New Book Releases | February 10
This week's best new releases offer leadership lessons, work-life balance, theories of the mind, and an examination of America's reliance on unpaid caregiving labor.
Our picks of this week's new releases all ask us to consider what is worth preserving. L. Michelle Smith offers us leadership lessons from the Black church at a time when church attendance is in decline, and Tom Griffiths examines the laws of thought just as big tech companies encourage us to outsource our thinking to AI. Whether or not you've had the occasion to encounter it personally, you'll learn more from Laura Mauldin about America's reliance on unpaid caregiving and how "our cherished romantic ideals—commitment, sacrifice, 'in sickness and in health'—have been used to excuse the state from its responsibilities to its most vulnerable citizens. And finally, Guy Winch helps us see more clearly how work can intrude on our lives at home, "and unconsciously takes over our thoughts, our priorities, and even our coping mechanisms," and offers "clear, practical strategies we can use to regain control, change our mindset, and be more intentional" at work and in our personal lives.
All four of these books are available online and on local bookshop shelves today. Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are from the publisher.
Call and Response: 10 Leadership Lessons from the Black Church by L. Michelle Smith, published by Amistad
In collaboration with JVL Media—A captivating exploration of why many high-performing Black business leaders attribute their transformational leadership qualities to their experiences growing up in the Black Church and how we can foster these skills in younger generations despite waning church attendance.
The Black church in the U.S. has long been a “one-stop shop” for developing Black leaders, teaching them many of the qualities required to lead effectively in today’s ultra-competitive, digital, and swiftly transforming corporate world. Many high-performing Black leaders benefited from their experiences growing up in this cultural institution steeped in rich history.
Merging cultural study with applied neuroscience and tenets of positive psychology, L. Michelle Smith dissects how these qualities are demonstrated by leaders across industries, from resiliency to their sense of undeniable purpose, their ability to build community and collaborative environments to the delivery and language of their speaking style and their unique leadership flair. She reveals how this historic institution has served as a timeless wellspring of leadership development, empowerment, and cultural preservation—and ultimately, is Black leaders’ “secret sauce.”
Call and Response also explores whether the Black Church will be able to continue to ingrain these skills in future generations. Smith examines how cultural shifts have resulted in a decline in church attendance, how online attendance has risen since the Covid pandemic, and finally, how Black leaders may—or may not—be passing these traditions down to their children.
In Sickness and in Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America’s Caregiving Crisis by Laura Mauldin, published by Ecco
An urgent and deeply affecting account of America's failure to provide meaningful support to its chronically ill and disabled citizens and our resulting reliance on the unpaid caregiving labor of spouses and intimate partners.
When twenty-seven-year-old Laura Mauldin moved to New York for graduate school, she fell headlong into love. But just months into the relationship, her partner’s leukemia returned—and in a country without adequate systems for long-term care, Laura found herself quietly and devastatingly transformed from romantic partner to unpaid, full-time caregiver, fighting to keep the woman she loved alive in a system designed to let them both fall through the cracks.
Now a sociologist and professor of disability studies, Dr. Mauldin turns her private pain into a searing public investigation. To better understand her own experience, she speaks with couples across the country navigating the brutal, lonely fallout of chronic illness and disability. These are heartbreaking stories of love under strain—relationships full of extraordinary intimacy and resilience, but pushed to the edge by an ableist society that would rather look away from its most vulnerable citizens. At the heart of this investigation is a profound series of questions: What if love isn’t enough? What if our most cherished romantic ideals—commitment, sacrifice, “in sickness and in health”—have been weaponized to excuse the state from its responsibilities? And what happens to love when we ask it to do the work of an entire broken system?
Urgent, unflinching, and full of grace, In Sickness and In Health is a rallying cry for a radical reimagining of care—not as an individual act of devotion, but as a collective responsibility. In connecting the care crisis to the politics of love and intimacy, Mauldin reframes the conversation, urging us to build a world where no one is left to do the work of love alone.
The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind by Tom Griffiths, published by Henry Holt and Co.
From the author of Algorithms to Live By, an exploration of the quest to use mathematics to describe the ways we think, from its origins three hundred years ago to the ideas behind modern AI systems and the ways in which they still differ from human minds.
Everyone has a basic understanding of how the physical world works. We learn about physics and chemistry in school, letting us explain the world around us in terms of concepts like force, acceleration, and gravity—the Laws of Nature. But we don’t have the same fluency with concepts needed to understand the world inside us—the Laws of Thought. While the story of how mathematics has been used to reveal the mysteries of the universe is familiar to anybody who has taken even a casual interest in science, the story of how it has been used to study the mind is not.
There is no one better to tell that story than Tom Griffiths, Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton University and renowned expert in the field of cognitive science. In this groundbreaking book, he explains the three major approaches to formalizing thought—rules and symbols, neural networks, and probability and statistics—introducing each idea through the story of the people behind it.
In the 21st century, knowing the Laws of Thought is just as important to scientific literacy as knowing the Laws of Nature. Artificial intelligence systems demonstrate on a daily basis that aspects of thought and language can be emulated by machines, pushing us to reconsider how we think about our minds. Understanding human minds and their potential to be automated becomes critical as we plan our careers and think about the world our children will occupy. As informed conversations about thought, language, and learning become ever more pressing, The Laws of Thought is an essential read on the future of technology.
Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life by Guy Winch, published by Simon & Schuster
Clinical psychologist, TED Speaker, and author of Emotional First Aid offers a guide to combating the many stresses modern work imposes, based on recent research and the stories of clients Winch has helped to thrive in the relentless grind of today’s workplace.
Whether we like it or not, work is central to our lives. Most of us define ourselves by our work; it gives us a purpose, it enables us to maintain our lives, our homes, our nourishment, our recreational pursuits, and it puts us often among like-minded people who share and appreciate our skills and achievements. No wonder we feel it is so important. But the dark side is that it intrudes on our lives and unconsciously takes over our thoughts, our priorities, and even our coping mechanisms. Especially in recent years, the separation between work and home is blurrier than ever, and we struggle to maintain healthy boundaries, to restore ourselves and recover our attention and energy, to give due focus to our loved ones, and to nourish other essential aspects of our self.
In Mind Over Grind, Guy Winch explains how our enmeshment with work reinforces these unconscious tendencies and reveals the damage they do to our careers and personal lives, as well as to our emotional health. He argues that attaining a work-life balance involves changing how you think both at work and at home. And he offers clear, practical strategies we can use to regain control, change our mindset, and be more intentional, so we can excel at work and flourish in our personal lives.
