Recommendations from Webster Vienna

Recommended by Franco Algieri, Associate Professor and Head of the WVPU International Relations Department

Timothy Garton Ash is one of the most experienced and critical observers of European history and the European integration process.

As Professor of European studies at the University of Oxford and a columnist for The Guardian, he constantly shares his analysis and observations of a multifaceted Europe.

His latest publication, "Homelands," is more than just the journey through European history starting in the second half of the 20th century. It is Ash’s personal history, and the reader is taken along with him through different phases of a destroyed, divided, rising, triumphing and faltering Europe. This book offers highly interesting perspectives based on the author’s personal experiences and creates hope for the future of Europe.

Recommended by Benjamin Fasching-Gray, WVPU librarian

African Americans and Jewish Americans have over the centuries been neighbors, allies and antagonists, and many wonderful books have been written about how they encounter each other throughout U.S. history, focusing mainly on these social, political and economic relations. “Black Zion” is one of the few to look long and hard at religion.

When Christianized slaves learned the Old Testament stories of escaping to the "Promised Land," they found something strongly resonant in the new religion. African American religious and social movements often approach these sacred texts with a theology different from either traditional Judaism or mainstream Christianity.

When I lived in the United States, I personally met people from the Nation of Islam, Black Israelites and even Nuwaubians, and I was interested how the academics in this book would write about them.

“Black Zion” is scholarly but not dry. Most of part one tells the jaw-dropping, page-turning story of how a group of Chicago African Americans began to worship as Jews, then up and moved to the woods in Liberia, barely surviving in tents, before settling in the Negev in Israel, and how that worked out for them.

Part two examines Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam and his biblical exegesis, pointing to parallels in the Gnostic Gospels, before tackling Louis Farrakhan, an important African American leader in the 1990s who repeated many old antisemitic tropes. Still more complex are Malachi Z. York and the Nuwaubians, whose story rounds out this middle section.

Part three looks at African American Christian theologians and religious leaders who interpret sacred Jewish texts in new ways. The most exciting part of this section was about the relationship between the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, two progressive social activists allied during the Civil Rights Movement.

There’s more in “Black Zion,” like articles about Haiti, about the first Black Synagogues in the U.S., and about Black Churches that repurpose unused synagogues. I think of this book as a real treasure, and I was very happy to find it in Webster’s ebook collection.

Recommended Emil Martirosyan, WVPU adjunct faculty member.

"Good to Great” by Jim Collins is dedicated to the substantial analysis of why some listed companies outperforming building up sustainable market capitalization increase in the long range prospective and the others are generating the profit affordable to keep the current interest of the financial investors.

The author is defining the key factors why due to internal organizational structure and motivation approaches one companies building high potential to value increase and lucrativeness for the strategic investors, while the others creating well-based profit performance and attracting the financial investors tending to get the dividend flow.

The author calls “Great” the companies with the long-standing capitalization increase and “Good” — the ones are profit focused. One of the key idea in the book is the transition from “Good” to ”Great” organization, which leads up in restructuring and reorganizing the internal structures, motivation models, leadership paths and corporate culture.

The book’s framework consists of the three main components:

Process: From setting up yourselves towards greatness (aka Build Up) to achieving an inflection point that takes you to greatness (aka Breakthrough).

Phases: There are three different phases in the "Good to Great" journey.

Flywheel: A quiet and deliberate process of figuring out what needs to be done for best future results and taking those step one by one, pushing the flywheel in a consistent direction until it achieves a breakthrough point.

My favorite quotes from the book are the following:

• "By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average."
• “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.”
• “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
• “A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.”

Recommended by Jasmina Dukovska, Front Desk Officer with the WVPU Facility Team

A book I recommend to anyone living in Vienna is entitled, “"111 Orte im Wienerwald, die man gesehen haben muss.”

The title of this travel guide, which is written in German, translates to “111 must-see places in the Vienna Woods.” This book helped me become acquainted to the surroundings and nature around the city in which I live. Reading this guide brought me closer to Austrian culture in terms of respect and attitude towards the nature, habits while interacting with it, and cast a light on how important nature is to the Austrian lifestyle.

This book covers the Wienerwald — the Vienna woods — its paths and signs, the beautiful hidden and not-so-hidden spots which are worth a visit not only for the nature itself, but for the cuisine, history, and social life of the Viennese people.

This guide is written in a precise, clear manner, with thorough instructions and apt descriptions, while at the same time using lighthearted language and not-so-complex use of the German language.

I hope everybody enjoys reading and being guided by this travel series just as we did.

