en-US Mon, 07 Apr 2025 06:11:53 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 205136369 224 Ann M. Eisenberg 1108834019 Ken 0 to-read 4.00
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]]> 176444106 Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.

To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.]]> 304 Ezra Klein 1668023482 Ken 0 to-read 4.14 2025
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]]> 195476226 ��
American taxation is unfair, and it is most unfair to the very people who critically need its support. Not only do taxpayers with fewer resources—less wealth, power, and land—pay more than the well-off, they are forced to fight for their rights within an unjust system that undermines any attempts to improve their position or economic standing. In The Black Tax , Andrew W. Kahrl reveals the shocking history and ruinous consequences of inequitable and predatory tax laws in this country—above all, widespread and devastating racial dispossession.

Throughout the twentieth century, African Americans acquired substantial amounts of property nationwide. But racist practices, obscure processes, and outright theft diminished their holdings and their power. Of these, Kahrl shows, few were more powerful, or more quietly destructive, than property taxes. He examines all the structural features and hidden traps within America’s tax system that have forced Black Americans to pay more for less and stripped them of their land and investments, and he reveals the staggering cost. The story of America’s now enormous concentration of wealth at the top—and the equally enormous absence of wealth among most Black households—has its roots here.
��
Kahrl exposes the painful history of these practices, from Reconstruction up to the present, describing how discrimination continues to take new forms, even as people continue to fight for their rights, their assets, and their power. If you want to understand the extreme economic disadvantages and persistent racial inequalities that African American households continue to face, The Black Tax is your starting point.]]> 456 Andrew W. Kahrl 022673059X Ken 0 to-read 4.50 2024
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]]> 103509629 176 Omkari Williams 163586688X Ken 0 to-read 4.18
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]]> 52535437 Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Providing the language necessary to begin critical conversations at the earliest age, Antiracist Baby is the perfect gift for readers of all ages dedicated to forming a just society.]]> 24 Ibram X. Kendi 0593110412 Ken 0 to-read 4.04 2020
author: Ibram X. Kendi
name: Ken
average rating: 4.04
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]]> 216884624 Affordable Housing in the United States addresses the issue of affordability, or lack thereof, in housing, going beyond conventional policy discussions to consider fundamental questions such What makes housing affordable and for whom is it affordable? What are the consequences of a lack of affordable housing? How is affordable housing created? And what steps can be taken to ensure all people have access to affordable housing?

With the understanding that different households face different challenges, the book begins by breaking down the variables relevant to the study of affordable housing, including housing costs, household income, geographic location, and market forces, to help readers understand and quantify affordability at the individual and societal level. Part II examines the consequences of unaffordable housing, highlighting racial inequities in housing access and affordability, and multiple forms of housing precarity including eviction and homelessness. Part III explores the entities involved in providing affordable housing such as local and federal governments, regulatory agencies, non-profit organizations, and for-profit developers. In Part IV, case studies from US cities demonstrate the complex web of organizations, policies, and market conditions that influence housing affordability, revealing substantial regional variations in access and policy response. Part V proposes a future roadmap and outlines four potential states with radically different outcomes for the affordable housing system in the United States.

An ideal book for graduate and undergraduate courses in real estate finance and development, urban planning, economics, sociology, and public policy, this title will also be of value to professionals and policymakers working to improve housing affordability and access.]]> 214 Gregg Colburn 1032411694 Ken 0 to-read 0.0
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]]> 55404479 Yanis Varoufakis, author of Another Now

'Utterly inspiring'
Caroline Lucas, MP, Green Party

'A masterpiece of measured rage and love'
Jonathan Porritt, author of Hope in Hell

Capitalism is broken. The relentless pursuit of more has delivered climate catastrophe, social inequality and financial instability - and left us ill-prepared for life in a global pandemic. Tim Jackson's passionate and provocative book dares us to imagine a world beyond capitalism - a place where relationship and meaning take precedence over profits and power. Post Growth is both a manifesto for system change and an invitation to rekindle a deeper conversation about the nature of the human condition.]]> 227 Tim Jackson 1509542531 Ken 0 to-read 3.77 2021
author: Tim Jackson
name: Ken
average rating: 3.77
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]]> 59095821 320 Matthias Schmelzer 1839765844 Ken 0 to-read 3.89
author: Matthias Schmelzer
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]]> 127462058 "[A] well-reasoned and eye-opening treatise . . . [Kohei Saito makes]��a provocative and visionary proposal."
��Publishers Weekly, (starred review)

"Saito’s clarity of thought, plethora of evidence, and conversational, gentle, yet urgent tone . . . are sure to win over open-minded readers who understand the dire nature of our global. . . . A cogently structured anti-capitalist approach to the climate crisis."
��Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Why, in our affluent society, do so many people live in poverty, without access to health care, working multiple jobs and are nevertheless unable to make ends meet, with no future prospects, while the planet is burning?

In his international bestseller, Kohei Saito argues that while unfettered capitalism is often blamed for inequality and climate change, subsequent calls for “sustainable growth�� and a “Green New Deal�� are a dangerous compromise. Capitalism creates artificial scarcity by pursuing profit based on the value of products rather than their usefulness and by putting perpetual growth above all else. It is therefore impossible to reverse climate change in a capitalist society�� the system that caused the problem in the first place cannot be an integral part of the solution.��

Instead, Saito advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and production. In practical terms, he argues

the end of mass production and mass consumptiondecarbonization through shorter working hours the prioritization of essential labor over corporate profits
By returning to a system of social ownership, he argues, we can restore abundance and focus on those activities that are essential for human life, effectively reversing climate change and saving the planet.]]> 273 Kōhei Saitō 1662602359 Ken 0 to-read 3.90 2020
author: Kōhei Saitō
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]]> 17465709 Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.]]> 408 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1571313354 Ken 0 currently-reading 4.52 2013
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Ken
average rating: 4.52
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]]> 53642699 250 Brianna Wiest Ken 4 4.08 2020
author: Brianna Wiest
name: Ken
average rating: 4.08
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rating: 4
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We listened to the audio book on a road trip and got a lot of value from it.
]]> 475 Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?

In his million-copy bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?

As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of these societies, but other societies found solutions and persisted. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society's apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.

Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?]]> 608 Jared Diamond 0143036556 Ken 0 to-read 3.93 2004
author: Jared Diamond
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]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Ken 0 to-read 4.39 2024
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]]> 45388334
Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement.]]> 200 Marcus Aurelius 9388118782 Ken 4 4.41 180
author: Marcus Aurelius
name: Ken
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]]> 59433346
"Like all skills, these techniques take practice. But anyone who sincerely wants to bridge the gaps in understanding will appreciate this book. Guzmán is emphatic about making an effort to work on difficult conversations." —Manhattan Book Review

We think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we're not using: our own built-in curiosity.

Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we're right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding one another is hurting our relationships and our society. In this timely, personal guide, Mónica, the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt—broken conversations among confounded people.

She shows you how to overcome the fear and certainty that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is different from or even opposed to yours.

In these pages, you'll learn:

* How to ask what you really want to know (even if you're afraid to)
* How to grow smarter from even the most tense interactions, online or off
* How to cross boundaries and find common ground—with anyone
Whether you're left, right, center, or not a fan of labels: If you're ready to fight back against the confusion, heartbreak, and madness of our dangerously divided times—in your own life, at least—Mónica's got the tools and fresh, surprising insights to prove that seeing where people are coming from isn't just possible. It's easier than you think.]]> 304 Monica Guzmán 1637740328 Ken 0 to-read 3.88
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]]> 197773418 Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload.

Our current definition of “productivity�� is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers—from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe—Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,�� a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for workers to replace them with a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.]]> 244 Cal Newport 0593544854 Ken 0 to-read 3.65 2024
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]]> 56377192 June Jones emerges from her shell to fight for her beloved local library, and through the efforts and support of an eclectic group of library patrons, she discovers life-changing friendships along the way.

Lonely librarian June Jones has never left the sleepy English village where she grew up. Shy and reclusive, the thirty-year-old would rather spend her time buried in books than venture out into the world. But when her library is threatened with closure, June is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community and the place that holds the dearest memories of her mother.

Joining a band of eccentric yet dedicated locals in a campaign to keep the library, June opens herself up to other people for the first time since her mother died. It just so happens that her old school friend Alex Chen is back in town and willing to lend a helping hand. The kindhearted lawyer's feelings for her are obvious to everyone but June, who won't believe that anyone could ever care for her in that way.

