2024 FPPL Social Wellness Month Reading List

"Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University's Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults -- a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood,...

"An urgently needed guide to help parents understand their teenagers' emotional highs and lows--and how to support their sons and daughters through this critical development stage--from the New York Times bestselling author of Untangled and Under Pressure. In teenagers, powerful emotions are the rule, not the exception. Unfortunately, many of today's parents now regard their teens' negative feelings as disruptive, dangerous, or diagnosable, thanks...

Rich in Buddhist and Quaker spiritual wisdom and practice, Hope Leans Forward helps us navigate life's essential questions of true aliveness and meaning--guiding us to discover greater bravery and courage to meet these fractured times. As we cultivate clarity and discernment, we see ourselves truly connected to a larger whole.

"Do you feel guilty about the hours you spend on social media every week? Have you ever felt down after scrolling through an instastar's feed as they appear to be living a far more amazing life than the rest of us? What if a doctor could tell you how to keep both your social media and your sanity? No more deleting all your online social accounts or digital abstinence, in this much needed reprieve amongst a society focused on the negative effects of...

"Draws on history, psychology, and anthropology to discuss how the tribal connection--the instinct to belong to small groups with a clear purpose and common understanding--can satisfy the human quest for meaning and belonging, "--NoveList. Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians -- but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an...

Many of us believe in equality, diversity, and inclusion, but how do we stand up for those values in our turbulent world? Chugh reveals the surprising causes of inequality, and offers practical tools to respectfully and effectively talk politics with family, to be a better colleague to people who don't look like you, and to avoid being a well-intentioned barrier to equality. Being the person we mean to be starts with a look at ourselves. -- adapted...

"Jenn M. Jackson has been known to bring deep historical acuity to some of the most controversial topics in America today. Now, in their first book, Jackson applies their critical analysis to the questions that have long energized their work: Why has Black women's freedom fighting been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost in the meantime? A love letter to those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection repositions...

"The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. Racist ideas are woven into the fabric of this country, and the first step to building an antiracist America is acknowledging America's racist past and present. This book takes you on that journey, showing how racist ideas started and were spread, and how they can be discredited"--Dust jacket flap. "A history of racist and antiracist...

"The definitive takedown of fatphobia, drawing on personal experience as well as rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it-from the acclaimed author of Down Girl and Entitled. For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant occasion: her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She's been bullied...

"Why are people more relaxed and at ease with each other in some countries than others? Why do we worry so much about what others think of us and often feel social life is a stressful performance? Why is mental illness three times as common in the USA as in Germany? Why is the American dream more of a reality in Denmark than the USA? What makes child well-being so much worse in some countries than others? As The Inner Level demonstrates, the answer...