Recommended by Anatoly Reshetnikov, Assistant Professor of International Relations.

Today, concerns about the possibility of another nuclear catastrophe have returned to the public discourse in response to Russia’s continued occupation of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine and the rising tensions between the world nuclear powers.

Alexievich’s book is a somber, albeit necessary, reminder about the real extent of such incidents, as well as their immediate and postponed effects on human lives. A Belarusian writer and Nobel Prize Laureate, who was recently forced into exile, Alexievich interviewed more than 500 people who either witnessed the 1986 Chernobyl disaster or had to deal with its devastating consequences over the decades that followed.

In her book, she gives voice to eyewitnesses, the members of cleanup brigades, firefighters, politicians, and scientists, but most importantly to ordinary people, whose lives had been changed forever by that disaster. As such, one of the most valuable things about this book is its perspective: the book is deeply personal, psychological, and as such, easily relatable, regardless of one’s cultural, historical or geographical distance from the described events. It is also a great example of well-crafted and well-narrated analysis that can be conducted on the border between journalism, ethnographic research and literature, combining the best features of all three genre. The huge success of the recent HBO miniseries, “Chernobyl,” owes a lot to Alexievich, as its creators were often relying on the testimonies presented in the book.

Recommended by Eva Zedlacher, WVPU Assistant Professor of Management.

I recommend "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt.

This easy-to-read book by U.S. moral psychologist Haidt is a recommendation for anyone who is interested in social science research and the study on (individualist) ethical decision making in business and politics. Haidt reviews renowned experiments among children and adults to demonstrate why so many of our moral views and decisions actually take place intuitively and quickly, and how people often only reason after-the-fact about whether something is right or wrong.

For example, helping/not-harming those in need (e.g. small children) or returning favors are values which people hold intuitively and largely largely independent of age, culture, education or gender. But if this is the case, why are we so often divided by different “ethics”?

Haidt illustrates, via large-scale studies on moral beliefs of American voters, that despite common moral intuition, liberals and conservatives are divided by distinct values, among them the importance of group loyalty and purity/sanctity of the body.

Nevertheless, this book makes the case for more tolerance towards different (political) views and beliefs since after all, we all share some common intuition about what is “right” or “wrong.”

Bradley E. Wiggins, Associate Professor and Department Head of Media Communications at Webster Vienna, recommends two books.

"A Queer History of the United States" (2011) by Michael Bronski

While reading "A Queer History," I’m reminded of the approach to historical narratives largely developed by renowned historian Howard Zinn, who’s book "A People’s History of the United States" certainly leaves an indelible impression on those who read it. In Bronski’s work of American social history, it becomes quite clear right away that queer lives are and have always been integral to the American project, despite many people living closeted lives. This work relies on primary documents, literature, and cultural histories to tell a story of how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender experience shaped the United States' culture, and history. The book is a remarkable and timely reminder that significant progress has occurred, to be sure, but to quote the founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and one of the prominent figures associated with the Stonewall uprising in 1969, Marsha Johnson, ‘the first pride was a riot’.

Learn more about the commitment within the Webster University global network to embrace all human differences while building upon our commonalities as people on this web page.

"Wittgenstein's Vienna" (1996) by Allan Janik and Stephen Edelston Toulmin

Another history book, this taking place across the pond, is one read by Wiggins in the late 1990s.

I read this book for first time for a course called "Vienna" at the University of Pittsburgh where I completed my bachelor's and master's degrees. The book, "Wittgenstein’s Vienna," relies on analytical narrative to explore the depth and significance of Vienna’s contributions to philosophy, psychology, science, art, politics, the humanities and so much more.

It’s really a must-read for anyone with even the slightest interest in the fin-de-siècle (end-of-the-century) era of Vienna’s exit from the 19th and entry into the 20th centuries and beyond. I’m re-reading this book to prepare for a course to be offered in summer 2024 which will highlight Vienna’s intellectual contributions to the fields of media studies and public relations.

Recommended by Barbara Katharina (Katie) Reschenhofer, WVPU Language Center Tutor.

Attachment theory describes human behaviors of and attitudes toward attachment. According to attachment research, we form secure or insecure attachment styles very early on in childhood. Throughout life, attachment styles can develop in various ways and manifest in either secure or insecure behaviors when interacting with family members, peers, and partners. Understanding the basics of human attachment will therefore not only benefit anyone interested in child development and behavioral psychology, but it can also help individuals navigate intimate relationships formed later on in life.

