Summary: Richard V. Reeves’s Of Boys and Men takes a hard look at the challenges faced by the modern American male and advocates for structural changes that can help boys and men overcome them. In Part One, Reeves describes what he calls “the male malaise,” how boys and men have fallen behind and become disengaged from school, work, […]
Summary: Scott Barry Kaufman and Jordyn H. Feingold’s Choose Growth is a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to transform our collective trauma into an opportunity for reflection and posttraumatic growth, Kaufman teamed up with Feingold to expand and operationalize the research from his previous book, Transcend, which upgraded Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs using a […]
Summary: Elaine N. Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person presents Aron’s theory and research on “highly sensitive persons” (HSPs). Aron claims that HSPs comprise about 15-20% of the general population, with roughly another 20% being “moderately” sensitive. HSPs tend to “pick up on the subtleties that others miss” and “arrive quickly at the level of arousal past which [they] are […]
Summary: William K. Rawlins’s The Compass of Friendship is an excellent follow-up to Friendship Matters. Rawlins utilizes the same dialectical framework from his first book but expands his research on friendship into new territory. The opening chapters lay out Rawlins’s general theories of friendship, and the latter chapters examine specific types of friendships such as cross-sex, cross-race, […]
My Dear and Honoured Rilke, I have received your letters We all did–– Joyce’s “general postoffice of human life” was Not too late After all Your letters, first posted Then unposted–– Wash us clean across the generations Bring us the quiet and careful wisdom You sought in Solitude Criticism won’t bring us near to art […]
Summary: Sarah Jaquette Ray’s A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety isn’t a book about how to solve the climate crisis. Rather, it’s about how to cultivate a mature, compassionate, and resilient mindset that will allow climate activists to pursue climate justice in a healthy and sustainable fashion. Ray presents a series of lessons about the psychological challenges […]
Summary: Paul Conti’s Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic provides a basic introduction to the topic of trauma and summarizes what Conti has learned during his career working with trauma victims. In Part One, Conti defines trauma, breaks down the different types of trauma, and suggests some conceptual frameworks for how to best understand trauma’s effects on individuals and […]
Summary: Warren Farrell and John Gray’s The Boy Crisis examines how and why boys and men are struggling to survive and thrive in modern life, and seeks to provide a preliminary blueprint for how to reverse this trend. In Part One, Farrell lays out the statistical evidence for the problem, demonstrating how boys and men are failing […]
Summary: bell hook’s The Will to Change is a work of feminist philosophy that seeks to articulate and subvert the patriarchal constraints that make it difficult for men to give and receive love. “Masses of men have not even begun to look at the ways that patriarchy keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their […]
Summary: Amanda Ripley’s High Conflict examines how individuals and groups get stuck in self-perpetuating and mutually-destructive conflicts, as well as how we can pull ourselves out of them. Ripley defines “high conflict” as “what happens when conflict clarifies into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them” (4). Ripley claims that high conflict is “the invisible […]