NYU Reads

When Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court, his comments that a judge should have "the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay, disabled, or old" caused a furor. Objective, reasoned, and impartial judgment were to be replaced by partiality, sentiment, and bias, critics feared. This concern about empathy has since been voiced not just by conservative critics, but by academics and public figures. In The Space Between, Heidi Maibom combines results from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to argue that rather than making us more biased or partial, empathy makes us more impartial and more objective. The problem is that we don't see the world objectively in the first place, Maibom explains. We see it in terms of how we are placed in it: as an extension of our interests, capabilities, and relationships. This is a perspective and it determines what we pay attention to, how we interpret events, and what matters to us individually. It is not private, however. By means of the imagination, Maibom contends, we can place ourselves in another person's web interests, capabilities, and relationships and, viewing the world from there, experience a new way of interpreting and valuing what happens. This broadens and deepens our understanding of others and the world around us. It also helps us understand the greater reality of who we are ourselves.Maibom's book weaves together results from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to provide a positive up-to-date view of what it really means to take another person's perspective, and how empathy, rather than being the enemy of objectivity, is the foundation of it.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person and fostering deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives--from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain "More than a guide to better conversations, it's a blueprint for a more connected and humane way of living. It's a must-read for anyone looking to deepen their relationships and broaden their perspectives."--Bill Gates, GatesNotes (Summer Reading Pick) As David Brooks observes, "There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen--to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood." And yet all around are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing essential questions: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person's story should you pay attention to? Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception. The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them and, in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.

A New York Times Bestseller What makes for a happy life, a fulfilling life? A good life? In their "captivating" (The Wall Street Journal) book, the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted, show that the answer to these questions may be closer than you realize. What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life. The invaluable insights in this book emerge from the revealing personal stories of hundreds of participants in the Harvard Study as they were followed year after year for their entire adult lives, and this wisdom was bolstered by research findings from many other studies. Relationships in all their forms--friendships, romantic partnerships, families, coworkers, tennis partners, book club members, Bible study groups--all contribute to a happier, healthier life. And as The Good Life shows us, it's never too late to strengthen the relationships you already have, and never too late to build new ones. The Good Life provides examples of how to do this. Dr. Waldinger's TED Talk about the Harvard Study, "What Makes a Good Life," has been viewed more than 42 million times and is one of the ten most-watched TED talks ever. The Good Life has been praised by bestselling authors Jay Shetty "an empowering quest towards our greatest need: meaningful human connection"), Angela Duckworth ("In a crowded field of life advice...Schulz and Waldinger stand apart"), and happiness expert Laurie Santos ("Waldinger and Schulz are world experts on the counterintuitive things that make life meaningful"). With "insightful [and] interesting" (Daniel Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Stumbling on Happiness) life stories, The Good Life shows us how we can make our lives happier and more meaningful through our connections to others.

A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy.  All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. "The word 'love' is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society's failure to provide a model for learning to love.  As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life." All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better. 

"Organizing Relationships makes a contribution to the discipline in its treatment of this area from multiple perspectives, in its deliberate engagement/suggestions of future research directions, and its functional purpose of bringing together extant research on this important topic in a coherent and organized way. It adds cumulatively to our knowledge of organizational communication and relationships, it fits within the horizon of the established parameters of our field while opening new areas for engagement, and, moreover, it is a very interesting read. It will, no doubt, become a touchstone for the field of organizational communication."                                  --Janie Hardin Fritz, Duquesne University "This book represents an important step to a relational approach to organizational behavior (communication) by pulling together many different areas/types of relationships. It will be a ′must′ book to anyone who teaches relationships in organization or broadly relational/applied organizational communication." --Jaesub Lee, University of Houston The first book in the field to provide a comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of workplace relationships, Organizing Relationships: Traditional and Emerging Perspectives on Workplace Relationships explores both negative and positive workplace relationships, including supervisor-subordinate relationships, peer relationships, workplace friendships, romantic workplace relationships, and customer-client relationships. Author Patricia M. Silas, a recognized scholar in the field, examines workplace relationships from multiple theoretical perspectives, including postpositivism, social construction theory, critical theory, and structuration theory. She helps readers understand the unique influences of the workplace on relationship processes and dynamics. Key Features Examines the role of workplace relationships as information-sharing, resource-distributing, decision-making, and support systems and highlights their importance to both organizational and individual well-being Includes cases in each chapter that demonstrate the usefulness of approaching real-world workplace problems and issues from multiple perspectives Helps readers broaden and enrich the ways they think about workplace relationships and their roles in organizational processes Provides an innovative agenda for future research Organizing Relationships is appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in Workplace Relationships, Relational Communication, Applied Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication, Communication Management, Operations/Human Resource Management, Organizational Psychology, and Organizational Sociology.

Moving between linguistic, professional and national boundaries is part of the daily reality of modern workplaces, where the concept of a 'job for life' is now outdated. Employees move between jobs, countries and even professions during their working lives, but the multilayered process of redefining personal, social and professional identities is not reflected in current workplace research. This volume brings together a range of scholars from different disciplinary areas in the field, examining the challenges of transition into a (new) workplace, team or community, as well as transitions within different professional communities. By analyzing the strategies individuals adopt to navigate the boundaries they face (in languages, workplaces or countries), this book demonstrates that transitions are not linear but are negotiated and constructed in the situated 'here and now' of workplace interaction, at the same time as they are positioned in the wider socioeconomic order.

A practical guide to building the connections students need to thrive in and after college from the authors of the best-selling Relationship-Rich Education. Decades of research demonstrate how important the relationships with peers and professors are for students academically, personally, and professionally. Yet many students lack the strategies to develop educationally purposeful relationships in college. Connections Are Everything shows students the simple steps they can take to make their own college experience meaningful and transformational. In short, practical chapters, this guide helps readers learn how to build relationships through various strategies, including using "relationship accelerators" like internships and mentorships, undergraduate research, and campus employment. Undergraduate demographics have changed dramatically as students of color and first-generation students become the new majority at colleges and universities across the United States. Connections are particularly significant for these students; the positive--and negative--impacts of peer, faculty, and staff relationships are magnified. Higher education cannot meet students' needs or achieve equity, justice, and inclusion without relationship-rich education. This book empowers students to seek out relationships by demystifying the varied ways they can cultivate significant connections.