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Building Empathy in a Fractured World
by Jamil Zaki
Empathy is in short supply. Isolation and tribalism are rampant. We struggle to understand people who aren't like us, but find it easy to hate them.
Studies show that we are less caring than we were even thirty years ago. In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States is suffering from an "empathy deficit." Since then, things only seem to have gotten worse.
It doesn't have to be this way. In this groundbreaking book, Jamil Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait—something we're born with or not—but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. We meet a former neo-Nazi who is now helping extract people from hate groups, ex-prisoners discussing novels with the judge who sentenced them, Washington police officers changing their culture to decrease violence among their ranks, and NICU nurses fine-tuning their empathy so that they don't succumb to burnout.
Written with clarity and passion, The War for Kindness is an inspiring call to action. The future may depend on whether we accept the challenge.
"Zaki's heart-of-the-matter writing style relates complex emotion in clear, direct language. He walks his own fine line, between significant research findings and his personal emotional and empathic responses. His research and his book are worthy." - Booklist
"An earnest and well-researched call to action and an urgent message that will hopefully expand in Zaki's future work." - Kirkus Reviews
"Beautifully written and deeply felt, The War for Kindness is an outstanding scientific analysis of our species' best and last hope for survival—our unique ability to care about each other." - Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness
"Jamil Zaki is one of the brightest lights in psychology, and in this gripping book he shows that kindness is not a sign of weakness but a source of strength." - Adam Grant, author of Give and Take
"In this landmark book, Jamil Zaki gives us a revolutionary perspective on empathy: Empathy can be developed, and, when it is, people, relationships, organizations, and cultures are changed." - Carol Dweck, author of Mindset
This information about The War for Kindness was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic.
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