Brené Brown's Blog

When the first box of a new book arrives, I always give the top copy to my mom and I keep the second one as my “travel copy.” Strong Ground is my first book without her and holding that top copy in my hand was a tough moment.

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to share the “top of the box” copy with her. I’ll carry it with me and she can just ride around in the pages. I’m pretty sure she’ll hang out mostly in Chapter 4 which is titled, Paradox and the Human Spirit.

My mom was all about the...

Why the ABK Team loves this book:

Having founded the US’s largest grassroots organization against gun violence, Shannon Watts knows what it means to live on fire. But that hasn’t always been the case. Before becoming an activist, organizer, leader, and speaker, she realized she wanted to live with more authenticity, intention, and purpose.

In her new book, Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age, Shannon shares her own story and the stories of women ...

Why the ABK Team loves this book:

It turns out Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson weren’t 100% accurate when they said what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. 

As Dr. Tasha Eurich explains in Shatterproof: How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos (And Why Resilience Alone Isn’t Enough), resilience might get us through setbacks, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we come out the other side better and stronger than before. To transform setbacks into growth and thriving, she offers...

Why the ABK Team loves this book:

It’s easy to say a music video is just a music video, or a TV show is just a TV show, not to be taken seriously or deeply analyzed when it’s viewed in isolation. However, pop culture does not exist in a vacuum but rather in an ecosystem of messaging that tells us what is valued, expected, and rewarded in society.

Taking both a birds-eye view and a microscope to many of the cultural moments we lived through, movies we watched, songs we listened to, ...

Why the ABK Team loves this book:

“Looking at history through any single lens creates distortions, because history is too complex for any one way of looking to suffice,” John Green writes in Everything Is Tuberculosis where he offers another lens through which to view human history: the history of disease. When John met Henry, a teenage tuberculosis patient in Sierra Leone, he embarked on a journey to understand a disease that, in some parts of the world, is seen as something of the p...

Why the ABK Team loves this book:

Since planting seeds as a kid with her grandma, Debbie Millman’s fascination with gardening has always been rooted in awe and wonder. And, as a native New Yorker, Debbie has gotten creative on how and what it means to have a garden.

With beautiful illustrations, images, and words, Love Letter to a Garden is a celebration of gardening in all its forms and the lessons it can teach us along the way. No matter where you live, you can find a way to part...

Chad Sanders is a writer, podcast host, and creator. In his latest book, How to Sell Out: The (Hidden) Cost of Being a Black Writer , Chad brings deep vulnerability, honesty, and humor to a collection of essays that reflect on personal experiences from his career. He is also the author of Black Magic: What Black Leaders Learned From Trauma and Triumph and the children’s book The Quest Cousins Go Camping. In addition to hosting the Yearbook podcast on The Armchair Expert Network and the Audible Or...

Dr. Emily Nagoski is a sex educator and author committed to debunking the myths of what it takes to improve sexual pleasure, connection, and relationships, with a lot of science, humor, and movie references. You might know Dr. Emily Nagoski from one of the most popular Unlocking Us episodes On Burnout and How to Complete the Stress Cycle , where she and her sister, Dr. Amelia Nagoski, discuss the causes and impact of burnout and how to move through emotional stress and exhaustion. Or, you mig...

One summer morning in 2020, after the brutal killing of George Floyd, Bonita T. Hampton Smith was meditating on her patio when she was struck with a vision: “Invite White women to write letters to Black women, and Black women to write letters to White women.” This vision became Dear White Woman, Dear Black Woman: A Tapestry of Letters for Hope and Healing , where 56 women came together to forge a path towards unity through honest dialogue.A former chaplain for incarcerated individuals and cur...

Rich Benjamin grew up knowing almost nothing about his family’s history, including that his grandfather, Daniel Fignolé, was once the president of Haiti for 19 days before being overthrown by a coup and exiled with his family to the United States. Through many years of research, Rich uncovered the events that shaped his grandfather, his mother, and himself, as well as the nations that shaped them in return.

As a cultural researcher and critic, Rich Benjamin tells a story in Talk to M e that is int...