Books of 2021: Best Regular Ol' Non-fiction

In a good year for non-fiction, a few titles to enthusiastically recommend.  One was actually published this year.  The other is from a while back.  That one from a while back gets my if you read nothing else I recommend this year, read this book endorsement.

The Unthinkable; Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why, Amanda Ripley, 2008

If you read nothing else that I recommend this year, read this book.  Paige came across this book, and we started reading it aloud in the car on our long drive to and from the Outer Banks in the summer (our sons are so lucky).  Ripley pulls together an impressive amount of research and stories in a highly readable fashion a la the Heath brothers or Malcolm Gladwell.  She explains the natural human reactions (and some non-human animal responses) to disasters - major threats to survival - natural and otherwise.  Like the stages of grief, there is a predictable set of responses to unexpected circumstances including denial, deliberation, and "gathering."  People in the World Trade Center on September 11 and in 1993 when one of the towers was truck-bombed have shown a surprising fog of denial and a tendency to pick up and pack up things that their brain or gut tells them they need to gather before they get out safely.  Some people deny, deliberate, and gather so long that they don't get out.  The books is scary and bracing and empowering.  I came back from vacation and did something I've never done: walked down the stairs in my office building to make sure I know where the stairs near my office let out and how long it takes (~3 minutes from the tenth floor with no one in front of me.)  Ripley writes clearly and tells her example stories grippingly.  A book everyone should read and that goes down more easily than some "medicine" titles.

Dopamine Nation; Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, Anna Lembke, 2021

My standard joke about Dopamine Nation is that I had to request it at the library and then wait for it to come in, which was a big bummer because I wanted the immediate gratification of reading it.  Dr. Lembke briskly chronicles how a human species that evolved to survive scarcity now faces a possibly-worse threat: abundance.  She uses a pleasure/pain balance as her central metaphor and explores how when pleasure can be accessed super easily at almost all times, those with addictive tendencies tend to pursue pleasure to their ruin.  Whatever the "drug" that people reach for, they follow its empty promise until all good things in their life are stripped away.  Although this is rather familiar terrain by now, Lembke weaves her observations of addiction culture together with stories of her patients and the confession of her own addiction.  Possibly the most unexpected pieces here are that pursuing pain can be a way to restore a see saw that has been imbalanced toward pleasure and the healthy value of prosocial shame.  For the former, intermittent fasting and subjection to cold water (even ice water) are her most potent examples.  Re: the latter, Lembke breaks down shame and guilt and the reinforcing effects of destructive shame - pursue pleasure with abandon, feel shame, pursue pleasure to cover the pain of the shame.  She then offers an alternative with examples from 12-step groups and sports teams about how being honest about failure in a nurturing environment can help people grow, rather than shrivel.  Not quite as amazing as I expected after hearing Lembke interviewed, but a helpful read.