Book Summaries Archives | Page 19 of 28

Book Summary – No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder.

June 19, 2021 In Book Summaries 6 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. – Eat, Pray, Love

In No Visible Bruises, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder examines how domestic violence is a pressing social crisis and is at the root of other crimes such as mass shootings, familicides, homicides, etc. Despite the World Health Organization deeming it a ‘global epidemic’. In America, domestic violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime, and yet it remains locked in silence.

In America, domestic violence accounts for 15% of all violent crime.

Our family and friends easily oversimplify domestic Violence; the common response to emotional and domestic abuse by our loved one is usually: “If he hits you, just leave,” “why did you stay?”. Rachel shares many stories of domestic violence, the complexity, societal stigma, and tools to deal with domestic violence issues.

Book Summary – Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World by Annie Lowrey.

June 18, 2021 In Book Summaries 7 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

American Journalist Annie Lowrey examines the Universal Basic Income (UBI) movement, the challenges the movement faces: contradictory aims, uncomfortable cost, and the belief that no one should get something for nothing. She delves into the history of welfare programs, the coming of the machines, and the inherent technological unemployment, the need for policies that would prepare us for a world with mass unemployment.

As Lowrey notes – a UBI—giving people money—is not just a solution to our problems, but a better foundation for our society in this age of marvels.

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World by Admiral William H. McRaven.

June 17, 2021 In Audiobooks Listening Challenge 10 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

On May 14, 2014, Naval Admiral William H. McRaven delivered an inspiring commencement speech to the 2014 graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin. Taking inspiration from the University of Texas slogan, “What starts here changes the world,” he shared the ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Naval career but also throughout his life. He explained how anyone could use these basic lessons to change themselves and the world for the better.

The speech went viral and it lead the Admiral to write a short book about the simple lessons he learned about overcoming the trials of SEAL training and the challenges of life. The core of the Make your bed book is:

“Remember… start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if you take some risks, step up when times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden, and never, ever give up—if you do these things, then you can change your life for the better… and maybe the world!”

Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy retired) served with great distinction in the Navy. In his thirty-seven years as a Navy SEAL, he commanded at every level. As a Four-Star Admiral, his final assignment was as Commander of all U.S. Special Operations Forces. He is now Chancellor of the University of Texas System.

New Power by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans.

June 16, 2021 In Book Summaries 10 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

Book Title: New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World–and How to Make It Work for You
Authors: Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans
Publication Year: 2018

Jeremy Heimans, cofounder of Purpose and Avaaz, and Henry Timms, director of the 92nd Street Y in New York—offer a framework for organizations seeking to effectively use the two distinct forces of “old power” and “new power.” Old power, the authors argue, works like a currency. It is held by few and is zero-sum. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures.

The future will be a battle over mobilization. The everyday people, leaders, and organizations who flourish will be those best able to channel the participatory energy of those around them—for the good, for the bad, and for the trivial.

New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.

New power actors differ from old power players along two dimensions: the models they use to accumulate and exercise power and the values they embrace. Some enterprises, like Facebook, have new power models but don’t seem to embrace the values; others, like Patagonia, have new power values but wield their influence using traditional old power models.

The book is about how to navigate and thrive in a world defined by the battle and balancing of two big forces : The old power and new power.

Book Summary – The Book You Were Born to Write by Kelly Notaras.

June 14, 2021 In Book Summaries 8 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

Title: The Book You Were Born to Write: Everything You Need to (Finally) Get Your Wisdom onto the Page and into the World
Author: Kelly Notaras.

The Book You Were Born to Write is a guide to writing a full-length transformational nonfiction book by the editor and author Kelly Notaras. After two decades working as a book editor—editing many of today’s biggest personal growth and spirituality authors—Kelly Notaras saw that her clients and readers had important questions about the transformational book writing journey. The Book You Were Born to Write is her answer!

Book Summary -Stop Walking on Eggshells by Paul T. T. Mason MS and Randi Kreger.

