It's been a year of amazing books that offer new and uplifting insights, creative solutions to current problems, and inspiration for the future. Here are the best of the best.
This memoir is on everyone’s best books of the year list. But why psychology? Through extreme real-life examples of growing up in isolated rural Idaho, Westover offers some great psychological insights into how one’s upbringing shapes our worldview—and the ways in which we might not even realize it until we are exposed to other viewpoints, cultures, and historical contexts through education. The tension between loyalty to one’s roots and the discovery of a broader world is a common theme in psychological development. As readers, we become intimate witnesses of the process by which Westover becomes educated. A gut-wrenching, engrossing, and deeply moving book.
2. The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris
In the sequel to her amazing TED talk, @Nadine Burke Harris a physician, connects the dots between childhood trauma and physical illness in adulthood. Before that, it seems the fields of medicine and psychology weren’t really talking to each other about it. The author’s research discovered just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect, parental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. Childhood adversity changes our biology in profound ways—and the impact lasts a lifetime. This book is recommended for anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do.
[For more on this story by Tara Well Ph.D., go to https://www.psychologytoday.co...sychology-books-2018]
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