April Picks for Higher Education

A bold new framework for successfully navigating complicated interactions at work and at home—by one of the first leadership coaches to infuse her work with an equity lens and propose spaces for connection that require accountability with generosity

Amir Levine, MD, coauthor of the groundbreaking, multimillion-copy bestseller Attached, presents a bold new promise—that anyone can learn to create a secure life—and offers cutting-edge tools to make it a reality.

Two lifelong peace activists and guides to Israel/Palestine, both of whom have lost family in the conflict, take readers on a revealing life-changing journey across this holy, bloodstained land and discover the mythic, political, and personal history that divides but also binds them and their peoples.“We do not see ourselves as Palestinians and Isrealis, or as Jews and Arabs, but as human beings who believe in fostering a culture of dialogue, a culture of forgiveness, and a culture of peace. To those who see only division lines, we say: If you must divide us, let it be as those who believe in peace and equality and those who don’t ... yet.” Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah and Israeli Maoz Inon forged a bond of brotherhood when the world expected them to be enemies. Both have lost family to the conflict. Both have known the bitterness of righteous anger. Yet, they chose a different path.In The Future Is Peace, Sarah and Inon take readers on a transformative weeklong journey across a sacred and bloodstained land. Facing competing narratives, they explore  how compassion and unity can pull humanity back from the precipice of blind hatred. Throughout their travels, they have been constantly asked: In the face of so much loss, how can we ever find hope? Their answer is always the same. One cannot find hope. We must create it.This book is a rebuttal to a broken world and a bold challenge to the belief that more violence can ever bring security. Told with unflinching honesty, their story is proof that peace is not a naive dream, but a courageous choice—for reconciliation to heal the wounds of revenge, for partnerships to change a destiny of war, and for empathy to save us from drowning in sorrow.Pairing unapologetic candor and inspirational prose, Sarah and Inon are sending an urgent message that the people have the power to make change. Peace is inevitable. For Palestinians, for Israelis, and for the world that awaits their example, it is not just possible—it is the future.

From an award-winning University of Oxford professor comes a brilliant, urgent new look at prophecies—the predictions that determine our lives, from our personal finances and the quality of our healthcare to the news and social media we consume and the products foisted upon us.Today’s computer scientists play the same role as the oracles of the ancient world and the astrologers of the Middle Ages. Modern predictions not only advise on war, crop output, and marriages, but algorithms and statisticians also now determine whether we can get a loan, a job, an apartment, or an organ transplant. And when we cede ground to these predictions, we lose control of our own lives.In this powerful, refreshing new look at the many ways prediction shapes our everyday lives, University of Oxford professor Carissa Véliz explains how putting too much stock in others’ predictions makes us vulnerable to charlatans, con artists, dubious technology, and self-deception. Examining a wide range of subjects both personal and societal, including medicine, climate, technology, society, and others, Véliz uncovers a number of insights: predictions about humans tend to be self-fulfilling; more data doesn’t guarantee better outcomes; AI is more likely to increase risk than decrease it; and a free and robust society requires not more prediction, but better preparation.Véliz argues in this incisive and bracingly original book that the main promise of prediction is not knowledge of the future, but rather power over others. Prophecy is an invitation to defy those orders and live life on our own terms.

A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1855—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel. "A bold and biting satire, Yesteryear…will have you cackling and gasping right to the final page."—Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid seriesMy name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive. Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.