact, and meaning in life and work.

Did you know that Freaky Friday wasn’t the first book to use the premise of a parent swapping bodies with a child.

The movie Freakier Friday exceeded initial predictions on opening weekend, grossing $44 million globally. A sequel to the 2003 hit starring Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, the film is Disney’s latest installment in their Freaky Friday franchise inspired by Mary Rodgers’ 1972 novel of the same name.

But nearly a century earlier, Thomas Anstey Guthrie—writing under the pseudonym "F. Anstey"—published his comic Victorian novel, Vice Versa, where a father and son magically exchange bodies, flipping their worlds upside down.

Even C.S. Lewis, best known for The Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series, mentioned Vice Versa when discussing books he grew up with and admired.

What if you ran your life like a business?

In The Business of You, entrepreneurs Nick Coniglio and Marnie Stockman use a fictional story to teach students and emerging leaders to think like a CEO—of themselves.

It’s a must read for every high school and college student, or any jobseeker looking to get to the next level.

What happens when ordinary life collides with extraordinary danger?

In Jeanine Cummins’ novel, American Dirt, a bookstore owner and her son flee across Mexico after a ruthless cartel shatters everything they know. Their journey, fraught with terror and hope, unearths the resilience tucked away in humans.

Our new series, One Word Smarter, has received a ton of positive feedback since we launched it in July.

Take a minute—yes, only a minute!—and get one word smarter by reading about our August Words and the books we found them in.

  • Heuristic đź‘‰ as used in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

  • Eunoia 👉 as used in Facing the Unseen by Damon Tweedy, M.D.

  • Peripatetic 👉 as used in The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

  • Serendipity 👉 as used in Postcards and Pearls by Gina Greenlee

  • Mise en place đź‘‰ as used in Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

We also kicked off a new series called Author Bookshelf where we reveal the books that inspired your favorite authors.

The first authors we featured were Marnie Stockman and Nick Coniglio who wrote The Business of You (featured above) and Lead it Like Lasso.

Nick and Marnie are entrepreneurs and leadership geeks (geeks, not gurus as they like to say) on a mission to help people stop drifting and start leading their lives with purpose

Here are the books and authors that influenced Nick and Marnie:

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HUBSPOT

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