Though my two doctorates and experience landed me in the arenas of education and data-sharing, I soon realized that merely sharing information was not the way to get people to embrace fact. My books and speaking (I’ve lectured at Cambridge, Columbia, Oxford, Comic-Con, etc.) now focus on how to persuade people to absorb, remember, care about, and act on new information. I teach everyone from scientists to parents about how to share information in ways that get around people’s mental blockades. I’m also a Mensan and Fulbright Specialist who writes for Psychology Today and was honored by the White House.
I first fell in love with Vedantam’s way of weaving storytelling with research via his podcast Hidden Brain. When I found out he had written a book I was thrilled, and his written account of our unconscious minds did not disappoint. Vedantam doesn’t shy away from anything (terrorism, capital punishment, race, gender, politics…) in tackling why our reasons for thinking things are not what we believe them to be. He helps us understand the power (for good or for bad) of our “hidden brains” in a way you will never forget.
The hidden brain is the voice in our ear when we make the most important decisions in our lives—but we’re never aware of it. The hidden brain decides whom we fall in love with and whom we hate. It tells us to vote for the white candidate and convict the dark-skinned defendant, to hire the thin woman but pay her less than the man doing the same job. It can direct us to safety when disaster strikes and move us to extraordinary acts of altruism. But it can also be manipulated to turn an ordinary person into a suicide terrorist…
In
this historical fiction verse novel set in 1987, we meet Calvin Johnston and
his brothers. The brothers all have hemophilia and have contracted HIV through
blood transfusions.
Calvin and his family live in Ashland, the “Friendliest
Little Town,” but many of the people in Ashland react out of fear rather than
friendship when they learn of the Johnston brothers’ diagnosis. I grew up in a
small, sheltered town like Ashland, and I have to wonder how our village (and young
me) would’ve reacted to a similar situation.
One of the things I love most
about books is that they give me a chance to try on someone else’s life for a
bit. Blood Brothers turned me inside out, broke my heart, and allowed me
a chance to reflect and grow.
Rob Sanders’ lyrical writing, coupled with
supporting information at the back of the book, makes this an amazing option…
Written and illustrated by Rob Sanders. This award-winning novel is about Calvin Johnston and how his secret is out. He and his brothers are tainted. Untouchable. And the bad blood flowing through their veins is threatening to kill them. So are some of their neighbors in Ashland, the “Friendliest Little Town” in Florida. The Johnston brothers are kicked out of everything―school, baseball, scouts, even church. Ashland’s anger has erupted into a fireball of hate. The only silver lining is that Calvin’s best friend Izzy lives 65 miles away at the beach, and has no idea about his secret. But news…
I’ve been fascinated by the way people respond to physical beauty since childhood—my teachers heaped praise on the pretty kids, reserving hard words for the less genetically blessed. This experience drove me to explore the pervasive ways in which unconscious beauty bias perpetuates injustice, and how it intersects with racism and privilege. Prison plastic surgery might sound like a punchline but for many, it was a lifeline. UK-born, I now live in San Francisco and have a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, New York. My work has been published by The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, and Fast Company, among others.
For months, Asian women in Oakland, CA, reported a nonstop stream of harassment and muggings by local youth. The problem: their harassers were Black. In a lineup, the women couldn't identify their attackers, and they walked free. To counter this, women in the community received cross-racial training...which failed. The robberies stopped when cameras were installed and the police didn't need a victim to ID anymore. Eberhardt’s book is full of gems like this, smart snippets of life, and the innate biases that run it. This smart examination of cognitive biases goes further than pointing out how racial biases influence criminal justice — it also offers some solutions, especially for unconscious prejudices. These take the form of unconscious bias training, and forcing people to deal with uncomfortable subjects.
"Poignant....important and illuminating."-The New York Times Book Review
"Groundbreaking."-Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy
From one of the world's leading experts on unconscious racial bias come stories, science, and strategies to address one of the central controversies of our time
How do we talk about bias? How do we address racial disparities and inequities? What role do our institutions play in creating, maintaining, and magnifying those inequities? What role do we play? With a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt offers us the language and courage we…
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NUMBER ONE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION
'A beautifully readable reminder of how much of our urgent, collective history resounds in places all around us that have been hidden in plain sight.' Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)
Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks - those that are honest about the past and those that are not - which offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in…
I’m an awkward academic who thinks, writes, and teaches about US immigration and imprisonment regimes and their growth out of racism, imperialism, and nationalism. I’m strongly motivated by things that I hate. I want to understand how and why we are facing such catastrophic problems, so that we can figure out how to undo them. My work is partly motivated by my personal history as the daughter of immigrants who moved to support their families and survive in the aftermath of war. As a privileged person in the US, I'm not directly affected by the state violence I study. I also know that we're not going to have a future unless we get there together.
This book has hugely influenced my thinking on US racism, imprisonment, and immigration, especially my second book. By studying a long history of incarceration in Los Angeles, Lytle Hernandez demonstrates how “mass incarceration is mass elimination.” This argument was a revelation that opened new ways for me to see the connections among different people swept away into cages. Like Dunbar-Ortiz, she reveals how settler colonialism connects working-class white, Black, Indigenous, Chinese, and Mexican people targeted for arrest, imprisonment, and removal. Crucially, she reads “rebel archives” of those people who resisted their subjugation and fought for justice, showing how they never relinquished themselves to racist incarceration.
Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernandez documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest,…
I’m a law professor at Boston University who has studied and written about constitutional law, democracy, and inequality for over 20 years. I’m troubled by America’s rise to become the world’s leader in imprisoning its own citizens and the continued use of inhumane policing and punishment practices. These trends must be better understood before we can come up with a form of politics that can overcome our slide into a darker version of ourselves.
