The World's Best Book Summaries
What are enhanced interrogation techniques? On what kinds of subjects are they used? Are they effective? Enhanced interrogation techniques are techniques including walling, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding. They’re often used in the fight against terrorism. Learn why enhanced interrogation techniques may be counterproductive, leading to misleading or false confessions.
What is the secret to developing healthy friendships? What if you’re shy? What if there are problems in your friendship–is it a lost cause? Should you throw in the towel? The secret to healthy friendships is the secret to healthy relationships in general: having a growth mindset. We’ll cover how a growth mindset can help you create and maintain healthy friendships and help you deal with your shyness.
The Brock Turner case outraged many. Should Brock Turner have received a harsher penalty for sexual assault? More time behind bars? Were there any nuances to the Brock Turner case? While many people have strong opinions about the Brock Turner case, Malcolm Gladwell thinks it’s not so simple. Learn the many ambiguities in the Brock Turner case, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers.
How to deal with failure is a crucial lesson, but we’re not always taught the most productive or effective ways. Mindset drives how people define and cope with failure. For people with a fixed mindset, failure is an identity that they fear and try to avoid, rather than something that happens. To learn how to deal with failure, you need to change your mindset. We’ll cover Carol Dweck’s advice for dealing with failure.
What happens when you black out? What are the stages of a blackout? What are its consequences? When a person drinks an excessive amount of alcohol in a short period of time, the hippocampus in the brain is affected. The hippocampus is responsible for memory, which is why excessive drinking often leads to a state of blackout. Blackout refers to a state in which some or all of your memories are lost. Learn what happens when you black out.
Experiencing rejection is painful for an adult, but imagine how it feels to a child. Children experience rejection daily in schools. Starting in grade school, some kids are victimized, attacked, or ridiculed. Ongoing bullying makes some children’s lives a nightmare and can evolve into years of depression and anger. What are the causes of bullying? Is the cause of bullying a fixed mindset? We’ll cover some causes of bullying, in schools particularly, and why a fixed mindset may be partially to blame.
We all experience rejection in our lives, whether it be in a relationship, after a job interview, or in a social situation. Coping with rejection can be difficult: What’s the best mindset for learning how to cope with rejection? Whether you have a fixed or growth mindset affects the course of your personal relationships. Mindset helps explain: Why people work against their own interests in relationships Why relationships devolve into warfare Why some relationships succeed and others don’t We’ll cover how having a growth mindset helps you cope better with problems in your relationship and learn how to cope with
What are some of the most egregious criminal justice system problems? Are the issues in the criminal justice system solvable? How? We’ll cover a few of the criminal justice problems that arise when judges have to make decisions solely on their gut feelings about a person. As we’ll see, some criminal justice system problems could be solved if we let a computer make more of our court decisions.
In general, in the fixed mindset world, success is about proving to yourself and others that you’re smart and talented. It’s about validation. If you fail, it means you’re not smart or talented, therefore failure is intolerable. If you have this mindset, it’s hard to learn how to overcome fear of failure. We’ll cover Carol Dweck’s advice for overcoming fear of failure and discuss why fear of failure is holding you back.
Bullying prevention is a huge issue in schools, but are we approaching the problem from all sides? Do you wonder how to stop bullying at its source? We’ll cover how to stop bullying from the perspective of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset. We’ll also discuss why a fixed mindset contributes to the experience of both the bully and the victim.