A quick run down of the must-read books you should enjoy this summer.
THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND
How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff
Is there a risk to treating children and young adults like Fabergé eggs—or snowflakes ready to melt at the slightest heat? Yes, the authors argue, because overprotection means they won’t develop the resilience they’ll need in life. Using today’s college campus—that bubble of trigger warnings and safe spaces—as Exhibit A, Haidt and Lukianoff expose an entire culture that’s too emotional, tribal, dogmatic, and brittle.
WHEN
The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
Daniel H. Pink
Want to maximize your time on Earth, starting tomorrow? Pink is here to help with a brilliant series of life-hacks targeting daily schedules and routines. But he doesn’t stop there. He also taps a wealth of scientific research to help you pick the right moment to make a big life move—in love, work, and more. And he does it all with great stories and humor.
MR. KNOW–IT–ALL
The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder
John Waters
Most of us don’t have a comic-genius friend who’s been making movies for decades, who parties with people like Johnny Depp and Tracey Ullman, and who once hitchhiked across America at age 66 wearing a “Scum of the Earth” ball cap. But we’re in luck! Lover of weirdness, connoisseur of crude, John Waters brings us inside his crazy life with a new blast of uncensored storytelling.
SUPERMARKET
Bobby Hall
Rapper, singer, and record producer Bobby Hall—aka Logic—has done something that Jay-Z, Eminem, Ice Cube, Ice-T, Wiz Khalifa, and many other hip-hop artists have never done—write a novel. It’s a head-trip psychological thriller, with sex, drugs, and murder, about an Oregon supermarket clerk with a messed-up life. The multitalented Maryland native, now 29, says he wrote it for the challenge. Corpse in aisle nine, anyone?
THE RIVER
Peter Heller
What if you and a college buddy were on a canoe trip in northern Canada and paddled your way into a raging wildfire? Then you encounter a guy who might have offed the woman sharing his canoe? And this potential killer turns his attention to you next. That’s the premise of this gripping thriller by a former Outside magazine editor and world-class kayaker. Think Deliverance in the Great White North.
RANGE
How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
David Epstein
To become elite at something, you have to focus all your time and energy on it, and start young, right? Isn’t that what Malcolm Gladwell teaches with his “10,000-hour rule”? Look at Mozart, right? Wrong. So says acclaimed science writer Epstein in a book even Gladwell finds compelling. Epstein demonstrates that success comes to those who gain a range of experiences, learn varied skills, take detours, and even switch careers.
MIND AND MATTER
A Life in Math and Football
John Urschel and Louisa Thomas
It sounds like a fanciful Hollywood movie—a lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, formerly one of college football’s greatest at Penn State, pursues a mathematics PhD at MIT while earning a living protecting quarterbacks from rampaging rushers. Now retired from the NFL, Urschel shares his incredible story of pursuing two very different passions—and becoming exceptional in both arenas.
WEED
Everything You Want to Know But Are Always Too Stoned to Ask
Michelle Lhooq
L.A.-based Lhooq, a former music editor at VICE, has created a weed wonderland between the pages of her book—the ultimate guide to the exciting new landscape of cannabis. Witty and vivid illustrations from artist Thu Tran complement Lhooq’s zesty (and very funny) compendium, which covers smoking, growing, cooking, scoring, edibles, stoner etiquette, and more, and features interviews with weed innovators, celebs, and pros.
UNDERLAND
A Deep Time Journey
Robert Macfarlane
A Scottish author, hiker, mountaineer, and Cambridge University scholar, Macfarlane may be the greatest nature writer in English. A wizard of words and story, he delivers a masterpiece here, exploring the dark realms beneath the Earth’s surface, from caves to Paris catacombs to deep-sunk repositories for nuclear waste. To accompany his many adventures, he reflects on the “underworlds” of myth, legend, story, and religion.
WHITE
Bret Easton Ellis
As you might guess from the title, Ellis, author of American Psycho, is here to provoke. No stranger to controversy (Psycho depicted ultraviolence and extreme misogyny), Ellis crushes political correctness, social media’s “cult of likability,” and America’s “overreaction epidemic.” He advises liberals to moan less about Trump. Progressive Twitter went ballistic months before White published. Here’s your chance to see what all the fuss was about.