In this revised edition, scholars of attachment and behavior - Dorothy Heard, Brian Lake and Una McCluskey — provide a rich and insightful look into how the study of attachment has developed since John Bowlby's (1969) and Mary Ainsworth's (1978) ground-breaking publications. Seminal research, such as Ainsworth's Strange Situation experiment and Bowlby's Caregiver-Careseeker model, is explored in detail and expanded on with new approaches to providing dynamic therapy.

The book moreover uses helpful terminology to suggest novel perspectives onto secure and insecure attachment styles and follows a clear, reader-friendly structure. The chapters are divided into three main parts: Part I discerns between and defines various types of the "self." Part II discusses structures and patterns of human interaction and therapy models. Part III is a collection of appendices which contextualize the origin of attachment theory and provide information on seminal studies in the field.

For anyone interested in attachment theory and the psychology behind human relationships, this book makes for a fantastic read.

I therefore recommend this book to both WVPU students who are pursuing a degree in psychology, as well as anyone interested in human behavior and the formation of different attachment styles and states beyond childhood. With a critical eye and an open mind, readers will certainly be able to gain fascinating new insights into this novel approach to examining adolescent and adult attachment.

Recommended by Dr. Emil Martirosyan, WVPU adjunct faculty member.

"Uncommon Sense, Common Nonsense" is dedicated to the reason analysis why one company achieves better market and financial results as compared to others.

The authors are creating a direct link to the outperforming potential that is based on human capital and leadership potential. These strategic components and advantages are creating the most valuable intellectual assets which are performing in their best conditions in company business models. Intellectual assets and the business model are the major factors for the long-standing sustainable capitalization growth.

The book “Uncommon Sense" consists of two main parts: first is a stack of fast-moving mini-chapters with real cases; the second part is a description of the Discovery Process and how to use discovery to transform the leadership teams in strategy for future success. Major lessons are devoted to human capital specifics, which forms different and sometimes unique competence-based teams and corporate structures.

My favorite quotes from the book are the following:

• “Firms outperform their competitors by aiming to be different, not better.”
• “Success is best measured by added value, not profit.”
• “The strategy is not an attack-plan but the idea under study.”
• “Winners are motivated more by meeting a need than by meeting a target.”
• “The greatest threats to corporate performance are internal, not external.”
• “Losers are typified by the 'catch up' strategy of a better product at a lower price."

Recommended by Johannes Pollak, Rector and Professor of Political Science in the International Relations Department at Webster Vienna Private University.

The war in Ukraine has re-focused European attention to a region that was almost forgotten for the past 50 years — a region that has experienced terrible atrocities in the past. Alexander Watson’s book "The Fortress" looks back to one of the most important eastern strongholds of the Habsburg Empire in what was then Galicia, and charts a vivid picture of the enormous incompetence of the Habsburg military elite, the horrible human suffering on all sides, and the countless war crimes that surrounded the fall of the fortress Przemyśl.

The siege of 1914 and the final fall of the fortress in 1915 were accompanied by brutal attempts of Russification on the one side and the stubborn allegiance to a lost cause on the Habsburg side, and thus a harbinger of what was to come only a few years later.

Watson’s account of the longest siege in World War I is based on an impressive number of soldiers’ diaries, personal accounts of civilians, and chronicled events. It’s vivid narrative style does not hide the brutal face of war, quite the opposite. As such, it is yet another account of the sheer endless human folly.

Recommended by Karim Elatraby, WVPU Department Coordinator for the Business & Management and Psychology Departments.

"The Big Short" is a captivating and thought-provoking read that sheds light on the events leading up to the financial crisis of 2008.

The book follows a group of investors who predicted the collapse of the housing market and, in turn, profited from it. Lewis uses his signature narrative nonfiction style to provide readers with a detailed account of the inner workings of the financial industry and the people who made bets against the market. Even though the book utilizes some technical lingo, one of its main strengths is Lewis's ability to take complex financial concepts and make them accessible to everyone.

He provides clear and concise explanations of terms such as subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations, which can be confusing to those not familiar with the financial industry. In doing so, he makes the book a fascinating read for anyone, regardless of their level of expertise in finance. Another aspect of the book that I found particularly interesting was the way Lewis explores the ethical and moral implications of the actions of those involved in the crisis.

The book raises important questions about the responsibilities of financial institutions and the role of government regulators in protecting the public. It also sheds light on the greed and self-interest that motivated many of the players in the industry and the devastating consequences of their actions. One of my favorite chapters in the book is "The End of the Financial World as We Know It," which provides a vivid description of the events leading up to the collapse of the housing market. Lewis uses the story of a small hedge fund manager to illustrate the irrationality and excess that were pervasive in the industry at the time. The chapter provides a clear and compelling picture of the hubris and recklessness that led to the crisis.

