Here are 100 books that The Forgiveness Project fans have personally recommended if you like
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Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls of Atomic City, the Last Castle, and We Gather Together. Throughout her career as a journalist and an author, she has explored underrepresented stories and characters and the impact they have had on history. These stories of the unsung offer fresh perspectives on historical tales we think we already know. At the heart of many of Kiernan’s nonfiction explorations are women from a variety of different backgrounds and time periods. She has devoted her last three books to the history of Thanksgiving and gratitude, writing separate books for all ages.
The late Oliver Sacks was a neurologist who wrote eloquently about medical topics until he was taken from us by cancer in 2015.
Before he died, he wrote four lovely essays talking about his illness, and the great privilege of being human. Sacks was one of our greatest writers, thoughtful and incisive. Because he was dying as he wrote this, you may wish to wait to digest this book if you have recently experienced the loss of a loved one, and come back to it when you’re in a better place.
Oliver Sacks died in August 2015 at his home in Greenwich Village, surrounded by his close friends and family. He was 82. He spent his final days doing what he loved: playing the piano, swimming, enjoying smoked salmon - and writing . . .
As Dr Sacks looked back over his long, adventurous life his final thoughts were of gratitude. In a series of remarkable, beautifully written and uplifting meditations, in Gratitude Dr Sacks reflects on and gives thanks for a life well lived, and expresses his thoughts on growing old, facing terminal cancer and reaching the end.
I can’t count the number of conversations where I’ve been asked to slow down, or take a breath, or talk in a straight line. My neurodivergent heroes are versions of me: me if I were an alien, or a dying old lady, or a zombie. Gus is the closest I’ve come yet to writing my true self. He’s just me. I want readers who identify with Gus to feel seen and accepted and those who don’t—to understand what it’s like to live like this. And, just maybe, to have a little fun along the way.
I love story remixes: new takes on an existing genre. This book takes a conventional mystery plotline and gives it bright new coloring thanks to the narrator’s autism.
As is often the case with neurodivergent folks, Christopher doesn’t know much about the world, but he understands himself. A quiet masterpiece. No sentimentality, thank heavens.
'Mark Haddon's portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement... Wise and bleakly funny' Ian McEwan
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the…
I’ve been fascinated by languages since my teenage years, when, in addition to my native Russian, I learned English, French, Spanish, Latin, Hebrew, and Esperanto to varying degrees of fluency. But it was in college that I decided to pursue linguistics as a profession, in part influenced by one of the books on my list! After 20 years of doing scientific research and teaching linguistics at different universities, I switched gears and now focus on bringing linguistic science to the general audience of lifelong learners. Even if you don’t change your career, like I did, I hope you enjoy reading the books on my list as much as I have!
This book is why I decided to become a professional linguist! It’s a classic: it set the bar high for writing about language in a way that’s scientifically accurate yet gripping.
I was utterly mesmerized by a myriad of things Pinker talks about, like Nicaraguan Sign Language, Broca’s area in the brain, and the workings of words like “riff-raff” and “ding-dong” (and why we don’t say “raff-riff” or “dong-ding”). I also love the author’s fascination with, and admiration for, the beauty and complexity of human language and of the human mind.
'Dazzling... Pinker's big idea is that language is an instinct...as innate to us as flying is to geese... Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations' - Independent
'A marvellously readable book... illuminates every facet of human language: its biological origin, its uniqueness to humanity, it acquisition by children, its grammatical structure, the production and perception of speech, the pathology of language disorders and the unstoppable evolution of languages and dialects' - Nature
I am a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Cambridge University. I've been conducting autism research for 40 years, and this has taken me deep into understanding how the mind works, in both autistic and neurotypical people. I've focused in particular on two aspects of the mind, empathy and systemizing, to understand how these develop, how individual differences in these arise, and how we can celebrate such neurodiversity and provide support for people who struggle with these. My research spans psychology, neuroscience, genetics, endocrinology, clinical practice, education, and vulnerability.
This book deservedly won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. It is simultaneously a history of autism, and a history of the concept of neurodiversity. It reaches back to the origins of the internet and the dark history of eugenics in the Holocaust. And it reaches forward into contemporary ideas about respecting, accepting, and celebrating differences in the mind, particularly of autistic people.
Winner of the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fictionA New York Times bestsellerForeword by Oliver SacksWhat is autism: a devastating developmental condition, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more - and the future of our society depends on our understanding it.Following on from his groundbreaking article 'The Geek Syndrome', Wired reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of…
I grew up in an alcoholic home. To me, my father’s addiction felt like an attachment to an outside lover that threatened the stability of our family. I think this is what motivated me, as a Marriage and Family Therapist, to have a special heart to help couples salvage their marriages from the destructive, outside influence of infidelity, when they so desired. I read every book I could get my hands on about affair recovery, for my clinical knowledge as well as for clients to read. Each of the books I included in this list are among my favorites from my 33 years of experience helping couples.
This is my favorite book on the challenging task of why and how to forgive “unforgivable” offenses. Beverly Flanagan was involved in the Stanford Forgiveness Project and is an expert on the subject of forgiveness. I liked this book because it honors the depth of the pain of wounded persons, including from spousal infidelity, in a way that I seldom see in the “forgiveness” literature. My copy is highlighted on nearly every page. Highly recommended for those who still feel stuck in the mire of pain after a wayward partner’s affair or were deserted by an unremorseful, straying spouse. She offers no clichés or trite solutions. Good for both religious and non-religious readers.
