List

Two writers show you how to turn a worthy sentence into a memorable one. Starting where The Elements of Style leaves off, Good Writing can improve your book, your essay, your memo, your blog post, speech, or script. These essential rules for persuasive language work on any type of writing, and anyone can learn them quickly.

Each rule is accompanied by examples and a lively pair of essays, the first by Neal Allen, who developed the list of tips over the course of his journalism and corporate careers; the second by his wife, Anne Lamott, acclaimed author of Bird by Bird and nineteen other nonfiction works and novels. The authors don’t always agree on the specifics, but they are passionate about making better sentences.

As Neal writes, “These rules economize, favor the plainspoken and the specific, keep the reader’s attention sharp, and in other ways show respect for the audience’s time and desire for novelty.”

Some rules are fundamental: Use strong verbs. Remove the boring stuff. Twist clichés. Some are more subtle: Draw on all five senses. Give your sentence a finale. Along the way, Good Writing addresses practicalities such as finishing projects despite challenges, trusting editors, and knowing when to break the rules to serve your story.

Whether you're a novice writer or a seasoned author, this entertaining guide will revolutionize your approach to crafting sentences.

Nearly two decades after the publication of Whistling Vivaldi, a landmark work that analyzed stereotype threats and how we can mitigate their corrosive effects, the legendary social psychologist Claude M. Steele returns with an equally ambitious work that examines "churn"--the mental agitation and physical stress we can experience in diverse settings in everyday life--and the surprising role that trust-building can achieve in reducing churn across identity divides.

Opening with a striking vignette of a parent-teacher conference between a well-meaning white teacher and the concerned Black parents of a seventh grader, the book demonstrates how churn threatens the high level of trust that is essential to mentoring and teaching the young. Drawing from decades of psychological research, Churn is rich with examples, such as a young woman entering a boardroom as one of only a few women; a white male feeling conspicuous during an intense diversity training session; a Chinese grandmother shopping in a public market where anti-Asian violence has occurred; and the lessons gleaned from remarkable student improvement and graduation rates at Georgia State University.

Too often, we deal with the commonplace tensions of diversity and difference by pretending they don't exist, by avoiding talking and relating to one another across what can seem like wide chasms of identity difference. Steele highlights a different path forward, a path rooted in trying to see full humanity and potential in human difference. He spells out practices--as he puts it, "a game played on the ground"--for how to build trust across all kinds of human divides: between individuals, or in larger settings, like classrooms, board rooms, even in whole institutions, corporations, and organizations. It is a game we can all play, he believes. Churn doesn't dwell on age-old tensions that continue to fester. It provides tangible ways to make a better world in the fractured society we inhabit.

Carefully intertwining state-of-the-art research with poignant anecdotes drawn from Steele's own biracial background, Churn is essential reading for anyone dedicated to fostering a community rooted in love and commitment. "Wise to its core" (Lee C. Bollinger, president emeritus, Columbia University) and filled with a deep well of hope, Steele's summa work brilliantly succeeds in teaching us how to work through the churn that continues to suffuse our lives.

We live on a floral planet, yet flowers don’t get the credit they deserve. We admire them for their aesthetics, not their power. In this exquisite exploration of the role flowers played in creating the world we know today, David George Haskell observes, smells, and studies flowers such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, as well as fascinating but less celebrated flowers such as seagrasses and tea to show us what we’ve been missing.

Flowers are beautiful revolutionaries. When they evolved, they remade the natural world: Gorgeous petals and alluring aromas transformed former enemies into cooperative partners. Flowers reinvented plant sexuality and motherhood, bringing male and female together in the same flower and amply provisioning seeds and fruits, innovations that also feed legions of animals, ourselves included. Through radical genetic flexibility, flowers turned past environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. This inventiveness allowed them to build and sustain rainforests, savannahs, prairies, and even ocean shores.

Without flowers, human beings would not exist. We are a floral species. Flowers catalyzed our evolution, and we now depend on them for food and a healthy planet. When we perfume ourselves, give a loved one a bouquet, or use blooms in gardens and religious ceremonies, we honor the special bond between people and flowers. The study of flowers also shaped modern science and horticulture in ways both marvelous and, sometimes, unjust.

Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. We need floral creativity, beauty, and joy more than ever. How Flowers Made Our World combines lyrical writing, sensual exploration, and the latest in scientific research to explore some of the most consequential life forms ever to have evolved, showing how our planet came to be and how it thrives today.

