It Might Be a Book Club

Potential Reads
EMOTIONAL AGILITY
Susan David
The counterintuitive approach to achieving your true potential, heralded by the Harvard Business
Review as a groundbreaking idea of the year.
The path to personal and professional fulfillment is rarely straight. Ask anyone who has achieved
his or her biggest goals or whose relationships thrive and youll hear stories of many unexpected
detours along the way. What separates those who master these challenges and those who get
derailed? The answer is agilityemotional agility.
Emotional agility is a revolutionary, science-based approach that allows us to navigate lifes twists
and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. Renowned psychologist
Susan Read more.

BORN FOR THIS

Chris Guillebeau
Have you ever met someone with the perfect job? To the outside observer, it seems like they've
won the career lottery -- that by some stroke of luck or circumstance they've found the one thing
they love so much that it doesn't even feel like workand they're getting paid well to do it.
To the outside observer, it seems like theyve won the career lotterythat by some stroke of luck
or circumstance, theyve found the one thing they love so much that it doesnt even feel like work,
and theyre getting paid well to do it.
In reality Read more.

FORTY CHANCES
Howard G Buffett
If someone granted you $3 billion to accomplish something great in the world, what would you
do? In 2006, legendary investor Warren Buffett posed this challenge to his son Howard G. Buffett.
Howard set out to help the most vulnerable people on earthnearly a billion individuals who lack
basic food security. And Howard gave himself a deadline: 40 years to put the resources to work
on this challenge.
40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World captures Howards journey. Beginning with his love
for farming, we join him around the world as he seeks out new approaches to ease Read more.

TRIBE
Sebastian Junger
Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were
constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has
been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason
lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that
attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate

bonds of platoon life. The loss of closeness that comes at the end of deployment may explain the
high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by military veterans Read more.

HILLBILLY ELEGY: A MEMOIR OF A FAMILY AND CULTURE IN CRISIS

J.D. Vance
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor
Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of Americas white working
class.
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisisthat of white workingclass Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly
disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has
never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story
Read more.

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

Ta-Nehisi Coates
This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live
within the all of it.
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to
the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new
framework for understanding our nations history and current crisis. Americans have built an
empire on the idea of race, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies
of black women and menbodies exploited through slavery and segregation Read more.

Better than Before

Gretchen Rubin
Gretchen Rubin's answer: through habits. Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life. It
takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to
build happier, stronger, more productive lives.
So if habits are a key to change, then what we really need to know is: How do we change our
habits?
Better than Before answers that question. It presents a practical, concrete framework to allow
readers to understand their habitsand to change them for good. Infused with Rubins
compelling voice, rigorous research, and easy humor, and packed with Read more.

HAPPIER AT HOME
Gretchen Rubin
One Sunday afternoon, as she unloaded the dishwasher, Gretchen Rubin felt hit by a wave of
homesickness. Homesickwhy? She was standing right in her own kitchen. She felt homesick,
she realized, with love for home itself. Of all the elements of a happy life, she thought, my
home is the most important. In a flash, she decided to undertake a new happiness project, and
this time, to focus on home.
And what did she want from her home? A place that calmed her, and energized her. A place that,
by making her feel safe, would free her to take Read more.

THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

Steven Covey
One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People has captivated readers for 25 years. It has transformed the lives of Presidents and CEOs,
educators and parents in short, millions of people of all ages and occupations.

QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CANT STOP

TALKING
Susan Cain
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to
speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own
over working in teams. It is to introvertsRosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniakthat
we owe many of the great contributions to society.
In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we
lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and
explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She Read more.

OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS

Malcolm Gladwell
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world
of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the
question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little
attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the
idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software
billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good Read more.

BOSSYPANTS
Tina Fey
Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young
girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by
her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on
TV.
She has seen both these dreams come true.
At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty
on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as
a mother eating Read more.

EVICTED
Matthew Desmond
In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods
of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to
raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment.
Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a

neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a
botched stickup after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they Read more.

TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS: ADVICE ON LOVE AND LIFE FROM DEAR

SUGAR
Cheryl Strayed
This bestselling book from the author of Wild collects the best of The Rumpus's Dear Sugar
advice columns plus never-before-published pieces. Rich with humor, insight, compassionand
absolute honestythis book is a balm for everything life throws our way.
Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you cant pay the bills
and it can be great: youve had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the
courage to write your novel. Sugarthe once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now
revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of Read more.

MEN EXPLAIN THINGS TO ME

Rebecca Solnit
In her comic, scathing essay, "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit took on what often
goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly
assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't, about why this arises, and how this
aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters.
This updated edition with two new essays of this national bestseller book features that nowclassic essay as well as "#YesAllWomen," an essay written in response to 2014 Isla Vista killings
and the grassroots movement that arose with it to end Read more.

HALF THE SKY: TURNING OPPRESSION INTO OPPORTUNITY FOR

WOMEN WORLDWIDE
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our eras most
pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake
an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among
them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered
devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience,
Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope Read
more.

ALL ABOUT LOVE: NEW VISIONS

Bell Hooks
"The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet...we would all love better if we used it as a
verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most
provocative and intensely personal, the renowned scholar, cultural critic, and feminist skewers
our view of love as romance. In its place she offers a proactive new ethic for a people and a
society bereft with lovelessness.
As bell hooks uses her incisive mind and razor-sharp pen to explore the question "What is love?"
her answers strike at both the Read more.

PERSEPOLIS
Marjane Satrapi
Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapis memoir of growing up in Iran
during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the
story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shahs
regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The
intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of
Irans last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of
her country.
Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily Read more.

$2.00 A DAY: LIVING ON ALMOST NOTHING IN AMERICA

Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer
Jessica Comptons family of four would have no income if she didnt donate plasma twice a week
at her local donation center in Tennessee. Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter, Brianna, in
Chicago, often have no food but spoiled milk on weekends.
After two decades of brilliant research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she
hadnt seen before households surviving on virtually no cash income. Edin teamed with Luke
Shaefer, an expert on calculating incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American
families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to one and a Read more.

RISING STRONG
Brene Brown
Social scientist Bren Brown has ignited a global conversation on courage, vulnerability, shame,
and worthiness. Her pioneering work uncovered a profound truth: Vulnerabilitythe willingness to
show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcomeis the only path to more love, belonging,
creativity, and joy. But living a brave life is not always easy: We are, inevitably, going to stumble
and fall.
It is the rise from falling that Brown takes as her subject in Rising Strong. As a grounded theory
researcher, Brown has listened as a range of peoplefrom leaders in Fortune 500 companies
and the Read more.