June 11, 2021 In Book Summaries 12 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

“You cannot force someone to want to change their behavior. After all, they are not just “behaviors” to the person suffering from the disorder—they are coping mechanisms they have used all their life.” — John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

Title: Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder
Authors: Paul T. T. Mason MS and Randi Kreger
Year: 2020 – Third Edition

Living with someone with a personality disorder is a roller coaster of emotions and uncertainties. The disorder leads to emotional instability, negative self-image, and difficulty with interpersonal relationships. In Stop Walking on Eggshells, authors Randi Kreger and Paul T. T. Mason MS write about caring for someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, setting boundaries, and caring for yourself.

“Although you can’t change the person with BPD, you can change yourself. By examining your own behavior and modifying your actions, you can get off the emotional roller coaster and reclaim your life.”

Book Summary -Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist by Margalis Fjelstad.

June 7, 2021 In Book Summaries 18 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In order to move through the stages from Caretaker to self-care, you need to know what you think, how you feel, what you want, and how you want to live your life.

Marriage and Family Therapist Margalis Fjelstad profers strategies for dealing and living with people with Borderline or Narcissist Personality Disorders. In Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life, Margalis shares tools for breaking the cycle of drama and ways for developing a new path of personal freedom, discovery, and self-awareness.

The book looks at how someone can move from being a caring person to being a Caretaker and the effects of that role. Factors that contribute to these more extreme reactions, how they impact your life as a Caretaker, how Caretakers are set up for failure, how to get out of the Caretaker role, and how to become that loving, caring person you want to be.

Book Summary – Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil.

June 5, 2021 In Book Summaries 7 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

Models are opinions embedded in mathematics.

Algorithms control almost everything we do on the internet, from Google search, Netflix movie recommendations, our Facebook news feed, Job applications, etc. Algorithms are mathematical models used to solve a set of problems or to perform computational instructions. American Mathematician and Author Cathy O’Neil write about the impact of big data algorithms on increasing preexisting inequality in the world. In Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, she calls these algorithms Weapons of Math Destruction.

WMDs, are mathematical models or algorithms that claim to quantify important traits: teacher quality, recidivism risk, creditworthiness but have harmful outcomes and often reinforce inequality, keeping the poor poorer and the rich richer.

Cathy defines algorithms as opinions embedded in code. These algorithms are being weaponized, and she argues that the algorithms are becoming more Widespread, Mysterious, and Destructive. She sights examples of how the WMDs are being used in various fields such as teacher assessment, predictive policing, insurance, the justice system, microtargeting politics, money lending, and how the algorithm decisions can lead to increasing inequality, reinforcing racism, and harming the poor.

Book Summary – Codependent No More by Melody Beattie.

June 4, 2021 In Book Summaries 8 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

“A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.”

Author Melody Beattie has survived abandonment, kidnapping, sexual abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, divorce, and the death of a child. In Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, Melody writes about codependent relationships. She shares life stories, personal reflections, exercises, self-tests, and strategies for dealing with codependency.

The surest way to make ourselves crazy is to get involved in other people’s business, and the quickest way to become sane and happy is to tend to our own affairs.

Book Summary – On Rumors by Cass Sunstein.

June 3, 2021 In Book Summaries 8 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

“If you want people to move away from their prior convictions, and to correct a false rumor, it is best to present them not with the opinions of their usual adversaries, whom they can dismiss, but instead with the views of people with whom they closely identify.”

In “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” American legal scholar Cass Sunstein writes about the ever-pervasive problem – rumors.

Rumors often arise and gain traction because they fit with, and support, the prior convictions of those who accept them. Some people and some groups are predisposed to accept certain rumors because those rumors are compatible with their self-interest, or with what they think they know to be true. Some people are strongly motivated to accept certain rumors because it pleases them to do so.

The Problem

Rumors are nearly as old as human history, but with the rise of the Internet, they have become ubiquitous. In fact we are now awash in them. False rumors are especially troublesome; they impose real damage on individuals and institutions, and they often resist correction. They can threaten careers, relationships, policies, public officials, democracy, and sometimes even peace itself.

