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THE COURAGE GAP

5 STEPS TO BRAVER ACTION

On-point leadership advice outshines some overly simplistic counsel.

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A guide to becoming a braver and less fearful leader.

Success is not for the meek—per Warrell, the braver you are, the more successful you will be. The author breaks down her path to success into five steps, which comprise the five major sections of this book: “Focus on What You Want, Not on What You Fear,” “Research What’s Kept You Scared or Too Safe,” “Breathe in Courage,” “Step into Discomfort,” and “Find the Treasure When You Trip.” These practices are all fleshed out in detail in an effort to help readers to wipe away fear and fill that gap with courage.  The first section sets up the rest of the book, hammering home the idea that readers should be focusing on what they want to achieve, not what scares them about that goal or their situation. “The fearful mind creates the gap,” Warrell writes. “The brave heart closes it.” The following chapters are devoted to ways to achieve this closure, including creating your “story,” or reality, in a way that will benefit you best; coming to embrace discomfort; and learning from your mistakes. The author sums it all up with a closing chapter on making those around you less fearful and more courageous, too. (“Measure yourself by how brave you make others feel,” she writes.) While the text contains some simplistic advice, such as admonitions to not cast yourself as the victim or become hemmed in by labels, Warrell, who has a background in business and psychology, also digs deeper at times, discussing how psychology and biology relate to her topics. There are some clever moments (the author describes human brains as “Teflon for good and Velcro for bad”), but some of Warrell’s advice comes off as a bit too elementary and disingenuous. For instance, her list of tips for telling your story includes using the word excited instead of scared and characterizing setbacks as learning experiences rather than failures. For the most part, though, this is a solid effort, filled with thoughtful guidance for overcoming the mundane.

On-point leadership advice outshines some overly simplistic counsel.

Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025

ISBN: 9781523007240

Page Count: 168

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2025

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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ABUNDANCE

Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

Helping liberals get out of their own way.

Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.

Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.

Pub Date: March 18, 2025

ISBN: 9781668023488

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Avid Reader Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.

The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011

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