To save the place and the books that mean so much to her, June must finally make some changes to her life. For once, she's determined not to go down without a fight. And maybe, in fighting for her cherished library, June can save herself, too.]]> 336 Freya Sampson 0593201388 Ken 0 to-read 3.70 2021
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name: Ken
average rating: 3.70
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]]> 58999233
A rigorous examination of six political myths used to deflect and discredit demands for social justice. In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump "I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct." Reeling from his victory, Democrats blamed the corrosive effect of "identity politics." When banned from Twitter for inciting violence, Trump and his supporters claimed that the measure was an assault on "free speech." In We Need New Stories , Nesrine Malik explains that all of these arguments are political myths―variations on the lie that American values are under assault. Exploring how these and other common political myths function, she breaks down how they are employed to subvert calls for equality from historically disenfranchised groups. Interweaving reportage with an incendiary analysis of American history and politics, she offers a compelling account of how calls to preserve "free speech" are used against the vulnerable; how a fixation with "wokeness," "political correctness," and "cancel culture" is in fact an organized and well-funded campaign by elites; and how the fear of racial minorities and their “identity politics�� obscures the biggest threat of all―white terrorism. What emerges is a radical framework for understanding the crises roiling American contemporary politics.]]> 224 Nesrine Malik 1324021896 Ken 4 4.05 2021
author: Nesrine Malik
name: Ken
average rating: 4.05
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Written shortly after Brexit and Trump's first election, Nesrine Malik, an award-winning British-Sudanese columnist and features writer for The Guardian dives into political and cultural narratives that influenced those two major votes and the pushback against social justice movements. Clearly still very relevant today.
]]> 104957 128 Dalai Lama XIV 072253955X Ken 4 4.25 1997
author: Dalai Lama XIV
name: Ken
average rating: 4.25
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rating: 4
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A pocket-sized summary of an earlier publication, Power of Compassion. Valuable teachings in bite-sized pieces and a good intro, but look to full-length publications for more depth.
]]> 51764686 The groundbreaking speeches of Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist who has become the voice of a generation, including her historic address to the United Nations

In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference brings you Greta in her own words, for the first time. Collecting her speeches that have made history across the globe, from the United Nations to Capitol Hill and mass street protests, her book is a rallying cry for why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. Our future depends upon it.]]> 112 Greta Thunberg 014313356X Ken 4 3.81 2019
author: Greta Thunberg
name: Ken
average rating: 3.81
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rating: 4
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Greta doesn't mince words. A no-holds-barred rallying cry to take action.
]]> 56914101 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN 9780593465271 can be found here.

On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe.

This edition includes a foreword by Oprah Winfrey.]]> 29 Amanda Gorman 059346527X Ken 5
"The new dawn blooms as we free it,
For there is always light,
If only we're brave enough to see it,
If only we're brave enough to be it."]]> 4.57 2021
author: Amanda Gorman
name: Ken
average rating: 4.57
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rating: 5
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A beautifully written, powerful, and needed message, as important today as it was in 2021.

"The new dawn blooms as we free it,
For there is always light,
If only we're brave enough to see it,
If only we're brave enough to be it."
]]> 206180610
For there is always light,
If only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Pulsing with hope and the fire to make change, Amanda Gorman’s poetry is a call to action. Her poems insist on the pursuit of positive change, the power of a single voice, and the universality of the human experience—that we all must come back to each other to create a better future.

As the youngest presidential inaugural poet, Gorman has established herself as a dynamic wordsmith with the power to inspire. Here for the first time is a journal that invites you to actively engage with her poetry. Flip from page to page to find over fifty quotes that challenge, uplift, and prompt dreams of a bright future, with an occasional poem reprinted in its entirety.

With vibrant, graphic designs, this journal provides readers an opportunity to consider their own influence on their communities, their dreams for the future, and the plans for positive change that are available within all of us.]]> 192 Amanda Gorman 0593796896 Ken 0 to-read 4.36
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]]> 50124402 An eminent political scientist’s brilliant analysis of economic, social, and political trends over the past century demonstrating how we have gone from an individualistic “I�� society to a more communitarian “We�� society and then back again—and how we can learn from that experience to turn the corner towards a stronger, more unified nation, from the author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids.

Deep and accelerating inequality; unprecedented political polarization; vitriolic public discourse; a fraying social fabric; public and private narcissism—Americans today seem to agree on only one thing: This is the worst of times.

But we’ve been here before. During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, America was highly individualistic, starkly unequal, fiercely polarized, and deeply fragmented, just as it is today. However as the twentieth century opened, America became—slowly, unevenly, but steadily—more egalitarian, more cooperative, more generous; a society more focused on our responsibilities to one another and less focused on our narrower self-interest. Sometime during the 1960s, however, our nation turned another corner, and all of these trends reversed, leaving us in today’s disarray.

In a sweeping overview of more than a century of history, drawing on his inimitable combination of statistical analysis and storytelling, Robert Putnam analyzes a remarkable confluence of trends that brought us from an “I�� society to a “We�� society and then back again. He draws inspiring lessons for our time from an earlier era, when a dedicated group of reformers righted the ship, putting us on a path to becoming a society once again based on community. Engaging, revelatory, and timely, this is Putnam’s most ambitious work yet, a fitting capstone to a brilliant career.]]> 464 Robert D. Putnam 198212914X Ken 0 to-read 3.93 2020
author: Robert D. Putnam
name: Ken
average rating: 3.93
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]]> 41161349
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' pain.

Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith...and a startling vision of human destiny.

This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler “pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale�� (John Green, New York Times)—now with a new foreword by N. K. Jemisin.]]> 329 Octavia E. Butler 1538732181 Ken 0 to-read 4.17 1993
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Ken
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1993
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]]> 34460583 New York Times��bestselling author Donald Miller uses the seven universal elements of powerful stories to teach readers how to dramatically improve how they connect with customers and grow their businesses.

Donald Miller’s StoryBrand process is a proven solution to the struggle business leaders face when talking about their businesses. This revolutionary method for connecting with customers provides readers with the ultimate competitive advantage, revealing the secret for helping their customers understand the compelling benefits of using their products, ideas, or services. Building a StoryBrand does this by teaching readers the seven universal story points all humans respond to; the real reason customers make purchases; how to simplify a brand message so people understand it; and how to create the most effective messaging for websites, brochures, and social media. Whether you are the marketing director of a multibillion dollar company, the owner of a small business, a politician running for office, or the lead singer of a rock band, Building a StoryBrand will forever transform the way you talk about who you are, what you do, and the unique value you bring to your customers.]]> 228 Donald Miller 0718033329 Ken 0 to-read 4.25 2017
author: Donald Miller
name: Ken
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
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]]> 29496453 Two great spiritual masters share their own hard-won wisdom about living with joy even in the face of adversity.
��
The occasion was a big birthday. And it inspired two close friends to get together in Dharamsala for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The subject was joy. Both winners of the Nobel Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet.

From the beginning the book was envisioned as a three-layer birthday cake: their own stories and teachings about joy, the most recent findings in the science of deep happiness, and the daily practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives. Both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu have been tested by great personal and national adversity, and here they share their personal stories of struggle and renewal. Now that they are both in their eighties, they especially want to spread the core message that to have joy yourself, you must bring joy to others.

Most of all, during that landmark week in Dharamsala, they demonstrated by their own exuberance, compassion, and humor how joy can be transformed from a fleeting emotion into an enduring way of life.]]> 354 Dalai Lama XIV 0399185046 Ken 4 4.37 2016
author: Dalai Lama XIV
name: Ken
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/29
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My fifth book by the Dalai Lama, second by Desmond Tutu, and I'll definitely be reading more. Their friendship, compassion, and joy shine through as they spend a week discussing common lessons from Buddhism, Christianity, and their lives of service.
]]> 38746152 The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays—some as short as a paragraph; some as long as five pages—that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives. His is a meditation on delight that takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities, even the terrors, in his life, including living in America as a black man; the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture; the loss of those he loves. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: the way Botan Rice Candy wrappers melt in your mouth, the volunteer crossing guard with a pronounced tremor whom he imagines as a kind of boat-woman escorting pedestrians across the River Styx, a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, pickup basketball games, the silent nod of acknowledgment between black people. And more than any other subject, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world—his garden, the flowers in the sidewalk, the birds, the bees, the mushrooms, the trees.

This is not a book of how-to or inspiration, though it could be read that way. Fans of Roxane Gay, Maggie Nelson, and Kiese Laymon will revel in Gay’s voice, and his insights. The Book of Delights is about our connection to the world, to each other, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. Gay’s pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.��

Preface
1. My Birthday, Kinda
2. Inefficiency
3. Flower in the Curb
4. Blowing It Off
5. Hole in the Head
6. Remission Still
7. Praying Mantis
8. The Negreeting
9. The High-Five from Strangers, Etc
10. Writing by Hand
11. Transplanting
12. Nicknames
13. But, Maybe ..
14. "Joy Is Such a Human Madness
15. House Party
16. Hummingbird
17. Just a Dream
18. "That's Some Bambi Shit" ..
19. The Irrepressible: The Gratitudes
20. Tap Tap
21. Coffee without the Saucer
22. Lily on the Pants
23. Sharing a Bag 24. Umbrella in the Café
25. Beast Mode
26. Airplane Rituals
27. Weirdly Untitled
28. Pecans
29. The Do-Over
30. Infinity
31. Ghost
32. Nota Bene
33. "Love Me in a Special Way"
34. "Stay," by Lisa Loeb
35. Stacking Delights
36. Donny Hathaway on Pandora
37. "To Spread the Sweetness of Love"
38. Baby, Baby, Baby
39. "REPENT OR BURN"
40. Giving My Body to the Cause
41. Among the Rewards of My Sloth . .
42. Not Grumpy Cat
43. Some Stupid Shit
44. Not Only . .
45. Microgentrification: WE BUY GOLD
46. Reading Palms
47. The Sanctity of Trains
48. Bird Feeding
49. Kombucha in a Mid-century Glass
50. Hickories
51. Annoyed No More
52. Toto
53. Church Poets
54. Public Lying Down
55. Babies. Seriously
56. "My Life, My Life, My Life, My Life in the Sunshine
57. Incorporation
58. Botan Rice Candy
59. Understory
60. "Joy Is Such a Human Madness": The Duff Between Us
61. "It's Just the Day I'm Having" ..
62. The Purple Cornets of Spring
63. The Volunteer
64. Fishing an Eyelash: Two or Three Cents on the Virtues of the Poetry Reading
65. Found Things
66. Found Things (2)
67. Cuplicking
68. Bobblehead
69. The Jenky 70. The Crow's Ablutions
71. Flowers in the Hands of Statues
72. An Abundance of Public Toilets
73. The Wave of Unfamiliars
74. Not for Nothing
75. Bindweed ... Delight?
76. Dickhead
77. Ambiguous Signage Sometimes
78. Heart to Heart
79. Caution: Bees on Bridge
80. Tomato on Board
81. Purple-Handed
82. Name: Kayte Young; Phone Number: 555-867-5309
83. Still Processing
84. Fireflies
85. My Scythe Jack
86. Pawpaw Grove
87. Loitering
88. Touched
89. Scat
90. Get Thee to the Nutrient Cycle!
91. Pulling Carrots
92. Filling the Frame
93. Reckless Air Quotes 94. Judith Irene Gay, Aged Seventy-six Today!
95. Rothko Backboard
96. The Marfa Lights
97. The Carport
98. My Garden (Book):
99. Black Bumblebees!
100. Grown
101. Coco-baby
102. My Birthday]]> 274 Ross Gay 1616207922 Ken 0 to-read 4.15 2019
author: Ross Gay
name: Ken
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/24
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]]> 203164398 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER �� In her inspiring, intimate memoir, the first Black woman to ever be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States chronicles her extraordinary life story.

