Non-fiction Deep Cuts
 
April 2026
 
 
Ways We Connect
 
Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. Cohen
Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides
by Geoffrey L. Cohen

Finalist for The Next Big Idea Bookclub - Behavioral Scientist and Greater Good Society Book of the Year Selection This is perhaps the richest book on belonging you'll ever read....The inspiration one draws from every page of this book is an enhanced sense of what is possible. It revives the very thing we need most in these times: hope. --Claude M. Steele, author of Whistling Vivaldi
Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate by Roger Fisher
Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate
by Roger Fisher

The seasoned negotiator who brought readers Getting to Yes joins forces with psychologist Shapiro to reveal how emotions affect negotiations and, more importantly, how they can be used as a tool.
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers--and why they often go wrong. How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn't true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland--throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
by 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 help explain the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by military veterans today. Combining history, psychology, and anthropology, TRIBE explores what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning. It explains the irony that -- for many veterans as well as civilians -- war feels better than peace, adversity can turn out to be a blessing, and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations. TRIBE explains why we are stronger when we come together, and how that can be achieved even in today's divided world.
The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives by Cheryl Jarvis
The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives
by Cheryl Jarvis

The true story of thirteen women who took a risk on an expensive diamond necklace and, in the process, changed not only themselves but a community. Four years ago, in Ventura, California, Jonell McLain saw a diamond necklace in a local jewelry store display window. The necklace aroused desire first, then a provocative question: Why are personal luxuries so plentiful yet accessible to so few? What if we shared what we desired? Several weeks, dozens of phone calls, and a leap of faith later, Jonell bought the necklace with twelve other women, with the goal of sharing it. Part charm, part metaphor, part mirror, the necklace weaves in and out of each woman's life, reflecting her past, defining her present, making promises for her future. Lending sparkle in surprising and unexpected ways, the necklace comes to mean something dramatically different to each of the thirteen women. With vastly dissimilar histories and lives, the women show us how they transcended their individual personalities and politics to join together in an uncommon journey. What started as a quirky social experiment became something far richer and deeper, as the women transformed a symbol of exclusivity into a symbol of inclusiveness. They discovered that sharing the necklace among themselves was only the beginning; The more they shared with others, the more profound this experience-and experiment-became. Original, resonant, and beautifully told, this book is an inspiring story about a necklace that became greater than the sum of its links, and about thirteen ordinary women who understood the power of possibility, who touched the lives of a community, and who together created one extraordinary experience.