"You don't really have any friends, do you, Dad?" 

A seemingly innocuous, if direct, question from Andrew McCarthy's son left him reeling. McCarthy did have friends, but like so many other men, the necessities of modern adult life had forced his friendships to the background. At one point his friends had been instrumental in broadening his horizons, bolstering his courage, providing safe harbor. Now, McCarthy found himself questioning what had happened to those friendships, whether he needed them, what he valued, and what he had to offer. A simple question had become a moment that demanded a reckoning. 

Who Needs Friends charts McCarthy's journey over nearly ten thousand miles behind the wheel, following him on often-unexpected travels through Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, the Chihuahuan Desert, the Rocky Mountains with one driving purpose: to reconnect. Along the way he talks to countless men about their male friendships, from cowboys and blues musicians to preachers and rootless teens. What began as a simple desire to catch up with a few friends turned into a deep exploration of the challenges and rewards that men experience in forming bonds with each other.

In McCarthy's own words, "It turns out that guys have a difficult time with friendship." But that's not the way it needs to be.

Jenny Lawson is full of contradictions. She’s a celebrated author but battles self-doubt, paralysis, and anxiety. She’s an award-winning humorist but struggles with treatment-resistant depression. The questions people most often ask her are, “How do you do it? How do you keep going even when it feels impossible? How do you keep creating?” This book is her answer. 

In How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay, Jenny shares more than one hundred humorous, heartfelt, and genuine tools and tricks that she relies on to keep her going even when her brain isn’t working properly due to depression, anxiety, and ADHD. She also offers tips to stay passionate and focused on creative endeavors, especially when everything around you is saying to give up.

With chapters like “Wash Your Brain More Than You Wash Your Bra” (sleep, you beautiful human), “Working on Easy Mode Is Still Working” (asking for accommodations is okay!), “Celebrate Good Times, Come On!” (make it a habit to celebrate the good things), and many more, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay is a balm and companion, reminding us all that we are not alone. It’s for anyone who struggles with self-doubt, guilt, motivation, and mental blocks and wants to rekindle their passion for creating. Funny, simple, empathetic, and full of hope, it will encourage you not to just survive but to find and curate joy in the face of difficult times.

Recall the words chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia: “You will not replace us!” Recall the string of mass shooters across the globe—in Oslo, Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh—who claimed their crimes were a defense against “White genocide.” Recall business and media figures cultivating anxiety and furor over demographic change. These incidents only scratch the surface: Popular and ruling politicians in every region of the world have expressed some version of great replacement theory, eroding democratic norms in the name of preventing demographic change. 

The term was coined in 2011 by a French novelist who argued that Black and Brown immigrants were “invading” Europe, brought by shadowy elites to “replace” the White population. From there, politicians and theorists in the United States and elsewhere repackaged it as a story of “globalists” welcoming “migrant criminals” and promoting diversity to take away the jobs, cultures, electoral power, and very lives of White people. Over time, great replacement theory has expanded those under threat to include citizens, men, Jews, Christians, heterosexuals, and ethnic majorities in countries as distinct as Russia, El Salvador, Brazil, Italy, and India, all targeted with the message that they are facing an existential attack that only a strongman can prevent.

In Chain of Ideas, internationally bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi offers an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age—and how we can free ourselves from it.

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! is the autobiography of EGOT icon Liza Minnelli. This fascinating, untold story reveals the intimate truth of the only child born to Hollywood legends Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland. For the first time, here is Liza up close: Raw, strong, sexy, hilarious and heartbreaking.

Liza decided at the age of 16 that "sympathy is my mother's business. I give people joy." That veil of joy, however, masks a lifelong struggle with Substance Use Disorder ("SUD," which Liza inherited from her mother's branch of her family), boundless love to give and an equal need to receive it, broken marriages, multiple miscarriages, and hospitalizations--the highs and lows of unparalleled artistic success and lifelong friendships, as well as chronic anxiety and the threat of financial ruin. 

Despite every challenge, Liza's is a life wrapped in laughter and her tremendous capacity to give and receive love. Today at nearly 80, she opens her heart, mind and memories, sharing secrets we never knew. Liza's book celebrates supreme artistry and, more importantly, her human rights activism.

"It's time to tell the truth," Liza says, "and help people heal, as I have, one day at a time."