It is no longer possible to deny that there is widespread alienation, desperation, and violence among the youth that we have sometimes persuaded ourselves is a tranquil and unproblematic middle class. Yet, for the most part, that crisis has been either ignored or, when it explodes into public view, misunderstood. And this is a tragedy, because there are lives at stake.

With frank honesty, J.D. Vance, author of the best-selling book "Hillbilly Elegy," spoke Wednesday in the student union at Bowling Green State University about his life growing up in Appalachia and the systemic problems stemming from poverty, educational inequalities and drug abuse. Persistence, resilience and grit are the Common Experience themes at BGSU this year and Vance's memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" is the year's Common Read book, reflecting those concepts. The student union was filled...

From description on Amazon page for book: Clinical psychologist and author of The Defining Decade, Meg Jay takes us into the world of the supernormal: those who soar to unexpected heights after childhood adversity. Whether it is the loss of a parent to death or divorce; bullying; alcoholism or drug abuse in the home; mental illness in a parent or a sibling; neglect; emotional, physical or sexual abuse; having a parent in jail; or growing up alongside domestic violence, nearly 75% of us...

I just had to cradle a bundle of books when my publisher showed me the first 1000 copies that arrived from the printer. A thousand copies! At this very moment the most important thing is they exist. Not if or when they’ll be purchased. Not who will get a copy or what they’ll think of it as they read it. What’s happening is I am telling. A thousand times over, I am telling. A lot of people already know that after every rape my father said, “You tell anyone and I’ll kill you.” And I’ve worked...

Toni Morrison is no stranger to tough subject matter—once called the "voice of America's conscience," the Nobel Laureate has, across 11 novels, scrutinized the black identity in the United States. Still, Morrison's latest work, The Origin of Others, may be her most comprehensive examination of race in America to date. While Morrison has typically steered clear of autobiography, The Origin of Others, based on her 2016 Norton Lectures at Harvard University, interweaves Morrison's memories with...

The concept of the slum emerged when industrial capitalism hit its stride in the late 19th century. Derived from Cockney street slang, the word was soon taken up by reformers and moralists of the Victorian period, a loaded descriptor of the densely populated and poorly serviced neighborhoods that housed workers, their families, and the reserve army of the unemployed. Plenty of people used the word “slum” with the best of intentions, but it is notable that very few have used it to describe...

Teenagers. We’ve all been one at one time or another, and we probably remember how fraught those years were. Growing up is risky, there’s no way around it. But why did we, as teens, get pulled toward taking dangerous chances in the first place? And, now that we’ve grown up, how can we help the next generation of teens develop good judgment, especially when whatever we say seems to fall on deaf ears? These questions are at the heart of Dr. Jess P. Shatkin’s new book, Born to Be Wild .

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris was already known as a crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was Diego - a boy who had stopped growing after a sexual trauma - who galvanized her to dig deeper into the connections between toxic stress and the lifelong illnesses she was tracking among so many of her patients and their families. A survey of more than 17,000 adult patients' "adverse childhood experiences", or ACEs, like divorce, substance abuse, or neglect, had...

We Were Eight Years in Power , the new book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is not precisely new. It’s a collection of eight articles Coates wrote for the Atlantic, starting in 2007 during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, concluding this year with the start of Donald Trump’s administration, and including some of Coates’s greatest hits, including his much-lauded 2014 article “The Case for Reparations.” What’s new is that each of the eight articles isintroduced by an essay in which Coates lays out...

Great site with some lovely books for children 'Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept' https://www.facebook.com/SomeSecretsShouldNeverBeKept/

In “Survivor Cafe,” Elizabeth Rosner writes about how we recognize and cope with the traumas that directly affected previous generations. [For more on this story by John Williams, go to https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/books/elizabeth-rosner-survivor-cafe.html ]

Review: The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others. By Tali Sharot. Henry Holt. 231 pages. 978-1627792653 Facts alone don’t change people’s minds or behavior. Emotions do. That’s the basic takeaway from cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot’s highly accessible exploration of why and how we succeed, or fail, in our quest to influence, persuade, or alter the opinions and actions of others. Understand how the brain works, she argues in The Influential Mind:...