Forman’s book is a must-read to learn why the War on Crime was not merely the work of one party or one racial group in society. Indeed, a number of people of color, including black mayors and black chiefs of police, strongly supported tough-on-crime measures.
The book raises the question of what it will take to reverse the trends of mass incarceration, given these realities.
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
Longlisted for the National Book AwardOne of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2017Former public defender James Forman, Jr. is a leading critic of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on people of colour. In LOCKING UP OWN OWN, he seeks to understand the war on crime that began in the 1970s and why it was supported by many African American leaders in the nation's urban centres.Forman shows us that the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges and police chiefs took office amid…
I’m a journalist and a social media prof. I talk to thousands of kids every year about what they read on the Internet. And frankly, they’re confused—as we all are—about what’s true online and what isn’t. To spot misinformation, kids have to become better critical thinkers. That’s why I wrote Can You Believe It? and it’s why I’m recommending these great books. It’s also helpful to know what credible journalism looks like. My TeachingKidsNews.com (TKN) is a kid-friendly news source that kids and teachers can trust. In addition to publishing TKN, I’ve authored six children’s books and I have a Master’s degree in Creative and Critical Writing.
This is Your Brain on Stereotypes takes a deep dive into not just our conscious prejudices but our unconscious biases as well as systemic bias and stereotypes.
It looks not only at how to recognize our biases, but also how to change them and what it will take to change society’s systemic racism. It uses research, statistics, and anecdotes and it may make us feel uncomfortable at times. That uncomfortable feeling is one of discovery—and it’s the first step toward making meaningful change through critical analysis.
An essential overview of the science behind stereotypes: from why our brains form them to how recognizing them can help us be less biased. From the time we're babies, our brains constantly sort and label the world around us --- a skill that's crucial for our survival. But, as adolescents are all too aware, there's a tremendous downside: when we do this to groups of people it can cause great harm. Here's a comprehensive introduction to the science behind stereotypes that will help young people make sense of why we classify people, and how we can change our thinking. It…
I’m a Harvard professor of psychology and a cognitive scientist who’s interested in all aspects of language, mind, and human nature. I grew up in Montreal, but have lived most of my adult life in the Boston area, bouncing back and forth between Harvard and MIT except for stints in California as a professor at Stanford and sabbatical visitor in Santa Barbara and now, Berkeley. I alternate between books on language (how it works, what it reveals about human nature, what makes for clear and stylish writing) and books on the human mind and human condition (how the mind works, why violence has declined, how progress can take place).
Stanovich is a cognitive psychologist who showed that rationality is related, but not identical, to intelligence.
In this timely book, he shows that smart people, and everyone else, are victims of a powerful bias to show that our own tribe is virtuous and wise and knowledgeable and the other tribe is evil and stupid and ignorant. Needless to say, it explains a lot about our current moment.
Why we don't live in a post-truth society but rather a myside society: what science tells us about the bias that poisons our politics.
In The Bias That Divides Us, psychologist Keith Stanovich argues provocatively that we don't live in a post-truth society, as has been claimed, but rather a myside society. Our problem is not that we are unable to value and respect truth and facts, but that we are unable to agree on commonly accepted truth and facts. We believe that our side knows the truth. Post-truth? That describes the other side. The inevitable result is political polarization.…
I started out as a technical writer for computer magazines and my specialty was explaining complex subjects in language the average person could understand. I got tired of that and began writing for general interest magazines, then wrote a couple of thrillers, then plays. For years, I’d been hearing the story of a gentleman farmer who was murdered in 1918, toward the end of WWI, not far from where I live. The murder was never solved and was rumored to involve German espionage. I decided to tackle the story, which involved a mountain of research into historical documents and uncovered a case that was as compelling as any fictional mystery.
If you’re like me, you’ve never been the victim of senseless, cruel injustice, and may find it hard to believe that anyone could inflict that on another person. Injustice—the false accusation of rape made against an innocent young Black man—is at the heart of King’s book and it might just break your heart, as it did mine. Reading it reinforced my conviction that William Dean—murdered not far from where I live—deserved justice, even if the crime took place a hundred years ago.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POST
"Compelling, insightful and important, Beneath a Ruthless Sun exposes the corruption of racial bigotry and animus that shadows a community, a state and a nation. A fascinating examination of an injustice story all too familiar and still largely ignored, an engaging and essential read." --Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Devil in the Grove, the gripping true story of a small town with a big secret.
In December 1957, the wife of a Florida citrus baron is raped in…
As a lifelong journalist, I’m riveted by stories that dissect actual events. Nonfiction is my wheelhouse and I’m fortunate to have a related body of distinguished work. Over the decades, I’ve written for exceptional newspaper and magazine editors who taught me the craft of making reality not only engaging – but also meaningful. Instead of ignoring the not-so-convenient truths – details that might be swept away by a historical fiction writer – I hunt for them. My coverage of inequities, hurricanes, and real estate scams has taught me: show, don’t tell. Any author who can take a mountain of interviews, details, facts and color and transform it into a thought-provoking story, they have my attention.
When I read Gilbert King’s story of the ruination of four Black men based on charges they raped a white woman in the 1950s, I had to check King’s background. He won my admiration for going from small-town newspapers and photography work to tell this epic story of Thurgood Marshall-style justice.
The story itself will rip you apart as the Southern sheriff “interrogates” these men in inhumane ways. I live just an hour’s drive from where this all went down and I am so grateful to King for helping me better understand the depths of our warped system of justice. The fact the book won a Pulitzer shouldn’t be a surprise. The fact that it led the town of Groveland to posthumously exonerate the men should be one.
* Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction * Nominated for a 2013 Edgar Award * Book of the Year (Non-fiction, 2012) The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor
In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor. To maintain order and profits, they turned to Willis V. McCall, a violent sheriff who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves beyond the citrus…