With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.

Named “Ketanji Onyika,�� meaning “Lovely One,�� based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams: from hearing stories of her grandparents and parents breaking barriers in the segregated South, to honing her voice in high school as an oratory champion and student body president, to graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, where she performed in musical theater and improv and participated in pivotal student organizations.

Here, Justice Jackson pulls back the curtain, marrying the public record of her life with what is less known. She reveals what it takes to advance in the legal profession when most people in power don’t look like you, and to reconcile a demanding career with the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.

Through trials and triumphs, Justice Jackson’s journey will resonate with dreamers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and refuse to be turned aside. This moving, open-hearted tale will spread hope for a more just world, for generations to come.]]> 432 Ketanji Brown Jackson 0593729900 Ken 0 to-read 4.45 2024
author: Ketanji Brown Jackson
name: Ken
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2024
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]]> 39939208 New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies comes a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement.

In the year 2018, it seems as if women’s anger has suddenly erupted into the public conversation. But long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women’s March, and before the #MeToo movement, women’s anger was not only politically catalytic—but politically problematic. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates the long history of bitter resentment that has enshrouded women’s slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it comes from women as opposed to when it comes from men.

With eloquence and fervor, Rebecca tracks the history of female anger as political fuel—from suffragettes marching on the White House to office workers vacating their buildings after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Here Traister explores women’s anger at both men and other women; anger between ideological allies and foes; the varied ways anger is perceived based on its owner; as well as the history of caricaturing and delegitimizing female anger; and the way women’s collective fury has become transformative political fuel—as is most certainly occurring today. She deconstructs society’s (and the media’s) condemnation of female emotion (notably, rage) and the impact of their resulting repercussions.

Highlighting a double standard perpetuated against women by all sexes, and its disastrous, stultifying effect, Traister’s latest is timely and crucial. It offers a glimpse into the galvanizing force of women’s collective anger, which, when harnessed, can change history.]]> 320 Rebecca Traister 1501181807 Ken 0 to-read 4.37 2018
author: Rebecca Traister
name: Ken
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> 33574165
Eloquent rage keeps us all honest and accountable. It reminds women that they don’t have to settle for less. When Cooper learned of her grandmother's eloquent rage about love, sex, and marriage in an epic and hilarious front-porch confrontation, her life was changed. And it took another intervention, this time staged by one of her homegirls, to turn Brittney into the fierce feminist she is today. In Brittney Cooper’s world, neither mean girls nor fuckboys ever win. But homegirls emerge as heroes. This book argues that ultimately feminism, friendship, and faith in one's own superpowers are all we really need to turn things right side up again.]]> 288 Brittney Cooper 1250112575 Ken 0 to-read 4.38 2018
author: Brittney Cooper
name: Ken
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/20
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]]> 9633859
In 1987, Anne Firth Murray had the idea that funding should go to grassroots women's organizations around the globe and that the recipients themselves should decide how to use that money. From that idea, The Global Fund for Women was born. The organization became a major force for good in the world, embodying a new paradigm of philanthropy. In these pages, Murray shares her wisdom, offering guidelines that demonstrate how anyone can turn a clear vision of a better world into reality.]]> 270 Anne Firth Murray 1577317556 Ken 3 3.67 2006
author: Anne Firth Murray
name: Ken
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2014/05/22
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Overall the book is pretty good. My main takeaway is that the culture of the organization, how you act internally, is just as important as the outward work of the organization. Basically, live and work by the values that you espouse.
]]> 210943364
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk�� city of “old traditions and new machinery,�� but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning�� of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Ken 0 to-read 4.52 2024
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Ken
average rating: 4.52
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]]> 189844437 464 Mahbub Rashid 1421447991 Ken 0 to-read 4.00
author: Mahbub Rashid
name: Ken
average rating: 4.00
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/19
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]]> 58537365 Celebrating special interests Cultivating Autistic relationships Reframing Autistic stereotypes And rediscovering your valuesIt’s time to honor the needs, diversity, and unique strengths of Autistic people so that they no longer have to mask—and it’s time for greater public acceptance and accommodation of difference. In embracing neurodiversity, we can all reap the rewards of nonconformity and learn to live authentically, Autistic and neurotypical people alike.]]> 304 Devon Price 0593235231 Ken 0 to-read 4.38 2022
author: Devon Price
name: Ken
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/23
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]]> 54304124
Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles.

Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity.

Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,�� including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.

Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now�� (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet ).]]> 256 Devon Price 1982140100 Ken 0 to-read 3.92 2021
author: Devon Price
name: Ken
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/23
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]]> 35397160 Year after year, readers pulled me aside at events and said, “I’ve never had a problem starting. I’ve started a million things, but I never finish them. Why can’t I finish?

According to studies, 92 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail. You’ve practically got a better shot at getting into Juilliard to become a ballerina than you do at finishing your goals.

For years, I thought my problem was that I didn’t try hard enough. So I started getting up earlier. I drank enough energy drinks to kill a horse. I hired a life coach and ate more superfoods. Nothing worked, although I did develop a pretty nice eyelid tremor from all the caffeine. It was like my eye was waving at you, very, very quickly.

Then, while leading a thirty-day online course to help people work on their goals, I learned something surprising: The most effective exercises were not those that pushed people to work harder. The ones that got people to the finish line did just the opposite�� they took the pressure off.

Why? Because the sneakiest obstacle to meeting your goals is not laziness, but perfectionism. We’re our own worst critics, and if it looks like we’re not going to do something right, we prefer not to do it at all. That’s why we’re most likely to quit on day two, “the day after perfect”—when our results almost always underper­form our aspirations.

The strategies in this book are counterintuitive and might feel like cheating. But they’re based on studies conducted by a university researcher with hundreds of participants. You might not guess that having more fun, eliminating your secret rules, and choosing something to bomb intentionally works. But the data says otherwise. People who have fun are 43 percent more successful! Imagine if your diet, guitar playing, or small business was 43 percent more suc­cessful just by following a few simple principles.

If you’re tired of being a chronic starter and want to become a consistent finisher, you have two options: You can continue to beat yourself up and try harder, since this time that will work. Or you can give yourself the gift of done.]]> 206 Jon Acuff 0698184807 Ken 4 4.13 2017
author: Jon Acuff
name: Ken
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/11
date added: 2024/05/11
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"The sneakiest obstacle to meeting your goal is not laziness, but perfectionism." We heard Jon as a guest on the Good Life Project podcast and enjoyed what he talked about, so we picked up a couple of his books. This one has some solid advice on avoiding perfectionism and getting things done. Definitely helped me recognize (or remember) things I tend to do to get in my own way and be better about finishing things.
]]> 169739638
Prepare to embark on a path to peace, balance and personal growth where ancestral knowledge offers timeless lessons for transforming our lives and the lives of future generations.]]> 64 James Vukelich Ken 5 4.61
author: James Vukelich
name: Ken
average rating: 4.61
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/29
date added: 2024/03/31
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Enduring wisdom that you can finish in one sitting, definitely check this one out.
]]> 41721428 New York Times Best SellerOver 5 million copies soldFor David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare -- poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him "The Fittest (Real) Man in America."In Can't Hurt Me, he shares his astonishing life story and reveals that most of us tap into only 40% of our capabilities. Goggins calls this The 40% Rule, and his story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.]]> 366 David Goggins 1544512260 Ken 3 4.30 2018
author: David Goggins
name: Ken
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/16
date added: 2024/03/16
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]]> 59682855
We're getting something terribly wrong. We've designed the love out of our workplaces, and our schools too, so that they fail utterly to provide for or capitalize on one of our most basic human needs: our need for love.

As Marcus Buckingham shows in this eye-opening, uplifting book, love is an energy, and like all forms of energy, it must flow. It demands expression—and that expression is work. Whether in our professional accomplishments, our relationships, or our response to all the many slings and arrows of life, we know that none of this work will be our best unless it is made with love. There's no learning without love, no innovation, no service, no sustainable growth. Love and work are inextricable.

Buckingham first starkly highlights the contours of our loveless work lives and explains how we got here. Next, he relates how we all develop best in response to other human beings. What does a great work relationship look like when the other person is cued to your loves? What does a great team look like when each member is primed to be a mirror, an amplifier, of the loves of another? Finally, he shows how you can weave love back into the world of work as a force for good, how you can use your daily life routines to pinpoint your specific loves, and how you can make this a discipline for the rest of your life.

