School is out, summer is here, and for most of us this again will be a time of rest, reflection and reconnection. After the last few summers close to home, we’re also now ready to hit the road again, anxious for a change in scenery. I’m hoping that more than a few people, inspired by Kerouac, Steinbeck, or even Chevy Chase, will embark on a cross-country trip to explore more of America from the freedom of the open road. For those mired in the day-to-day of economic turbulence, partisan polarization and negative news, a trek along Route 66 might offer renewed hope, broader understanding and a change in the way of looking at our shared problems and common goals. How might an inspired business decision maker and strategic thinker prepare for such an auspicious journey? By taking along a few good books (as if you had to ask).
Of course, like most other trips these days, this begins with Waze and a strategy for parking at stops along the way. In fact, parking itself is one of the issues that divides us, confounds us and prevents us from being our best collective selves, according to journalist Henry Grabar, author of the entertaining new book Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains The World. We want free parking right out front, any time, every time, and we are willing (often quite literally) to fight for it. Grabar chronicles how we have relegated much of the nation’s most valuable real estate to car storage — much of that space (in publicly financed stadiums (for example), unused and ignored most of the time. “Parkitecture” determines the design of new buildings, the fate of old ones, traffic patterns, and the viability and livability of our shared public spaces, according to Grabar. I found his description of Chicago’s recent and disastrous 75-year lease of its parking meters to a group of investors led by Morgan Stanley riveting and his take on mandated parking as the prime obstacle to affordable housing insightful. Parking in America, and its priority in our professional, social and financial lives, requires a bold and decisive reimagining.
Are we up to that task? Could a few people, refreshed from a family road trip and inspired by scenic vistas, spark major policy changes around parking and urban planning to improve our communities? Yes, probably, and not so fast, according to policy experts Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox in their new book: Gradual: The Case For Incremental Change in a Radical Age. Despite calls from politicians and activists on both sides of a variety of controversial issues, especially on hyper-polarized social media, progress in areas such as climate change, Social Security expansion and criminal-justice reform, has been incremental, the result of the gradual give-and-take built into our American system of government. Berman and Fox’s take on immigration, the media’s pejorative coverage of it, and how some unlikely states are leading the way forward was especially thought-provoking.
Change, like memorable travel, often requires patience, vision and leadership. Someone has to chart the course and remain steady when things don’t go as planned. In King: A Life, Jonathan Eig tells us how Martin Luther King Jr. did just that. Eig’s authoritative biography of King, the first in decades, is masterful, detailing how King moved from protesting Jim Crow laws in the South to opposing segregation in the North in cities such as Chicago and Detroit. Eig draws on archival sources and dozens of interviews to present MLK in all of his complicated humanity. He traces MLK’s travel through the U.S., detailing his frustration, insecurities and fears, and revealing an America fraught with inequality and division but also receptive, in many disparate places, to King’s inspired message of peace, hope and economic justice. To my mind, the best books about leadership don’t use that word in their title. This surely is one of them.
Finally, not every summer road trip will include only nonfiction titles. I’d also strongly recommend a playlist that includes Chris Stapleton’s aptly named Traveller, an amazing album from a once-in-a-generation talent, and two novels for non-strategic, poolside reading: West with Giraffes, which is Lynda Rutledge’s engaging coming-of-age adventure, and Ghost Music, An Yu’s haunting story of grief, music and self-discovery.
With the promise of summer rolling out before us, here’s hoping that we all have a chance to “get out there” and reflect on the collective challenges ahead. You might even be surprised at where you might end up.
Read in the Boston Business Journal
Authors & Innovators is an occasional column by Larry Gennari, a transactional lawyer, law professor, and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.
