Fans pick 67 books like The Village Effect

You may have noticed that patients’ rooms in new or recently remodeled hospitals often feature nature motifs in the drapery, a picture of a mountain scene across from the bed, nature videos on the television, and a window facing trees or landscaping. Why? Because of numerous recent discoveries that healing proceeds faster and better when a patient connects with nature, even via a photograph! In The Biophilia Effect, Clemens Arvay presents surprising results of many relevant biological studies, and he also suggests methods of boosting our mental and physical healing through specific immersions in nature. These suggestions are set in venues such as long walks in a forest or gardening. He discusses the powerful healing effects of recognizing ecopsychosomatics with regard to various diseases and conditions. 

During the past twenty years, hundreds of studies have found that practicing medicine with compassion, caring, and good information-sharing brings significantly better empirical results than usual. In short, relational dynamics affect our measurable physical condition. For instance, biopsy wounds and surgical wounds heal faster if the patients receive compassionate care from their doctors and nurses. Similarly, diabetes patients receiving compassionate care are far less likely to develop metabolic complications. These relational findings should revolutionize medicine, especially considering the hefty savings in healthcare costs. For now, though, “Research shows that physicians routinely miss emotional clues from patients and routinely miss 60-90% of opportunities to respond to patients with compassion.” These two doctors write in an enjoyable conversational style, sharing their own stories as well as the irrefutable data.  

As in other areas of modern life, the role of relationships in education has been considered of minor consequence. However, the Relational Schools Foundation in the UK has found, after years of research, that a focus on improving the quality of relationships in schools improves a broad range of educational and social outcomes and can overcome disadvantages as well. The book the Foundation has published, The Relational Teacher and the accompanying film, begins with some framing by social scientists, but the body of the book consists of six case studies and the insightful reflections of the teacher involved with each study. The relational dynamics in a classroom—particularly the motivational relationship created by the teacher—are closely related to a student’s effort in learning and developing. 

Our mental health has been compromised and the overall health of the planet destroyed because the mechanistic worldview of modernity has long assured us that we live apart from nature, more or less on top of it. This book—actually a boxed set of five short paperbacks: Planet, Place, Partners, Persons, Practice—is a beautiful, deeply engaging antidote to modern alienation. The focus is on memoirs and storytelling because sharing stories is the way we humans make sense of the vast interrelatedness that is our reality. The aim here is a fuller understanding of Kinship Writ Large and the ways in which each of us can become better kin. The wise co-editors who chose these pieces include Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of the acclaimed book Braiding Sweetgrass.

This is a fascinating book that gives clarity to a difficult topic: how does our brain make decisions? I taught neuroscience before I retired, and I understand that when the semester turns to the cerebrum, details fade into vague and general statements. I confess to cribbing lecture notes from Sapolsky’s popular book because he explains things much more effectively than any textbook. Of course, our behaviors are influenced by immediate circumstances and by past experiences. And, yes, ancestral genetic patterns and molecular dynamics within the neurons also play a role. But so does something as simple as fatigue–and we all know that making lots of decisions can be exhausting and leave us as much in need of food and rest as digging a ditch. Now, I can justify an afternoon nap even if I have only been working at my desk all morning.

Richard Sapolsky is known for his popular… show more.

For almost four centuries, many philosophers, politicians, and social scientists have considered Thomas Hobbes as having provided great insight into human nature with his “thought experiment” imagining the state of nature as a state of war.  After more than one century, Darwin’s contrary insight in The Descent of Man (1877:125) is finally being given the attention it deserves: the “social instinct” is a more powerful influence on human behavior than “the base principal of selfishness.”  In Moral Origins, one of the best books in this genre, cultural anthropologist Christopher Boehm argues that higher levels of group support increased the survival of hunter gatherer bands and so favored evolution of more altruistic individuals.  Group culture that included gossip, expulsion and other forms of collective social control became ubiquitous as means to suppress free riders and egoistic bullies in human societies.

A man is driving to some oceanside cliffs to end his life. On the way, he stops for a night at a B&B in a small fishing village. He meets a girl, who has disappeared in the morning, and the man thinks, “What the heck. I’ll just stick around here and pretend I’m the girl’s boyfriend (who no one in the village has met before) and wait until she returns.” The villagers grow increasingly suspicious (about everything, it seems) and the man is soon caught in an uncontrollable deception of his own making.

This is a really odd, really well-written Gothic tale by an author I’d never heard of (who doesn’t seem to have written anything before or since), but I picked it up because its vagueness intrigued me. It’s the interplay of the main character trying his best to pretend he’s someone he’s not, for reasons even he’s… show more.

I love a good page-turning thriller, but to keep my interest, there has to be more than thrills and spills – I want characters I care about too.

The heroine here, unusually, is a teenage girl, who’s funny, smart, and stroppy, but at the same time vulnerable and scared. She teams up with a nosy elderly lady who proves to have hidden depths and as they find themselves in a terrifying situation and tackle some seriously bad villains, I was rooting for them all the way.  

This is the first book in The Huxtables family series. The author blends wit, charm, and family foibles just as easily as does Georgette Heyer. The banter between the siblings is a joy to read. Even when fortune comes their way in the unexpected elevation of one family member who inherits an earldom, the characters stay true to themselves. 

Written in the style of M.C. Beaton, this book is a perfect English murder mystery.

The idea of a village fete itself has always been alluring to me. I put myself in the story and I’m right at home in the village and celebration at Berrywick House. I blame my British DNA. As in any good cozy, the most irritating member of the community ends up dead, and no exception here.

The main character, Julia, is not only concerned with a murder—or two, but she’s also afraid their peaceful village will be forever ruined. Like all great amateur sleuths, she gets involved. Bird paints a picture of a perfect English village. Add a dog, her Labrador, Jake, and well, sign me up.