Book Summary – Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit by Joseph Epstein.

June 2, 2021 In Book Summaries 9 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

Former American Scholar editor and author, Joseph Epstein writes about gossip, that much-excoriated yet apparently unstoppable human activity that knows neither historical nor cultural bounds. Educated fleas may not do it, but all human beings seem to enjoy that conspiratorial atmosphere of intimacy in which two or three people talk about another person who isn’t in the room. Usually, they say things about this person that he would prefer not to have said. They might talk about his misbehavior in any number of realms (sexual, financial, domestic, hygienic, or any other that allows for moral disapprobation) or about his frailties (his hypocrisy, tastelessness, immodesty, neuroses, etc.). Or they might just wish to analyze his character, attempting to get at why has been a life of such extraordinary undeserved success or such unequivocally merited failure.

“gossip, make no mistake, always implies a judgment.”

Gossip may well have spread in the way it has because so few among us are any longer trained in the skill of ascertaining truthful statements. Or have most of us lost our belief in truth itself; found that truth is simply unavailable in contemporary journalism, print or electronic; think truth no longer a precise but a proximate, relative thing, and so, as in the game of horseshoes, close to the truth is good enough?

Like astrology, psychoanalysis, and other pseudoscientific endeavors, gossip promises to provide significant secrets. Sometimes it does, but often it comes up empty.

Book Summary – Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People by Stephanie Moulton Sarkis Ph.D.

May 31, 2021 In Book Summaries 11 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

“Relationships with gaslighters are filled with tumult—so much so that it’s easy to feel shame. But being attracted to a gaslighter is no cause for shame. Even brilliant, successful, and otherwise discerning people can be easily seduced by a gaslighter’s many initial charms. ”

In Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People, Psychotherapist and author Stephanie Moulton Sarkis writes about gaslighting – the manipulative technique used by sociopaths, narcissists, and others–offering practical strategies to cope and break free.

Gaslighters who were psychologically abused as children learned maladaptive coping techniques so as to cope with the cruelty inflicted upon them.

Book Summary – The New Case for Gold by James Rickards.

May 28, 2021 In Book Summaries 7 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

In the new case for Gold, American Lawyer and Author James Rickards argue that gold is money, that monetary standards based on gold are possible, even desirable, and that in the absence of an official gold standard, individuals should go on a personal gold standard, by buying gold, to preserve wealth. James makes the case for gold as money in the twenty-first-century, gold’s role in cyber financial warfare, gold’s importance in economic sanctions on nations such as Iran, and gold’s future as a competitor to the world money called special drawing rights (SDRs) issued by the International Monetary Fund.

Book Summary – The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway.

May 27, 2021 In Book Summaries 9 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

Adjunct Professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, Scott Galloway writes about the four most influential technology companies: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. Scott analyzes the four companies’ peculiar strengths and strategies, their novel economic models, their inherent capacity, their ambition, and the drastic consequences of their rise that people face in both social and individual terms.

Book Summary – Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson.

May 25, 2021 In Book Summaries 7 Mins Read By Lanre Dahunsi

Print | Kindle(eBook) | Audiobook

Who Moved My Cheese? is a simple parable that reveals profound truths about change. It is an amusing and enlightening story of four characters who live in a ‘Maze’ and look for ‘Cheese’ to nourish them and make them happy.

“Cheese’ is a metaphor for what you want to have in life – whether it’s a good job, a loving relationship, money, a possession, good health, or spiritual peace of mind.

The Maze’ is where you look for what you want – the organization you work in, or the family or community you live in.

In the story, the characters are faced with unexpected change. Eventually, one of them deals with it successfully, and writes what he has learned from his experience on the maze walls.

When you come to see ‘The Handwriting on the Wall ‘, you can discover for yourself how to deal with change, so that you can enjoy less stress and more success (however you define it) in your work and in your life.