100 Books Like Planet

Susan Pinker, a developmental psychologist in Montreal, demonstrates that online communicating can never replace the benefits we derive from face-to-face interpersonal contact. Strong bonds of friendship and love heal us and keep us healthy, just as they help children learn, and just as they extend our lives and make us happy. Looser, secondary in-person bonds also have a significant effect on us. In combination with our close relationships, they form a personal “village” around us composed of networks of connectedness. Susan Pinker presents numerous surprising discoveries from social neuroscience, as well as stories from people’s lives. In the final chapter, she suggests six very practical principles to keep in mind while building our “village.” After all, as she concludes, “Genuine social interaction is a force of nature; we all need some.” 

You may have noticed that patients’ rooms in new or recently remodeled hospitals often feature nature motifs in the drapery, a picture of a mountain scene across from the bed, nature videos on the television, and a window facing trees or landscaping. Why? Because of numerous recent discoveries that healing proceeds faster and better when a patient connects with nature, even via a photograph! In The Biophilia Effect, Clemens Arvay presents surprising results of many relevant biological studies, and he also suggests methods of boosting our mental and physical healing through specific immersions in nature. These suggestions are set in venues such as long walks in a forest or gardening. He discusses the powerful healing effects of recognizing ecopsychosomatics with regard to various diseases and conditions. 

During the past twenty years, hundreds of studies have found that practicing medicine with compassion, caring, and good information-sharing brings significantly better empirical results than usual. In short, relational dynamics affect our measurable physical condition. For instance, biopsy wounds and surgical wounds heal faster if the patients receive compassionate care from their doctors and nurses. Similarly, diabetes patients receiving compassionate care are far less likely to develop metabolic complications. These relational findings should revolutionize medicine, especially considering the hefty savings in healthcare costs. For now, though, “Research shows that physicians routinely miss emotional clues from patients and routinely miss 60-90% of opportunities to respond to patients with compassion.” These two doctors write in an enjoyable conversational style, sharing their own stories as well as the irrefutable data.  

As in other areas of modern life, the role of relationships in education has been considered of minor consequence. However, the Relational Schools Foundation in the UK has found, after years of research, that a focus on improving the quality of relationships in schools improves a broad range of educational and social outcomes and can overcome disadvantages as well. The book the Foundation has published, The Relational Teacher and the accompanying film, begins with some framing by social scientists, but the body of the book consists of six case studies and the insightful reflections of the teacher involved with each study. The relational dynamics in a classroom—particularly the motivational relationship created by the teacher—are closely related to a student’s effort in learning and developing. 

In discussing difficult issues with those close to us we all know the importance of listening, empathy, and the power of stories. However, is it possible to do this when communicating via text, email, or Facebook?  What Schultze has taught me is how to utilize these communication skills not only in face-to-face encounters but also when discussing issues via social media. How can I discern which media platform is best suited for sharing my opinions or perspective on potentially divisive issues? While social media is often cast as a source of our collective incivility, this book gives hope that it can also be part of the solution. While written for Christian communicators, the principles he shares are applicable to anyone interested in fostering productive conversations either in person or via social media.  

Like the best memoirs, this one reads like a novel in that Arthur Fleischman and his wife and children are drawn with so much honesty and detail you’ll feel as if you know them, or know people like them. Daughter Carly, however, is less knowable, because her childhood diagnosis of autism, cognitive delay, and oral motor apraxia (difficulty easily coordinating and initiating movement of the jaw, lips, tongue, and soft palate) had left her unable to communicate.

Carly’s Voice was one of the early books to explore, first-hand, the challenges of living with autism for the autistic individual as well as her family. Through the determined efforts of her parents and therapists who refused to stop helping Carly reach her full potential, Carly learns to type! That changes everything. Readers are privileged to peek inside the thoughts, feelings, and quirky sense of humor of an inspiring young woman who… show more.

Bill Isaacs offers a pioneering approach to communicating in business and in life. His book starts with the assumption that people don’t know how to talk in a way that will make it easier for them to work together with others to solve shared problems. His company, DIAlogos, has organized dialogues in a wide variety of public and private settings. In the book, his discussion of “the architecture of the invisible” makes clear why better communication begins with listening, respect, suspending our own opinions, and finding our voice. I’m particularly taken with his discussion of how we can “cultivate organizational and system dialogue.” He also has some important ideas about how we can return to civility in our public discourse in the current time when “Red” and “Blue” have forgotten how to communicate at all. 

Cassette tapes of Muslim sermons played by taxi drivers in Cairo set the stage for this profound investigation of the intersection of sound, spiritualism, and technology. The tapes, Hirschkind argues, are not mechanisms for social control as much as jumping-off points for Muslims to find their way towards ethical self-improvement. 

Brian Skyrms works on evolutionary game theory, among other things.

Signals is set in this context but focuses on the importance of information and communication for cooperation, and morality. We cannot cooperate, if we cannot communicate. And we cannot be moral, if we are not cooperative.

Thus, morality is born out of sociability, which is born out of communication. Like Sugden, Skyrms does not assume a moral character but ends up with a moral outcome.

An alternative understanding of Signals is focused on evolution. Signals, meaning and communication follow evolutionary dynamics, similarly to moral and social norms.

Understanding communication is vital to understand our social behavior, and it is especially topical today when communication takes many means and forms.

A young boy and his grandfather are thrown together for the afternoon. They are both lost for words—the grandfather does not speak English and the boy does not speak Thai. What I love about this book is how the spare text in this story manages to speak volumes and the gorgeous, evocative illustrations illuminate their relationship. The language gap and culture gap seems to loom between them. And yet…. unexpectedly, a sketchbook ignites a silent conversation as the two draw their way to a new understanding of and connection to each other. It’s a heartfelt story—so relatable—that beautifully depicts an age-old immigrant experience, the sometimes painful cultural alienation between older and younger generations.