Fans pick 100 books like Life-Changing Cross-Cultural Friendships

When Max Lucado writes–I listen! He's a dream to read, and his books are always full of wisdom and advice. When I saw this children's book by him, I knew I had to get it for my kids, and I was not disappointed. 

The lessons are profound, my kids are engaged, and his writing is, as always, on point. You find God on every page, and the truth of the Gospel of Grace abounds. I couldn't recommend this any more highly than I do here. I'm happy that it is a part of my children's book repertoire.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a story about the redemptive love of a civil rights icon who was brutally beaten, threatened, and who lived through the era of civil rights unrest and huge racism. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and has received notable awards such as a noble peace prize.

His book is a fascinating read about a man who had every reason to hate white people along the journey or racism and civil unrest but instead chose the path of love and forgiveness. He has titled it One Blood as he believes that we all have things in common, even in the midst of suffering and pain, if we allow ourselves to grow through the suffering and become the mirror image of the hate and bitterness that we have received on the journey of life.

This generational read opens with an encounter with suicide that took a supernatural occurrence to escape. From there, readers travel through pages of a child’s near-death experience, surviving flames of a house fire that left her with third-degree burns to encounters that only she can explain. As the author chronicles her process of facing elementary taunts of bullies, to the 30 reconstructive surgeries she endured to regain her mobility, readers uncover a story of the father’s love and the family ties that we can all relate to.

See His Glory, unravels the broken pieces of this burn survivor’s past to reveal a most beautiful work…her story. What I really love the most about this author and the story is how she highlights the love she experienced from different people through her suffering. She described one of the lessons she has learned along her journey is the universal language of love… show more.

In this book, the author does not allude that we need to ignore attributes such as class, race, ethnicity, etc. We don’t have to be color-blind to accept people who are of a different race or ethnicity. We just need to extend respect, care, empathy, and love while acknowledging that we haven’t always gotten it right with different cultures.

He presents a great case for grace and being a bridge builder in our communities.

It talks about finding Sisters in Christ without referring to them as Sisters in Christ.

Wants you to focus on your five specific close relationships where you share everything. She explores these five “paths to connection” close, safe, protected, deep, and committed. She gave some great examples from her own life and one of the things that awed me the most was how close their small group in their new church was; to the point of discussing their finances with each other.

She said it brought real peace to their marriage because nothing was hidden, all was laid bare in front of people who truly wanted their success. Comes to the point of needing sisters in Christ from a different angle that I enjoyed and was really engaging. 

If you seriously care about racial healing, you have to read this book. White people are so damn afraid to say the wrong thing or to offend anyone when it comes to the topic of race, that we end up not saying anything at all. And silence is death to a movement. If you care about Black and Brown lives, then this book will shake you up in a good way, and remind you of the importance of being a good listener to the concerns of people of color. When you listen, you can have empathy. When you have empathy, you can start to be a part of the racial reckoning and healing that’s starting to take place in our nation.

Workplaces are increasing in diversity, making it essential for workers to understand the nuances of cross-cultural relationships. This book delves into those nuances in a way that is practical, insightful, and fun. The author begins by introducing the four stages of cultural awareness, then builds by providing workbook opportunities for the reader to develop often profound insight. The author remarkably shows no bias toward one culture over another, which heightens the book's value. It’s also a terrific read for global travelers to gain an understanding and appreciation of places and people visited.

"The first person you meet when you travel abroad is yourself.”

I was very happy to discover this self-help book (way back in 2004) on how to deal with ‘the other’ when traveling or living in a foreign culture. It’s a classic in its approach to understanding the people you meet abroad.

Our impressions of other people always start with our own expectations and beliefs of what is right and proper. This book helps us understand our own biases in the process of trying to understand the locals.

Polly Platt was the first author to write about the frustrating features of French in a way that would help foreigners deal with them. In this classic, first published in 1994, she delves into their intense relationship to food, explains how to handle rudeness in stores, how to deal with the French bureaucracy, how their idea of time can drive foreigners crazy and much more. Platt’s observations were eye-opening for me when I first moved to France and are still relevant 25 years later. 

A renowned teacher of expository writing, Perl is invited to Austria to offer a course on how to teach the Holocaust. Although her mother warned her that as a Jew she should never enter a German-speaking country, Perl decides to accept.

She writes with brutal honesty about the troubled and often profound relationships she establishes with her Austrian students. Her explorations of difficult and sometimes excruciating issues are conducted with a spirit of love and openness toward her students and herself. This is the most ethically engaged book I have read about the profession of teaching.