Today, too often, love comes last at work, and we are living the painful consequences of this. Love + Work powerfully shows why love must come first—and how we can make this happen.]]> 256 Marcus Buckingham 1647821231 Ken 0 to-read 3.71 2022
author: Marcus Buckingham
name: Ken
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/07
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]]> 59133541
In Homelessness Is a Housing Problem , Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city—including mental illness, drug use, poverty, weather, generosity of public assistance, and low-income mobility—and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country. Instead, housing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a far more convincing account. With rigor and clarity, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem explores U.S. cities' diverse experiences with housing precarity and offers policy solutions for unique regional contexts.]]> 284 Gregg Colburn 0520383761 Ken 0 to-read 4.22 2022
author: Gregg Colburn
name: Ken
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/16
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]]> 165059495
Building on the lessons she learned on Wall Street about money and the markets, Vivian now offers her best personal finance tips and tricks to readers of all ages and demographics, so that anyone can get rich, whether you grew up knowing the rules to the game or not. Vivian will be your mentor, dispensing fresh, no-BS advice on how to think like a rich person and create smart money habits. Throughout the pages of Rich AF , Vivian will break down her best recommendations to help
And much more!

Rich AF will equip readers with the tools and knowledge to not only understand the financial landscape, but to build a financial strategy of their own. And with Your Rich BFF at your side, you’ll be able to start your financial journey already in an affluent mindset, making the most of your money and growing your wealth for years to come.]]> 336 Vivian Tu 0593714911 Ken 5 4.04 2023
author: Vivian Tu
name: Ken
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/03
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I've followed Vivian Tu (Your Rich BFF) on social media for a while and really enjoyed her debut book. Financial literacy should be taught in schools, but until (and after) then, it's important to learn more and to take action. Tu covers straightforward and effective strategies to maximize your earnings at work, manage values-based spending and budgeting, overcome investing anxiety, build wealth, and achieve the financial freedom to leave bad work or personal situations and make decisions out of a place of power and abundance instead of scarcity or desperation. I learned quite a bit from the book and have already taken action based on it. It's essential reading if you are just getting started but even if you're pretty good with money, I recommend picking this one up.
]]> 59663133
In Rural Renaissance , Moore argues we don’t have to wait for new legislation or technologies to begin our work. From the White House to her hometown in rural Georgia, Moore has gathered the tools needed to bring the far-reaching benefits of clean power to small communities, particularly in rural America. In this accessible guide, Moore provides an overview of the current energy landscape, including the federal, state, and local policies that will shape each community’s unique approach. Next, she describes five pathways to clean power in rural America and strategies for achieving them, including energy efficiency, renewable power, resilience (including microgrids and battery storage), the electrification of transportation, and finally, broadband internet. Throughout this journey, Moore shares stories of challenges and successes and encourages readers to design programs that address inequality.

Clean energy shouldn’t be reserved for the wealthy or for sleek and modern city centers. Rural Renaissance offers a vision of thriving rural communities where clean power is the spark that leads to greater investment, vitality, and equity. We can start today—and this book provides the toolbox.
��]]> 252 L. Michelle Moore 1642831964 Ken 0 to-read 4.29
author: L. Michelle Moore
name: Ken
average rating: 4.29
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]]> 61273746 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781982166694.

What makes for a happy life, a fulfilling life? A good life? In their “captivating�� ( The Wall Street Journal) book, the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted, show that the answer to these questions may be closer than you realize.

What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life.

The invaluable insights in this book emerge from the revealing personal stories of hundreds of participants in the Harvard Study as they were followed year after year for their entire adult lives, and this wisdom was bolstered by research findings from many other studies. Relationships in all their forms—friendships, romantic partnerships, families, coworkers, tennis partners, book club members, Bible study groups—all contribute to a happier, healthier life. And as The Good Life shows us, it’s never too late to strengthen the relationships you already have, and never too late to build new ones. The Good Life provides examples of how to do this.

Dr. Waldinger’s TED Talk about the Harvard Study, “What Makes a Good Life,�� has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the ten most-watched TED talks ever. The Good Life has been praised by bestselling authors Jay Shetty “an empowering quest towards our greatest meaningful human connection��), Angela Duckworth (“In a crowded field of life advice...Schulz and Waldinger stand apart��), and happiness expert Laurie Santos (“Waldinger and Schulz are world experts on the counterintuitive things that make life meaningful��).

With “insightful [and] interesting�� (Daniel Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Stumbling on Happiness) life stories, The Good Life shows us how we can make our lives happier and more meaningful through our connections to others.]]> 352 Robert Waldinger Ken 0 to-read 4.11 2023
author: Robert Waldinger
name: Ken
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
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date added: 2024/01/17
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]]> 157095669 #1 New York Times bestseller

"This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self. It would've helped me find a more joyful path to progress."
-Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam singles tennis champion

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights.

We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distances we ourselves can travel. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.

Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid story­telling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess �� it’s about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the charac­ter skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.

This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.]]> 304 Adam M. Grant 0593653149 Ken 0 to-read 4.09 2023
author: Adam M. Grant
name: Ken
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/17
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]]> 61153739 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER �� A groundbreaking manifesto on living better and longer that challenges the conventional medical thinking on aging and reveals a new approach to preventing chronic disease and extending long-term health, from a visionary physician and leading longevity expert

Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.

For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of aging that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late to help, prolonging lifespan at the expense of healthspan, or quality of life. Dr. Attia believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalized, proactive strategy for longevity, one where we take action now, rather than waiting.

This is not “biohacking,�� it’s science: a well-founded strategic and tactical approach to extending lifespan while also improving our physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Dr. Attia’s aim is less to tell you what to do and more to help you learn how to think about long-term health, in order to create the best plan for you as an individual. In Outlive, readers will discover:

�� Why the cholesterol test at your annual physical doesn’t tell you enough about your actual risk of dying from a heart attack.
�� That you may already suffer from an extremely common yet underdiagnosed liver condition that could be a precursor to the chronic diseases of aging.
�� Why exercise is the most potent pro-longevity “drug”—and how to begin training for the “Centenarian Decathlon.��
�� Why you should forget about diets, and focus instead on nutritional biochemistry, using technology and data to personalize your eating pattern.
�� Why striving for physical health and longevity, but ignoring emotional health, could be the ultimate curse of all.

Aging and longevity are far more malleable than we think; our fate is not set in stone. With the right roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.]]> 496 Peter Attia 0593236599 Ken 0 to-read 4.33 2023
author: Peter Attia
name: Ken
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/17
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]]> 75816949 352 Kathryn J. Edin 0063239493 Ken 5 4.15 2023
author: Kathryn J. Edin
name: Ken
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/13
date added: 2024/01/13
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The authors used poverty, health, and social mobility metrics to rank all US counties and the 500 largest cities, then visited, studied, and met with community leaders in the places of deepest disadvantage and highest advantage. The methodology brings a deeper understanding of well-being and opportunity that can depend greatly on where you live in the United States, dives into the historical and present day reasons for why areas ended up where they are, and explores methods for improving outcomes. By directly comparing counties and cities, they found that "America's most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural."
]]> 26312997 "This book is a breakthrough, a lyrical, powerful, science-based narrative that actually shows us how to get better (much better) at the things we care about."--Seth Godin, author of Linchpin

"Anyone who wants to get better at anything should read [ Peak ]. Rest assured that the book is not mere theory. Ericsson's research focuses on the real world, and he explains in detail, with examples, how all of us can apply the principles of great performance in our work or in any other part of our lives."-- Fortune

Anders Ericsson has made a career studying chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. Peak distills three decades of myth-shattering research into a powerful learning strategy that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring new abilities. Whether you want to stand out at work, improve your athletic or musical performance, or help your child achieve academic goals, Ericsson's revolutionary methods will show you how to improve at almost any skill that matters to you.

"The science of excellence can be divided into two eras: before Ericsson and after Ericsson. His groundbreaking work, captured in this brilliantly useful book, provides us with a blueprint for achieving the most important and life-changing work possible: to become a little bit better each day."--Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code

"Ericsson's research has revolutionized how we think about human achievement. If everyone would take the lessons of this book to heart, it could truly change the world."--Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein ]]> 336 K. Anders Ericsson 0544456254 Ken 0 to-read 4.18 2016
author: K. Anders Ericsson
name: Ken
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> 27213329
Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.

Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own character lab and set out to test her theory.

Here, she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers; from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.

Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that not talent or luck makes all the difference.]]> 277 Angela Duckworth 1443442313 Ken 0 to-read 4.07 2016
author: Angela Duckworth
name: Ken
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
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]]> 11324722 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307377906 can be found here.

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
��
His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.]]> 419 Jonathan Haidt Ken 0 to-read 4.18 2012
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Ken
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> 36854825 How a fraying social fabric is fueling the outrage of rural Americans

What is fueling rural America's outrage toward the federal government? Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump? And, beyond economic and demographic decline, is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide? Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America's small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order--the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and identities--underpinning this critical segment of the nation. Wuthnow demonstrates that to truly understand rural Americans' anger, their culture must be explored more fully.

We hear from farmers who want government out of their business, factory workers who believe in working hard to support their families, town managers who find the federal government unresponsive to their communities' needs, and clergy who say the moral climate is being undermined. Wuthnow argues that rural America's fury stems less from specific economic concerns than from the perception that Washington is distant from and yet threatening to the social fabric of small towns. Rural dwellers are especially troubled by Washington's seeming lack of empathy for such small-town norms as personal responsibility, frugality, cooperation, and common sense. Wuthnow also shows that while these communities may not be as discriminatory as critics claim, racism and misogyny remain embedded in rural patterns of life.

