John V

This is a guidebook to enhance your spiritual, psychological, and philosophical health. The 72 Wisdoms cover 72 concerns all thinking people care about. The wisdoms are quotes which introduce particular topics of concern. They come from sources as diverse as Old Testament proverbs, ancient Greek and Roman aphorisms, Quaker values, a Beatles song, neuroscience, astrophysics, and memorable lines from classic flicks and TV shows. The people quoted are also a diverse lot, including, for example, Jesus, Muhammad Ali, the Dalai Lama, Betty White, and Stephen Hawking.

Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.

I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries.