Books

The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good (New Harbinger, 2020). “In these difficult times, The Gratitude Project is timely and beautiful,” says Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart. “It offers marvelous, wise, loving, and scientific ways to uplift and nourish the heart.” With essays written by renowned psychologists like Sonja Lyubomirsky and public figures like W. Kamau Bell, this edited volume offers more than just platitudes—it offers a blueprint for a new and better world.

Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood (PM Press, 2011). Today more than ever, fatherhood demands constant improvisation, risk, and struggle. With grace and honesty and strength, Rad Dad’s writers tackle all the issues that other parenting guides are afraid to touch: the brutalities, beauties, and politics of the birth experience, the challenges of parenting on an equal basis with mothers, the tests faced by transgender and gay fathers, the emotions of sperm donation, and parental confrontations with war, violence, racism, and incarceration.

The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness (WW Norton, 2010). We are witnessing a revolution in the scientific understanding of human nature. Where once science painted humans as self-seeking and warlike–notions of killer apes and selfish genes that still permeate popular culture–today scientists of many disciplines are making new discoveries about how and why people do good. In The Compassionate Instinct Steven Pinker, Frans de Waal, Dacher Keltner, Michael Pollan, and other scientists and journalists illuminate the biological, evolutionary, social, and psychological roots of positive emotions and happiness, and practical steps for achieving the good life.

Are We Born Racist? New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology (Beacon Press, 2010). Leading scientists, psychologists, educators, and writers discuss why and how our brains form prejudices, how racism hurts our health, steps we can take to mitigate prejudiced instincts, and what a post-prejudice society might actually look like. Writers in Are We Born Racist? illustrate the deep psychological roots of prejudice, detectable even in our brain activity—while also proving that we can change our responses to these biases.

The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family (Beacon Press, 2009). This influential book tells the stories of fathers who have embraced caregiving and egalitarian marriages, explores the hopes and ideals that inform their choices, and analyzes the economic and social developments have made their choices possible. “Insightful… compassionate”–Michael S. Kimmel, author of Guyland; “Impressive… persuasive”–Mothering magazine.