Moving beyond simplistic depictions of the residents of America's heartland, The Left Behind offers a clearer picture of how this important population will influence the nation's political future.]]> 200 Robert Wuthnow 069117766X Ken 0 to-read 3.51
author: Robert Wuthnow
name: Ken
average rating: 3.51
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]]> 37707827 An eminent sociologist and bestselling author offers an inspiring blueprint for rebuilding our fractured society.

We are living in a time of deep divisions. Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn't seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together, to find common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done?

In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, bookstores, churches, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. These are places where people gather and linger, making friends across group lines and strengthening the entire community. Klinenberg calls this the "social infrastructure" When it is strong, neighborhoods flourish; when it is neglected, as it has been in recent years, families and individuals must fend for themselves.

Klinenberg takes us around the globe--from a floating school in Bangladesh to an arts incubator in Chicago, from a soccer pitch in Queens to an evangelical church in Houston--to show how social infrastructure is helping to solve some of our most pressing challenges: isolation, crime, education, addiction, political polarization, and even climate change.

Richly reported, elegantly written, and ultimately uplifting, Palaces for the People urges us to acknowledge the crucial role these spaces play in civic life. Our social infrastructure could be the key to bridging our seemingly unbridgeable divides--and safeguarding democracy.]]> 288 Eric Klinenberg 1524761168 Ken 0 to-read 3.96 2018
author: Eric Klinenberg
name: Ken
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 180170423
This luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry , Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. Now in paperback and featuring an interview with the author and a discussion guide, Call Us What We Carry reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.]]> 256 Amanda Gorman 0593465083 Ken 0 to-read 4.11 2021
author: Amanda Gorman
name: Ken
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/28
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]]> 31374510
In 2007, John M. Eason moved his family to Forrest City, Arkansas, in search of answers to key questions about this Why is America building so many prisons? Why now? And why in rural areas? Eason quickly learned that rural demand for prisons is complicated. Towns like Forrest City choose to build prisons not simply in hopes of landing jobs or economic wellbeing, but also to protect and improve their reputations. For some rural leaders, fostering a prison in their town is a means of achieving order in a rapidly changing world. Taking us into the decision-making meetings and tracking the impact of prisons on economic development, poverty, and race, Eason demonstrates how groups of elite whites and black leaders share power. Situating prisons within dynamic shifts that rural economies are undergoing and showing how racially diverse communities lobby for prison construction, Big House on the Prairie is a remarkable glimpse into the ways a prison economy takes shape and operates.]]> 240 John M. Eason 022641034X Ken 0 to-read 3.57
author: John M. Eason
name: Ken
average rating: 3.57
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]]> 3431
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"]]> 196 Mitch Albom 0786868716 Ken 3 4.00 2003
author: Mitch Albom
name: Ken
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/05
date added: 2023/11/05
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]]> 61358638 Reimagining the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.]]> 304 Matthew Desmond 0593239911 Ken 5 4.27 2023
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Ken
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 5
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After winning the Pulitzer Prize for Evicted, Desmond lays out the case that poverty abolition is not only a moral and civic obligation but irresistibly attainable.
]]> 25852784 Evicted, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of 21st-century America's most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.]]> 418 Matthew Desmond 0553447432 Ken 5 4.47 2016
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Ken
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/30
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I knew it was going to be good, but I was still pretty blown away. No wonder it won the Pulitzer Prize and made just about every best book list of the year. Starting his next book Poverty, By America now.
]]> 6444492 A startling investigation of what people do in disasters and why it matters

Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster--whether manmade or natural--people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities?

In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.]]> 353 Rebecca Solnit 0670021075 Ken 0 to-read 3.94 2009
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Ken
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> 63365611
Families on the Edge is an ethnographic portrait of families in rural and small-town New England who are often undercut by the very systems that are set up to help them. In this book, author and medical anthropologist Elizabeth Carpenter-Song draws on a decade of ethnographic research to chart the struggles of a cohort of families she met in a Vermont family shelter in 2009, as they contend with housing insecurity, mental illness, and substance use. Few other works have attempted to take such a long-term view of how vulnerability to homelessness unfolds over time or to engage so fully with existing scholarship in the fields of anthropology and health services.

Research on homelessness in the United States has been overwhelmingly conducted in urban settings, so much less is known about its trajectory in rural areas and small towns. Carpenter-Song’s book identifies how specific aspects of rural New England—including scarce affordable housing stock, extremely limited transportation, and cultural expectations of self-reliance—come together to thwart opportunities for families despite their continual striving to “make it�� in this environment. Carpenter-Song shines a light on the many high-stakes consequences that occur when systems of care fail and offers a way forward for clinicians, health researchers, and policymakers seeking practical solutions.]]> 192 Elizabeth Carpenter-Song 0262546183 Ken 0 to-read 4.07
author: Elizabeth Carpenter-Song
name: Ken
average rating: 4.07
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]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 Ken 0 to-read 4.21 2023
author: Naomi Klein
name: Ken
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 173411 180 Ken Jennings 1576753085 Ken 3 4.03 2003
author: Ken Jennings
name: Ken
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/17
date added: 2023/09/17
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Good message, but I found the writing a bit cheesy. It's written in the form of a diary by someone who is meeting serving leaders and learning from them while dealing with some personal struggles at the same time. It's definitely a light read, and the storytelling may make the lessons memorable, but it doesn't get deep on any of them. I can see it being a decent introduction that encourages people to self reflect and look to learn more about servant leadership.
]]> 62314395 176 Katherine Johnson Martinko 0865719829 Ken 4 3.76
author: Katherine Johnson Martinko
name: Ken
average rating: 3.76
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/15
date added: 2023/09/16
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If you're interested in a lot less screen time in your life and your kids' lives, there are some strong reasons and good advice in this one. The negative effects of excessive screen time are becoming more commonly known and those are covered in the beginning of the book, but perhaps more compelling is all the better ways we could be spending those hours, building mental health, physical health, and life skills while playing, tinkering, exploring, and socializing in the real world. "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives."
]]> 13214
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.�� At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare��) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.]]> 289 Maya Angelou 0553279378 Ken 4
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity." �� James Baldwin

"Maya Angelou lived what she wrote. She understood that sharing her truth connected her to the greater human truths—of longing, abandonment, security, hope, wonder, prejudice, mystery, and, finally, self-discovery: the realization of who you really are and the liberation that love brings. And each of those timeless truths unfolds in this first autobiographical account of her life.

I'm so pleased (and I know she is, too) that an entire new generation of readers will get to know Maya Angelou's story and be better empowered to realize their own." �� Oprah Winfrey]]> 4.30 1969
author: Maya Angelou
name: Ken
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1969
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/09/10
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Obviously a very well known one, but if you haven't had a chance to read it yet, I'm one more person highly recommending it!

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity." �� James Baldwin

"Maya Angelou lived what she wrote. She understood that sharing her truth connected her to the greater human truths—of longing, abandonment, security, hope, wonder, prejudice, mystery, and, finally, self-discovery: the realization of who you really are and the liberation that love brings. And each of those timeless truths unfolds in this first autobiographical account of her life.

I'm so pleased (and I know she is, too) that an entire new generation of readers will get to know Maya Angelou's story and be better empowered to realize their own." �� Oprah Winfrey
]]> 40121378 Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
-��Make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
-��Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
- Design your environment to make success easier;
- Get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.]]> 319 James Clear Ken 5 4.34 2018
author: James Clear
name: Ken
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/09/10
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Whether you are trying to build more good habits or break bad habits, this book illustrates how and why some habits stick and others are more challenging �� then gives practical and proven steps to take to get the results you want. Once you understand how habits work and their potential for compounding gains, you can use them to achieve great things over time. As I worked through the book, I have already implemented several of the practices in my own life. They are small but significant improvements to my current routines and reframed ways of thinking about things, and they are, without a doubt, making it easier to do more of the things I've been wanting to do ("tiny changes, remarkable results").
]]> 9663794 "A powerful and penetrating exploration of what separates great companies and great leaders from the rest."
-Polly LaBarre, coauthor of Mavericks at Work Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty?

In studying the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered that they all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way-and it's the complete opposite of what everyone else does. People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers might have little in common, but they all started with why.

Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire.]]> 246 Simon Sinek 1591846447 Ken 4 4.10 2009
author: Simon Sinek
name: Ken
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/08/20
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I've watched and shared his most famous TedTalk several times over the years and finally made time to read the book. I'm glad I did, and folks closest to me will probably keep hearing me reference it for a while. It is a great book to understand why certain people, organizations, and movements inspire followers while others fail to gain momentum. It's especially insightful on how to ensure inspiration continues after the founders move on.
]]> 55935227 0 Layla F. Saad 1728238862 Ken 0 to-read 4.17
author: Layla F. Saad
name: Ken
average rating: 4.17
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]]> 46002342 Me and White Supremacy teaches readers how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of colour, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.

When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #MeAndWhiteSupremacy, she never predicted it would spread as widely as it did. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. She was looking for truth, and she got it. Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and over 90,000 people downloaded the Me and White Supremacy Workbook.

The updated and expanded Me and White Supremacy takes the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources.

Awareness leads to action, and action leads to change. The numbers show that readers are ready to do this work - let's give it to them.]]> 238 Layla F. Saad 1728209803 Ken 0 to-read 4.33 2020
author: Layla F. Saad
name: Ken
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> 57359691 The riveting, unforgettable story of a girl whose indomitable spirit is tested by homelessness, poverty, and racism in an unequal America—from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott of The New York Times

Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, this story goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding as the chasm deepens between rich and poor.