Overall, "The Big Short" is a compelling and insightful book that offers readers a behind-the-scenes look at the financial crisis of 2008. Lewis's writing style is engaging and accessible, and the book is an excellent choice for anyone interested in finance, economics, or the inner workings of the financial industry. The book raises important questions about the role of financial institutions and regulators in protecting the public and provides a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked greed and self-interest.

Recommended by Luca Ticini, PhD MBA, Professor, Head of Psychology Department at WVPU

I recently had the opportunity to read "Neuroscience for Leadership: Harnessing the Brain Gain Advantage" by Tara Swart, Kitty Chisholm and Paul Brown, and I must say that I was thoroughly impressed. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the latest research in neuroscience and how it can be applied to leadership and management. The authors do an excellent job of explaining complex concepts in an accessible and engaging way, making the book suitable for readers with a wide range of backgrounds.

One of the things I appreciated most about the book was the way that it seamlessly blended scientific research with practical advice and examples. The authors provide a wealth of tips and strategies for how leaders can use the principles of neuroscience to improve their own performance and that of their teams.

Overall, "Neuroscience for Leadership" is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of how the brain works and how it can be harnessed for success in the business world. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to improve their leadership skills and achieve greater success in their career.

Recommended by Hon.-Prof. Univ.-Doz. Dr. Claus Ebster

How do you get others to do what you want them to do? The question is a simple one, but the answer is anything but. Throughout our lives, we are constantly confronted with situations in which we need to influence and persuade others. How do you get your children to clean up their room? How do you persuade your boss to give you the promotion you deserve? How do you convince your colleagues to make a donation to a charity about which you care deeply? And how do you get investors to financially support your startup idea?

These are all challenging endeavors with no simple solutions. Fortunately, several years ago, I (together with five million other readers) discovered the book, “Influence — The Psychology of Persuasion.” It was written by Robert Cialdini, arguably the most well-known social psychologist of our times, and it can help you with all of these dilemmas. In the book, now available in an expanded edition, Cialdini distills decades of rigorous psychological research into seven highly relevant and applicable principles: reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, commitment, and unity. If you want to know more about these principles, read the book!

Unlike a myriad of unconvincing pop psychology books that merely use fancy terms to state the obvious, Cialdini succeeds in giving the reader actionable advice that is based on hard-nosed psychological experiments. What I like as much as the research-based approach of the book is the author’s accessible and humorous writing style. Judging from the limited interactions I have had with the author (who once generously helped one of my students), this is a reflection of Cialdini’s personality. His light-hearted yet meticulous, fact-based approach to writing sets an example that I aspire to as a writer myself.

One of my favorite passages in the book is a letter written by a fictional (?) first-year student, Sharon, in which she informs her parents that her academic studies are not going as expected. She uses the principle of perceptual contrast to put the unpleasant matter in perspective by first making her parents believe that a series of serious calamities, such as a fire in the dorm, a crippling disease, and an unwanted pregnancy has happened to her. Knowing that all of this is just make-believe, her letter is truly hilarious. In a dry note, Cialdini remarks, “Sharon may be failing Chemistry, but she’d get an A in psychology.” While Sharon may deserve an A, In my humble opinion, Cialdini’s book undoubtedly merits an A+.

Recommended by Luca Ticini, PhD MBA, Professor, Head of Psychology Department at WVPU

“Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman is a thought-provoking and well-written book that explores the concept of emotional intelligence and its role in our personal and professional lives. Goleman argues that emotional intelligence, which is the ability to understand and manage one's own emotions and the emotions of others, is a critical factor in success and fulfillment in both our personal and professional lives.

One of the key strengths of the book is Goleman's ability to clearly and concisely explain the concept of emotional intelligence and its components, including self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Through a combination of research, case studies, and personal anecdotes, Goleman provides a compelling argument for the importance of emotional intelligence in our lives and the many benefits it can bring.

Another strength of the book is its focus on the practical applications of emotional intelligence. Goleman provides a range of tips and strategies for developing and improving emotional intelligence, and he offers specific advice for applying emotional intelligence in different areas of our lives, including work, relationships, and parenting.

Overall, "Emotional Intelligence" is a valuable and thought-provoking read for anyone interested in improving their emotional intelligence and achieving greater success and fulfillment in their personal and professional lives.