Social Science

Every child messes up, sometimes in ways that seem sure to wreck their futures: a bad report card, poor sportsmanship, underaged drinking. These are tough moments for parent and child alike, often complicated by the fear that the misstep is also an indictment of our parenting. But what each of these “fails” has in common for our kids is the precious silver lining of a chance for character building and developing more grit—if we help them process their mistake well.

An invaluable playbook for anxious parents everywhere, Eight Setbacks That Can Make a Child a Success offers specific and unexpected advice about what to say, what not to say, and what to do to help children in eight categories of tense situations. Distilled from Michelle Icard’s decades of experience working with tweens, teenagers, and families, it also introduces her signature three-step approach to any kind of failure:

• Contain: Affirm your child, gather the facts, and control the narrative.
• Resolve: Explain what went wrong, define clear consequences, teach them to apologize well, and develop a plan to rebuild trust.
• Evolve: Reaffirm and re-expand their rights, and establish rewards for good behaviors.

With empathy, insight, and optimism, Michelle Icard’s advice ensures that a child’s mistake or rebellion doesn’t become the headline of their childhood, but instead becomes a launch pad to a better future.

A powerful exploration of how we pay attention that will transform the ways we connect with one another – at home, at work, and beyond.

Paying attention is a crucial human skill, yet many of us have forgotten how to listen carefully and observe intentionally. Deluged by social media and hobbled by the increasing social isolation it fosters, we need to rediscover the deeply human ways we connect with others.

Christian Madsbjerg, a philosopher and entrepreneur, understands this dilemma. To counteract it, he began a course at The New School in New York City called Human Observation, which lays out the ways that we can learn to pay attention more effectively. The course has been hugely popular since its inception, with hundreds of students filling waiting lists.

In Look, Madsbjerg sets out the key observational skills needed to show how we can recapture our ability to pay attention. Drawing from philosophy, science, the visual arts, and his own life, he offers both practical insights and a range of tools for experiencing the world with greater richness and texture. The result is a dynamic approach to rethinking observation that helps all of us to see with more empathy, accuracy, and connection to others.

What love is, why love is born, why it sometimes grows, and why it sometimes dies.

Have you ever wondered how romantic love evolves? What the difference is between mature and immature love? What role sex plays in romantic love, and whether love necessarily implies sexual exclusivity? And, most important, how can we make love last? Originally published in 1980, this updated edition of The Psychology of Romantic Love explores the nature of romantic love on many levels-the philosophical, the historical, the sociological, and the physiological. Nathaniel Branden explains why so many people say that romantic love is just not possible in today’s world and-drawing on his experience with thousands of couples-finds that such love is still a possibility for anyone who understands its essence and is willing to accept its challenges.

Branden sees it as a pathway not only to extraordinary joy but also to profound self-discovery. His vision of love is thoroughly appropriate to our time and grounded in our humanness.

My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.

In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black women are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to a diagnosis of heart failure at age twenty-nine, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image.

Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.

An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, Weightless holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.