In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to “code switch�� between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality. Based on nearly a decade of reporting, this book vividly illuminates some of the most critical issues in contemporary America through the life of one remarkable girl.]]> 602 Andrea Elliott 0812986946 Ken 0 to-read 4.71 2021
author: Andrea Elliott
name: Ken
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/09
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]]> 60784336
Now in paperback―the definitive guide to communicating and connecting in a hybrid world.

Email replies that show up a week later. Video chats full of “oops sorry no you go�� and “can you hear me?!�� Ambiguous text-messages. Weird punctuation you can’t make heads or tails of. Is it any wonder that communication takes us so much time and effort to figure out? How did we lose our innate capacity to understand each other?

Humans rely on body language to connect and build trust, but with most of our communication happening from behind a screen, traditional body language signals are no longer visible―or are they? In Digital Body Language , Erica Dhawan, a go-to thought leader on collaboration and a passionate communication junkie, combines cutting edge research with engaging storytelling to decode the new signals and cues that have replaced traditional body language across genders, generations, and culture. In real life, we lean in, uncross our arms, smile, nod and make eye contact to show we listen and care. Online, reading carefully is the new listening. Writing clearly is the new empathy. And a phone or video call is worth a thousand emails.

Digital Body Language will turn your daily misunderstandings into a set of collectively understood laws that foster connection, no matter the distance. Dhawan investigates a wide array of exchanges―from large conferences and video meetings to daily emails, texts, IMs, and conference calls―and offers insights and solutions to build trust and clarity with anyone in our ever-changing world.]]> 288 Erica Dhawan 1250852625 Ken 0 to-read 3.50
author: Erica Dhawan
name: Ken
average rating: 3.50
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]]> 42771901 232 Jenny Odell 1612197493 Ken 5 3.68 2019
author: Jenny Odell
name: Ken
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/25
date added: 2023/06/25
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This is one of my favorites so far this year. Thought it would be a good one about spending less time on social media, and it is, but it also hit in a lot of great ways I wasn't expecting. Her "argument is obviously anticapitalistic, especially concerning technologies that encourage a capitalist perception of time, place, self, and community." Goes deep into historical examples of retreat from society compared to resistance in place, bioregionalism, connection to place and community, and weaves art into all of it. Not surprised it made so many best books of the year lists!
]]> 53263728
In Gray to Green Communities , green affordable housing expert Dana Bourland argues that we need to move away from a gray housing model to a green model, which considers the health and well-being of residents, their communities, and the planet. She demonstrates that we do not have to choose between protecting our planet and providing housing affordable to all.

Bourland draws from her experience leading the Green Communities Program at Enterprise Community Partners, a national community development intermediary. Her work resulted in the first standard for green affordable housing which was designed to deliver measurable health, economic, and environmental benefits.

The book opens with the potential of green affordable housing, followed by the problems that it is helping to solve, challenges in the approach that need to be overcome, and recommendations for the future of green affordable housing. Gray to Green Communities brings together the stories of those who benefit from living in green affordable housing and examples of Green Communities�� developments from across the country. Bourland posits that over the next decade we can deliver on the human right to housing while reaching a level of carbon emissions reductions agreed upon by scientists and demanded by youth.

Gray to Green Communities will empower and inspire anyone interested in the future of housing and our planet.
��]]> 200 Dana Bourland 164283128X Ken 0 to-read 3.86
author: Dana Bourland
name: Ken
average rating: 3.86
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]]> 60382737
From the founder and creator of The Nap Ministry,��Rest Is Resistance��is a battle cry, a guidebook, a map for a movement, and a field guide for the weary and hopeful. It is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey's lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art,��Rest Is Resistance��is a call to action and manifesto for those who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.]]> 224 Tricia Hersey 0316365211 Ken 0 to-read 4.06 2022
author: Tricia Hersey
name: Ken
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 156992918
25 women with 25 different backgrounds share their journey of leading in the nonprofit sector and amplifying their voices as they lead. Escaping the harsh realities instilled in their hearts, these women stepped forward to lead in the nonprofit sector, a space that while it values the wellbeing of others falls short of valuing the leadership of women of color. But instead of giving way to the menace of racism, these women reclaimed their passion.

Contributing Alana Pierre, Ashley McIver, Benaye Wadkins Chambers, Brenda J. Gomes, Caazena P. Hunter, Candace Barnes, Chris McSwain, Cynthia Thompson, Daneshe Williams-Bethune, Dominique S. McCain, Dr. Garica Sanford, Dr. Summer Rose, Hillary Evans, Jessica Armstead, Marjorie Murat, Melanie Calhoun, Nichelle Bennett, Severina Ware, CVA, Shane Woods, Shawana O. Carter, Stephanie Epps, Tamika Sanders, Taylor Hall, Tina L. Robertson, and Yasmine "YaYa" Lockett. Their passion reclaimed by believing in the ideals of humility, discipleship, and strength. The passion reclaimed by living the mantra of “I will unapologetically do me!��.]]> 317 Errika Y. Flood-Moultrie Ken 0 to-read 5.00
author: Errika Y. Flood-Moultrie
name: Ken
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 30046462 207 Jessica Joelle Alexander 1101992972 Ken 0 to-read 4.18 2014
author: Jessica Joelle Alexander
name: Ken
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 186723 240 Henry David Thoreau 1406809756 Ken 0 to-read 3.92 1849
author: Henry David Thoreau
name: Ken
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1849
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/06/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 29502354 Overwork is the new normal. Rest is something to do when the important things are done-but they are never done. Looking at different forms of rest, from sleep to vacation, Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang dispels the myth that the harder we work the better the outcome. He combines rigorous scientific research with a rich array of examples of writers, painters, and thinkers---from Darwin to Stephen King---to challenge our tendency to see work and relaxation as antithetical. "Deliberate rest," as Pang calls it, is the true key to productivity, and will give us more energy, sharper ideas, and a better life. Rest offers a roadmap to rediscovering the importance of rest in our lives, and a convincing argument that we need to relax more if we actually want to get more done.]]> 320 Alex Soojung-Kim Pang 0465074871 Ken 0 to-read 3.77 2016
author: Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
name: Ken
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 63934607
Humans are unique in our ability to understand time, able to comprehend the past and future like no other species. Yet modern-day technology and capitalism have supercharged our short-termist tendencies and trapped us in the present, at the mercy of reactive politics, quarterly business targets and 24-hour news cycles.

It wasn't always so. In medieval times, craftsmen worked on cathedrals that would be unfinished in their lifetime. Indigenous leaders fostered intergenerational reciprocity. And in the early twentieth century, writers dreamed of worlds thousands of years hence. Now, as we face long-term challenges on an unprecedented scale, how do we recapture that far-sighted vision?

Richard Fisher takes us from the boardrooms of Japan - home to some of the world's oldest businesses - to an Australian laboratory where an experiment started a century ago is still going strong. He examines the psychological biases that discourage the long view, and talks to the growing number of people from the worlds of philosophy, technology, science and the arts who are exploring smart ways to overcome them. How can we learn to widen our perception of time and honour our obligations to the lives of those not yet born?


Praise for The Long View:

'A wise, humane book laced with curiosity and hope. It will open your mind and horizons - and leave you giddy at the prospect of all that we may yet become.' Tom Chatfield, author of How to Think

'Hope-filled and revelatory ... Beautifully readable and scholarly, rich and personal, this book shows how, to leave a robust legacy for the future, we need to overcome our bias for the present.' Rowan Hooper, author of How to Spend a Trillion Dollars

'A soaring hymn to all that might lie in the future; alongside the diverse and beautiful ways to think about it. Overflowing with wisdom and insight.' Thomas Moynihan, author of X-Risk

'Few books can claim to shake your perspective on life, but The Long View does exactly that ... a landmark book that could help to build a much brighter future for many generations to come.' David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect

'The Long View is a manifesto calling for a radical reconception of our relationship with time. Richard Fisher documents the social, psychological, and economic reasons we have become stranded on the Island of Now - and charts routes for us to get back to the mainland.' Marcia Bjornerud, the author of Timefulness...]]> 352 Richard Fisher 1472285212 Ken 0 to-read 3.90
author: Richard Fisher
name: Ken
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61331866
Loneliness is an epidemic; it feels harder than ever to connect with others meaningfully. What can we do to remedy this? Sheila Liming has the answer: we need to hang out more.

With the introduction of AI and constant Zoom meetings, our lives have become more fractured, digital and chaotic. Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time shows us what we have lost to the frenetic pace of digital life and how to get it back.

Combining personal narrative with pungent analyses of books, movies, and TV shows, Sheila Liming shows us how the new social landscape deadens our connections with others �� connections that are vital to both self-care and to a vibrant community. Whether drinking with strangers in a distant city or jamming with musician friends in an abandoned Pittsburgh row house, Liming demonstrates that unstructured social time is the key to a freer, happier sense of self.

Hanging Out shows how simple acts of casual connection are the glue that binds us together, and how community is the antidote to the disconnection and isolation that dominates contemporary life.

“The book conceives of hanging out as a way to reclaim time as something other than a raw ingredient to be converted into productivity.�� —New York Times

“Rich with illuminating stories.�� —Slate

“We could all use more of that blissfully unstructured social time, posits Sheila Liming in the well-considered series of arguments found in Hanging Out.�� —Reader’s Digest

“Opens with a simple and expansive account of what hanging out is �� Liming dedicates much of the book to stories from her past. She has lived an interesting life, and she tells these stories well.�� —Washington Post

“Sharp and vivid writing �� a layered exploration of social dynamics that contains some textured literary criticism.�� —Bookforum

“More books about hanging out, less about productivity please. Sheila Liming sees the gap in our thinking about time, and the true worth in spending it in an unstructured fashion with members of our community.�� —LitHub]]> 224 Sheila Liming 1685890059 Ken 0 to-read 3.12 2023
author: Sheila Liming
name: Ken
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61358639 How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the “attention economy�� to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don’t have time to spend?

