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Important FAFSA Update

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As part of the revitalized Omniquest program, we asked the Northwood community to nominate books that support the purpose of the Omniquest program: promoting The Northwood Idea, community building, personal enrichment, leadership, and career readiness.   

Each fall our Omniquest selection focuses on facets of The Northwood Idea and each spring our Omniquest selection focuses on personal and professional development. We received numerous nominations from students, faculty, staff and alumni, making the selection process difficult! I would like to thank the Omniquest Selection Committee for their diligence in the selection and recommendation process. They have selected two books that will enrich our coming academic year.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the Omniquest selections for the 2023-2024 academic year:

FALL 2023: Nation of Victims by Vivek Ramaswamy

SPRING 2024: Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute

Below is some additional information about each of the selections.


Current Selection

Fall 2023 – Nation of Victims by Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy is the New York Times bestselling author of Woke Inc. and a 2024 presidential candidate. Leaders have called Ramaswamy “the most compelling conservative voice in the country” and “one of the towering intellects in America,” and this book reveals why: he spares neither left nor right in this scathing indictment of the victimhood culture at the heart of America’s national decline. This fearless, provocative book is for readers who dare to look in the mirror and question their most sacred assumptions about who we are and how we got here. Intricately tracing history from the fall of Rome to the rise of America, weaving Western philosophy with Eastern theology in ways that moved Jefferson and Adams centuries ago, this book describes the rise and the fall of the American experiment itself—and hopefully its reincarnation. As the nominator for this selection said, “Ramaswamy provides powerful insights as to what is happening in our political world today.”

Nation of Victims Book Cover

Spring 2024 — Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute

Since its original publication in 2000, Leadership and Self-Deception has become an international word-of-mouth phenomenon. The book’s central insight–that the key to leadership lies not in what we do but in who we are–has proven to have powerful implications not only for organizational leadership but in readers’ personal lives as well. Leadership and Self-Deception uses an entertaining story everyone can relate to about a man facing challenges at work and at home to expose the fascinating ways that we blind ourselves to our true motivations and unwittingly sabotage the effectiveness of our own efforts to achieve and increase happiness. Readers will discover what millions already have learned – how to consistently tap into and act on their innate sense of what’s right, dramatically improving all of their relationships. The selection committee stated, “The concepts in Leadership and Self-Deception are nothing short of life-changing, from both a professional and personal perspective.”

2008-2009

  • The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
  • Capitalism At The Crossroads, 2nd Edition by Stuart L. Hart
  • Simply Success: How to Start, Build, and Grow a Multimillion-Dollar Business the Old Fashioned Way by Jack Miller

2007-2008

  • Where Have All The Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca
  • The Science of Success by Charles G. Koch
  • New Ideas from Dead CEO’s by Todd Buchholz

2006-2007

  • Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
  • The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
  • An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths by Glenn Reynolds, 2006, Nelson Current, ISBN: 159555042

2005-2006

  • Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni
  • Cleaning Up by Barry Minkow
  • The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman

2004-2005

  • Good to Great by Jim Collins
  • The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw

2003-2004

  • Founding Brothers (The Revolutionary Generation) by Joseph J. Ellis
  • Homesick by Sela Ward
  • Sailing Alone & Around the Room by Billy Collins

2002-2003

  • Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management by Blaine McCormick
  • The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
  • Make It BIG: 49 Secrets for Building a Life of Extreme Success by Frank McKinney with Victoria St. George

2001-2002

  • Fish! by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen
  • Living a Life That Matters by Harold S. Kushner
  • The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley

2000-2001

  • The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw
  • Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
  • No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith by Janann Sherman

1999-2000

  • Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
  • How Now Shall We Live? by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey
  • Permission Marketing by Seth Godin

1998-1999

  • Leading with Soul by Lee G. Bolman & Terrence E. Deal
  • Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all small stuff by Richard Carlson
  • The Northwood Idea: People Helping People

1997-1998

  • In Search of Nature by Edward O. Wilson
  • Image by Design by Clive Chajet & Tom Shachtman
  • Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg

1996-1997

  • The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players by Pat Riley
  • The Road Ahead by Bill Gates
  • The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America by Phillip K. Howard

1995-1996

  • Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing the Power of Your Total Work Force by Managing Diversity by R. Roosevelt Thomas
  • Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy by Viktor Frankl
  • The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge

1994-1995

  • Compassionate Capitalism: People Helping People Help Themselves by Rich DeVos
  • Beating the Street by Peter Lynch
  • The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protection by Russell D. Roberts

1993-1994

  • Breakpoint and Beyond: Mastering the Future – Today by George Land and Beth Jarman
  • The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
  • Principle-Centered Leadership by Stephen R. Covey

1992-1993

  • 2020 Visions: Long View of a Changing World by Richard Carlson and Bruce Goldman
  • Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment by Stephan Schmidheiny
  • Recapturing the Spirit of Enterprise by George Gilder

1991-1992

  • Essentials of Business Ethics by Peter Madsen and Jay M. Shafritz, Eds.
  • The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America by Shelby Steele
  • The Man Who Discovered Quality: How W. Edwards Deming Brought the Quality Revolution to America – The Stories of Ford, Xerox, and GM by Andrea Gabor

1990-1991

  • The New Realities by Peter F. Drucker
  • Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition by Harvey Mackay
  • Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus