What We Are Reading Today: High Conflict by Amanda Ripley

Short Url
Updated 12 April 2021
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: High Conflict by Amanda Ripley

New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflict — and how they break free.

The concept of high conflict is portrayed in a well-researched and relatable manner.  Ripley “is an eloquent writer and her organization of ideas and stories is brilliant,” a critic commented in goodreads.com.

Yascha Mounk said in a review for The New York Times: “In High Conflict, Ripley tells the harrowing tales of people who got drawn into fights that consume their lives and make them capable of committing terrible injustices, from a gang leader on the South Side of Chicago to a guerrilla fighter in the Colombian jungle.” 

Mounk added: But with a scrupulous eye for scientific evidence that is rare in a book this entertaining, Ripley also explains how it is possible for hardened combatants to leave behind the conflicts that once defined the core of their identity.”

Conflict, Ripley argues, can be productive. 

“It is often good for people who disagree to state their differences and advocate for their own interests,” said the review.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘A Natural History of Shells’ by Geerat Vermeij

Updated 03 May 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘A Natural History of Shells’ by Geerat Vermeij

Geerat Vermeij wrote this “celebration of shells” to share his enthusiasm for these supremely elegant creations and what they can teach us about nature.

Most popular books on shells emphasize the identification of species, but Vermeij uses shells as a way to explore major ideas in biology.

How are shells built? How do they work? And how did they evolve?

With lucidity and charm, the MacArthur-winning evolutionary biologist reveals how shells give us insights into the lives of animals today and in the distant geological past.


What We Are Reading Today: The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs 

Updated 02 May 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs 

Author: Gregory S. Paul

The bestselling “Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs” remains the must-have book for anyone who loves dinosaurs, from amateur enthusiasts to professional paleontologists. Now extensively revised and expanded, this dazzlingly illustrated large-format edition features nearly 100 new dinosaur species and hundreds of new and updated illustrations, bringing readers up to the minute on the latest discoveries and research that are radically transforming what we know about dinosaurs and their world.


What We Are Reading Today: The Virtue Proposition by Sig Berg

Updated 01 May 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Virtue Proposition by Sig Berg

Sig Berg, founder of the Severn Leadership Group, explains what’s missing from traditional leadership, with its emphasis on the rules and rituals of boardrooms and C-suites, and from iconoclastic leadership, which urges you to move fast and break things.

Neither of these embrace virtues, and neither has, nor ever will, deliver consistent superior results.

There is a courageous third way: virtuous leadership.

This book speaks to men and women who witness the absence of virtues and know they can do better, says a review published on goodreads.com.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Stellar English’

Photo/Supplied
Updated 30 April 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Stellar English’

Author: FRANK L. CIOFFI

“Stellar English” lays out the fundamentals of effective writing, from word choice and punctuation to parts of speech and common errors.

Frank Cioffi emphasizes how formal written English—though only a sub-dialect of the language—enables writers to reach a wide and heterogenous audience.

Cioffi’s many example sentences illustrating grammatical principles tilt in an otherworldly direction, making up a science fiction story involving alien invasion.

 


What We Are Reading Today: A Deadly Indifference

Updated 29 April 2024
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: A Deadly Indifference

Author: Marshall Jevons

Harvard professor Henry Spearman—an ingenious amateur sleuth who uses economics to size up every situation—is sent by an American entrepreneur to Cambridge, England.

Spearman’s mission is to scout out the purchase of the most famous house in economic science: Balliol Croft, the former home of Professor Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes’s teacher and the font of modern economic theory.

After a shocking murder, Spearman realizes that his own life is in danger as he finds himself face-to-face with the most diabolical killer in his career.