In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently. Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism.

This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time—inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales—that can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility.

Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it—the way we experience time itself—and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can “save�� time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.]]> 400 Jenny Odell 059324270X Ken 0 to-read 3.60 2023
author: Jenny Odell
name: Ken
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 32191710
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.]]> 223 Neil deGrasse Tyson 0393609391 Ken 4 4.07 2017
author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
name: Ken
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/30
date added: 2023/05/20
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]]> 54860473
The definitive guide to communicating and connecting in a hybrid world.

Email replies that show up a week later. Video chats full of “oops sorry no you go�� and “can you hear me?!�� Ambiguous text-messages. Weird punctuation you can’t make heads or tails of. Is it any wonder communication takes us so much time and effort to figure out? How did we lose our innate capacity to understand each other?

Humans rely on body language to connect and build trust, but with most of our communication happening from behind a screen, traditional body language signals are no longer visible -- or are they? In Digital Body Language , Erica Dhawan, a go-to thought leader on collaboration and a passionate communication junkie, combines cutting edge research with engaging storytelling to decode the new signals and cues that have replaced traditional body language across genders, generations, and culture. In real life, we lean in, uncross our arms, smile, nod and make eye contact to show we listen and care. Online, reading carefully is the new listening. Writing clearly is the new empathy. And a phone or video call is worth a thousand emails.

Digital Body Language will turn your daily misunderstandings into a set of collectively understood laws that foster connection, no matter the distance. Dhawan investigates a wide array of exchanges―from large conferences and video meetings to daily emails, texts, IMs, and conference calls―and offers insights and solutions to build trust and clarity to anyone in our ever changing world.]]> 288 Erica Dhawan 1250246520 Ken 0 to-read 3.71
author: Erica Dhawan
name: Ken
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 62586054 The Color of Law brilliantly recounted how government at all levels created segregation. Just Action describes how we can begin to undo it.

In the six years since its initial publication, The Color of Law has become a landmark work, which―through its nearly one million copies sold―has helped to define the fractious age in which we live. Aware that twenty-first-century segregation continues to promote entrenched inequality, Richard Rothstein has now teamed with housing policy expert Leah Rothstein to write Just Action, a blueprint for concerned citizens and community leaders. This book describes dozens of activities that readers and supporters can undertake in their own communities to make their commitment real, producing victories that might finally challenge residential segregation and help remedy America’s profoundly unconstitutional past.]]> 352 Richard Rothstein 1324093242 Ken 0 to-read 3.97
author: Richard Rothstein
name: Ken
average rating: 3.97
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53231851
McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm--the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country--from parks and pools to functioning schools--have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world's advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.

But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can't do on our own.

McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint a story of racism's costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy's collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.]]> 415 Heather McGhee 0525509569 Ken 0 to-read 4.62 2021
author: Heather McGhee
name: Ken
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 160425 Letting Go, three years ago, this is Morrie Schwartz's enlightened and compassionate philosophy of living, written as he was battling the effects of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Sadly, Morrie died before the book was published. A year later,though, a former student of Morrie's, Mitch Albom, wrote Tuesdays with
Morrie, chronicling Morrie's impact on his life. This book is, as the title says, Morrie in his own words, his invaluable legacy to us all.]]> 127 Morrie Schwartz 0385318790 Ken 3
Like Tuesdays With Morrie, this was a quick and enjoyable read, with a bit more focus on the day-to-day challenges of living with a degenerative disease. Lessons for handling your own declining health, or that of a loved one, along with plenty of general life lessons as well.

"The goals I have set for myself to help me stay composed during this illness are not unlike those most of us have aspired to since childhood: to behave with courage, dignity, generosity, humor, love, open-heartedness, patience, and self-respect. When you are close to death it is not easier to achieve these goals than at other stages of your life, just more urgent that you try."]]> 4.28 1996
author: Morrie Schwartz
name: Ken
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/24
date added: 2023/03/29
shelves:
review:
I recently read and enjoyed Tuesdays With Morrie, so when I came across this at a library book sale I grabbed it.

Like Tuesdays With Morrie, this was a quick and enjoyable read, with a bit more focus on the day-to-day challenges of living with a degenerative disease. Lessons for handling your own declining health, or that of a loved one, along with plenty of general life lessons as well.

"The goals I have set for myself to help me stay composed during this illness are not unlike those most of us have aspired to since childhood: to behave with courage, dignity, generosity, humor, love, open-heartedness, patience, and self-respect. When you are close to death it is not easier to achieve these goals than at other stages of your life, just more urgent that you try."
]]> 32191706 de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.

As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book�� (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.]]> 368 Richard Rothstein 1631492853 Ken 5 4.44 2017
author: Richard Rothstein
name: Ken
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2023/03/29
date added: 2023/03/29
shelves:
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I've been in the nonprofit housing sector for seven years and have even gotten to see the author speak twice, but it was still incredibly eye-opening and necessary to read this book. The number of different ways, the severity, and the enormous scale of discrimination against Black Americans by federal, state, and local governments were systematic, immoral, and unconstitutional. And the effects of being locked out of opportunity, disinvestment and destruction of communities, suppressed incomes, and violence didn't just go away when (most) housing discrimination was outlawed. Generational and place-based effects are still negatively impacting people today, and achieving fair housing and equal opportunity requires remedies of at least the same scale of the historic and ongoing injustice.
]]> 61897794 A New York Times Bestseller

A provocative guide to how we must reenvision citizenship if American democracy is to survive

The United States faces dangerous threats from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, terrorists, climate change, and future pandemics. The greatest peril to the country, however, comes not from abroad but from within, from none other than ourselves. The question facing us is whether we are prepared to do what is necessary to save our democracy.

The Bill of Obligations is a bold call for change. In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Richard Haass argues that the very idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded. The Bill of Rights is at the center of our Constitution, yet our most intractable conflicts often emerge from contrasting views as to what our rights ought to be. As former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out, "Many of our cases, the most difficult ones, are not about right versus wrong. They are about right versus right." The lesson is clear: rights alone cannot provide the basis for a functioning, much less flourishing, democracy.

But there is a cure: to place obligations on the same footing as rights. The ten obligations that Haass introduces here are essential for healing our divisions and safeguarding the country's future. These obligations reenvision what it means to be an American citizen. They are not a burden but rather commitments that we make to fellow citizens and to the government to uphold democracy and counter the growing apathy, anger, selfishness, division, disinformation, and violence that threaten us all. Through an expert blend of civics, history, and political analysis, this book illuminates how Americans can rediscover and recover the attitudes and behaviors that have contributed so much to this country's success over the centuries.

As Richard Haass argues, "We get the government and the country we deserve. Getting the one we need, however, is up to us." The Bill of Obligations gives citizens across the political spectrum a plan of action to achieve it.]]> 240 Richard N. Haass 0525560653 Ken 0 to-read 4.05 2023
author: Richard N. Haass
name: Ken
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53238019 86 Rev. Joseph D. Soel Ken 0 to-read 0.0
author: Rev. Joseph D. Soel
name: Ken
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54945537 0 Keith Seel 0433490527 Ken 4
The book covers what is in the certification requirements and exam: strategic management, ethical decision making, professional values, operational planning and management, volunteer staffing and development, volunteer retention, financial management, data management, evaluation and outcomes, risk management, and advocacy.

If you have never managed volunteers before, that may seem like more than you need, but in the nonprofit sector (and especially at Habitat for Humanity) volunteer contributions can be made in nearly every aspect of the organization. To be effective, you must be skilled in the overarching aspects of HR, program development, and strategic management in order to ensure volunteers�� skills and efforts are contributing towards the overall mission and vision.

I'm glad that I read it.]]> 4.40
author: Keith Seel
name: Ken
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/10
date added: 2023/02/10
shelves:
review:
I joined a study group with Habitat for Humanity colleagues to read this book and a few weeks ago I completed the internationally recognized professional credential to become a Certified Volunteer Administration (CVA).

The book covers what is in the certification requirements and exam: strategic management, ethical decision making, professional values, operational planning and management, volunteer staffing and development, volunteer retention, financial management, data management, evaluation and outcomes, risk management, and advocacy.

If you have never managed volunteers before, that may seem like more than you need, but in the nonprofit sector (and especially at Habitat for Humanity) volunteer contributions can be made in nearly every aspect of the organization. To be effective, you must be skilled in the overarching aspects of HR, program development, and strategic management in order to ensure volunteers�� skills and efforts are contributing towards the overall mission and vision.

I'm glad that I read it.
]]> 278344
Maya Angelou’s memoirs, essay and poetry collections, and cookbooks have sold millions of copies. Now, MAYA A GLORIOUS CELEBRATION offers an unusual and irresistible look at her life and her myriad interests and accomplishments. Created by the people who know her best—her longtime friends Marcia Ann Gillespie and Richard Long, and her niece Rosa Johnson Butler—it is part tribute, part scrapbook, capturing Angelou at home, at work, and in the public eye. Readers who have come to know and love Maya Angelou will be surprised and delighted by this personal, illustrated portrait of the renowned poet, author, playwright, and humanitarian.]]> 208 Marcia Ann Gillespie 0385511086 Ken 4
Without listing all of the other incredible achievements of her life, I can say that I was blown away at the width and depth of her success and impact on American life; from creative writing, storytelling, speaking, writing and performing in theatre and musical productions, journalism, and community organizing for justice.

Perhaps equally important is not just what she accomplished, but how she did it. How she “lived in the world.�� The stories, pictures, and handwritten notes included in this biography provide an extra special, visual connection to her zest for life and her deep commitment to her family and close friends (chosen family).

“In her writing, speeches, and conversations she is always encouraging us to be fully present, to ‘be as honest and courageous and as courteous and as loving as you can be.�� She calls us to have the courage to love, to dare to try something new, to step up and stand up for ourselves, to seek to explore and achieve our potential.��

I’m glad I was able to read this truly “glorious celebration�� before diving into more of Dr. Angelou’s writings. I have a couple of her books on my to-read list, but let me know if you have a favorite I should check out.]]> 3.95 2008
author: Marcia Ann Gillespie
name: Ken
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2020/11/27
date added: 2023/02/10
shelves:
review:
I knew the basics about Dr. Angelou; read a couple of her poems, heard many more quotes, and a couple interviews over the years. It is clear she is a national treasure and icon, but I honestly didn’t know much more than that.

Without listing all of the other incredible achievements of her life, I can say that I was blown away at the width and depth of her success and impact on American life; from creative writing, storytelling, speaking, writing and performing in theatre and musical productions, journalism, and community organizing for justice.

Perhaps equally important is not just what she accomplished, but how she did it. How she “lived in the world.�� The stories, pictures, and handwritten notes included in this biography provide an extra special, visual connection to her zest for life and her deep commitment to her family and close friends (chosen family).

“In her writing, speeches, and conversations she is always encouraging us to be fully present, to ‘be as honest and courageous and as courteous and as loving as you can be.�� She calls us to have the courage to love, to dare to try something new, to step up and stand up for ourselves, to seek to explore and achieve our potential.��

I’m glad I was able to read this truly “glorious celebration�� before diving into more of Dr. Angelou’s writings. I have a couple of her books on my to-read list, but let me know if you have a favorite I should check out.
]]> 9377600
Part history and part how-to, In Every Town uses a group of amazing organizations to highlight some of the most important factors in starting all-ages spaces and youth music organizations, from finding the right space, to building community relationships, to grassroots promotion & marketing. Accompanying the book is a free downloadable soundtrack providing a window into homegrown music communities nationwide.

With an introduction by Kimya Dawson.]]> 304 Shannon Stewart 0615317421 Ken 4 4.42 2010
author: Shannon Stewart
name: Ken
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2023/02/10
shelves:
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]]> 7721946 256 Muhammad Yunus 1586488244 Ken 3 3.94 1997
author: Muhammad Yunus
name: Ken
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2023/02/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 160939 Dr. Martin Luther King’s classic exploration of the events and forces behind the Civil Rights Movement—including his Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.

“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.��

In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States. The campaign launched by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement on the segregated streets of Birmingham demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action.

In this remarkable book—winner of the Nobel Peace Prize—Dr. King recounts the story of Birmingham in vivid detail, tracing the history of the struggle for civil rights back to its beginnings three centuries ago and looking to the future, assessing the work to be done beyond Birmingham to bring about full equality for African Americans. Above all, Dr. King offers an eloquent and penetrating analysis of the events and pressures that propelled the Civil Rights movement from lunch counter sit-ins and prayer marches to the forefront of American consciousness.

Since its publication in the 1960s, Why We Can’t Wait has become an indisputable classic. Now, more than ever, it is an enduring testament to the wise and courageous vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Includes photographs and an afterword by Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.]]> 223 Martin Luther King Jr. 0451527534 Ken 5 4.54 1964
author: Martin Luther King Jr.
name: Ken
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1964
rating: 5
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2023/02/10
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]]> 95727 163 Thich Nhat Hanh 1570753709 Ken 5 4.52 2001
author: Thich Nhat Hanh
name: Ken
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2023/02/10
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]]> 49358915
“Strikes a perfect balance of scholarship, wit, and enthusiasm.�� —Bill Bryson, New York Times best-selling author of The Body

�� If we are born to walk and run, why do most of us take it easy whenever possible?
�� Does running ruin your knees?
�� Should we do weights, cardio, or high-intensity training?
�� Is sitting really the new smoking?
�� Can you lose weight by walking?
�� And how do we make sense of the conflicting, anxiety-inducing information about rest, physical activity, and exercise with which we are bombarded?

In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise—to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion.

Exercised is entertaining and enlightening but also constructive. As our increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, Lieberman audaciously argues that to become more active we need to do more than medicalize and commodify exercise.

Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, Lieberman suggests how we can make exercise more enjoyable, rather than shaming and blaming people for avoiding it. He also tackles the question of whether you can exercise too much, even as he explains why exercise can reduce our vulnerability to the diseases mostly likely to make us sick and kill us.]]> 464 Daniel E. Lieberman 1524746983 Ken 0 to-read 4.15 2021
author: Daniel E. Lieberman
name: Ken
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53240367
Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric neuroendocrinologist who has long been on the cutting edge of medicine and science, challenges our current healthcare paradigm which has gone off the rails under the influence of Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Government.

Metabolical weaves the interconnected strands of nutrition, health/disease, medicine, environment, and society into a completely new fabric by proving on a scientific basis a series of iconoclastic revelations, among them:

Medicine for chronic disease treats symptoms, not the disease itself
You can diagnose your own biochemical profile
Chronic diseases are not druggable, but they are foodable
Processed food isn't just toxic, it's addictive
The war between vegan and keto is a false war--the combatants are on the same side
Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Government are on the other side
Making the case that food is the only lever we have to effect biochemical change to improve our health, Lustig explains what to eat based on two novel criteria: protect the liver, and feed the gut. He insists that if we do not fix our food and change the way we eat, we will continue to court chronic disease, bankrupt healthcare, and threaten the planet. But there is hope: this book explains what's needed to fix all three.]]> 416 Robert H. Lustig 0063027739 Ken 0 to-read 4.21 2021
author: Robert H. Lustig
name: Ken
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2021
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Did you know you can beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat? The evidence is incontrovertible: Aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance.

In SPARK, John J. Ratey, M.D., embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the way you think about your morning run---or, for that matter, simply the way you think]]> 294 John J. Ratey 0316113506 Ken 0 to-read 4.11 2008
author: John J. Ratey
name: Ken
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2008
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Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.]]> 210 Mitch Albom Ken 4 4.19 1997
author: Mitch Albom
name: Ken
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/11
date added: 2023/01/11
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A quick and enjoyable read with lots of understated but important life lessons. From the afterword: "how proud I am for Morrie that his gentle wisdom is settling like a snowfall on various streets around the world."
]]> 58330567 Atlas of the Heart, Brown takes us on a journey through eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary skills and an actionable framework for meaningful connection, she gives us the language and tools to access a universe of new choices and second chances—a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heartbreaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection.

Over the past two decades, Brown's extensive research into the experiences that make us who we are has shaped the cultural conversation and helped define what it means to be courageous with our lives. Atlas of the Heart draws on this research, as well as on Brown's singular skills as a storyteller, to show us how accurately naming an experience doesn't give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding, meaning, and choice.

Brown shares, "I want this book to be an atlas for all of us, because I believe that, with an adventurous heart and the right maps, we can travel anywhere and never fear losing ourselves."]]> 301 Brené Brown 0399592555 Ken 0 to-read 4.33 2021
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name: Ken
average rating: 4.33
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]]> 13588356 Researcher and thought leader Dr. Brené Brown offers a powerful new vision that encourages us to dare greatly: to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, to live wholeheartedly, and to courageously engage in our lives.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.�� —Theodore Roosevelt

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable, or to dare greatly. Whether the arena is a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation, we must find the courage to walk into vulnerability and engage with our whole hearts.

In Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability. Based on twelve years of research, she argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but rather our clearest path to courage, engagement, and meaningful connection. The book that Dr. Brown’s many fans have been waiting for, Daring Greatly will spark a new spirit of truth—and trust—in our organizations, families, schools, and communities.]]> 287 Brené Brown 1592407331 Ken 5 4.29 2012
author: Brené Brown
name: Ken
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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Lots of great insight and stories to make the lessons memorable.
]]> 53812200
Holding space is the practice of compassionately witnessing, accepting, and supporting someone without judgement, while retaining your boundaries and sense of self.

The ability to “hold space�� for yourself and for others has never been more urgent. Faced with global issues of climate change, political unrest, violence, and economic crises, more citizens of the world are experiencing disconnection, grief, and a deep sense of loneliness than at any other time.

But, with the right tools, you and your circle can become part of the solution. In this profound book, facilitator and speaker Heather Plett empowers you with constructive, actionable practices for transforming conflict, building boundaries, and increasing sovereignty in your own life―and the lives of those closest to you.

�۴dz�’l��
- How to create a non-judgmental space for yourself and others
- How to build trust and autonomy
- How to create and refine your circle of trust
- How to move through trauma
- How to reawaken your authentic identity
- How to work through conflict
- How to create “brave spaces�� that allow for free expression

When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control. We show we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without making them feel inadequate, needing to change them, or trying to impact the outcome.

By holding space, you create a container for liberation to occur in your life and in society. The Art of Holding Space is an instrument for hope, transition, and positive change in our time of near-constant transition, as we yearn to emerge into a new story.]]> 360 Heather Plett 1989603475 Ken 0 to-read 4.24
author: Heather Plett
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]]> 52668915
Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation.

In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of ‘intelligence��, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web��, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.

Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.]]> 352 Merlin Sheldrake 0525510311 Ken 0 to-read 4.34 2020
author: Merlin Sheldrake
name: Ken
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
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