Susan Cain’s premise is that introverts are misunderstood, undervalued, and maligned in a world that worships extroversion. There are societal consequences to this and Cain backs up her claims with compelling research. One example is a section early in her book on the limits of brainstorming. Cain poses that brainstorming in groups is actually less effective than working alone and cites 40 years of research to prove it. The reasons?
Read MoreStorycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction
Jack Hart is a former managing editor of The Oregonian and is now a writing coach. He has a journalistic background but his book isn’t about journalism. It’s a compendium of advice about writing narrative nonfiction—from defining the word narrative, to showing the reader how to chart a narrative arc, to covering basic principles of writing and storytelling such as point of view, character, scene, dialogue, and theme.
Read MoreIn the Shadow of Memory
Imagine being in your early forties, a writer and a poet, a distance runner. Now picture suffering brain damage from a virus that requires every bit of your concentration to walk without falling on your face. Words that once flowed easily from your mind to paper now crawl forward haltingly, scrambled, and often without coherence. You are disabled to the point where you can no longer work in public policy, and communicating is sometimes an exercise in folly because what you mean to say and the words that end up being heard are utterly different. Welcome to the world of Floyd Skloot. His book, In the Shadow of Memory, is a collection of essays that takes readers into his world.
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