"A clearheaded study of what life can do to us and possible ways to begin again." --Carl A. Whitaker, M.D., author of Midnight Musings of a Family Therapist and coauthor of The Family Crucible Women and men who have been deeply hurt by someone they love often experience a pain that spirals out to undermine their work, relationships, self-esteem, and even their sense of reality. In Forgiving the Unforgivable, author Beverly Flanigan, a leading authority on forgiveness, defines such unforgivable injuries, explains their poisonous effects, and then guides readers out of the paralyzing anger and resentment. As a Fellow of…
I was raised in Springfield, Illinois, what is considered Lincoln’s backyard. I grew up fascinated by history, and the Civil War in particular. The trouble was, its racial overtones always bothered me. Later in life, I became a high school history and journalism teacher and turned my interest in historical-based board gaming into a business I called Indulgent Wife Enterprises (because my wife is so incredibly supportive). To date, I have published 30 board games based mostly on American conflicts. When I retired, I began the ambitious project of writing a strongly researched account of the divisions leading up to the Civil War and through to the Reconstruction period that followed.
Having been raised with a love of history, particularly the Civil War, I have always sought to connect our seemingly irreconcilable differences to that great conflict. Here, I was reminded that our differences stem as much from our failed attempt at Reconstruction following the war as from the war itself.
I can’t believe we came so close to resolving our racial failings only to entrench them. I firmly believe this period in history defines who we are today.
Winner of the Bancroft Prize Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Winner of the Merle Curti award Winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize
No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The…
After high school, I traveled, exploring cultures beyond North America. I worked on kibbutzim in Israel for nearly two years. During the Yom Kippur War, exploding bombs drove us into underground shelters until the ceasefire. That experience made me consider the impact of war in new ways. Decades later, I wrote about the issue of "conflict" in my country: the Acadian deportation and World War Two. As a school librarian meeting Palestinian families in 2002, I decided to research and visit families in the West Bank through Christian Peacemaker Teams for my novel The Shepherd’s Granddaughter. A story children told me there inspired my picture book What the Kite Saw.
This author-illustrator has a gift for creating a high-concept, wordless story that young children can follow and enjoy in bold, simple images. I love how Otoshi chooses physical play to show the development and resolution of "conflict" at a child’s level. Not so easy to do!
The story begins with two boys separately drawing lines. When they bump into each other, they don’t turn angry. They play together. What fun when the lines come to life and become one long rope!
Then, one boy gets tangled and falls, and the other laughs at him. Anger builds, and the rope magically morphs into a bad, ugly space between them that grows until one boy starts to colour on the space. The other joins him. They laugh at how messy they look before running down the wonderful road they just created.
Draw the Line is a powerful picture book about forgiveness from Kathryn Otoshi, author of the bestselling book One.
When two boys draw their own lines and realize they can connect them together-magic happens!
But a misstep causes their lines to get crossed.
Push! Pull! Tug! Yank! Soon their line unravels into an angry tug-of-war.
With a growing rift between them, will the boys ever find a way to come together again?
Acclaimed author/illustrator Kathryn Otoshi uses black and white illustrations with thoughtful splashes of color to create a powerful, multi-layered statement about friendship, boundaries, and healing after conflict.
We are two dads, both with three kids, who are on a journey of trying our best to raise our kids in the way of Jesus. Of particular interest to us both is exploring how Jesus overcomes evil. Does He beat up the bad guys like superheroes do? Does He drop bombs on them, like nations do? With all the struggles kids experience at school—and everything they hear about evil occurring around the world—we think it’s important for kids to learn how Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, even from the earliest ages.
As we dive into the difficult work of enemy love and peacemaking, we quickly discover that loving someone often begins with forgiving them. And further, once you forgive someone, this opens the door to authentic friendship.
I have some comical memories of saying “bless you” to a particular bully in school as though this were a magic trick that would completely change the situation. While it may have been a good start, I now realize that forgiveness is more about an ongoing posture of the heart than it is about using “magic words” to fix everything.
This book doesn’t just show us how Jesus forgives us (through the story of Peter’s restoration), it also gives kids a roadmap to understand the deeper realities of forgiveness.
Bible storybook that points young children to Jesus, the friend who forgives.
Do you ever talk before you think? Mess up? Let others down?
That’s what Peter did, again and again and again, and it led him to abandoning his best friend, Jesus.
Peter loved Jesus. He felt terrible when he pretended not to know him. He thought all was lost when Jesus died.
But after Jesus rose from the dead, he went and found Peter and forgave him. He explained that his death took the punishment for all of Peter’s mistakes and that his resurrection showed that the penalty…
I’m a teacher with passion for history and writing realistic fiction. I published my two books when I was a teenager, and I currently work as a 6th-grade educator teaching writing. I love teaching and working with kids; it keeps me young. When I’m not teaching writing, I love to read realistic fiction, listen to or watch documentaries or horror podcasts, and write short stories.
I absolutely love and recommend this book to anyone who loves a good mystery or twist at the end of the story. The main characters, three teenage girls, in this book are so well thought out, and every chapter shows the transition of their own thoughts and dialects. It taught me that appearances aren’t always what’s in the mirror, and how much young adults to the elderly struggle and grow throughout their lives. Overall, this book is a fantastic story and worth the read!
This emotional and evocative novel explores the lives of three young women. Madeline, Desiree, and Ariel - who narrate alternating chapters - may live in separate decades, but they struggle with issues that transcend time and place. Madeline is worn down by caring for her alcoholic mother and has been teased since childhood for being overweight. Angry, foul-mouthed Desiree will do anything to avoid her neglectful mother and the unwanted advances of her mother's boyfriend. And sensitive Ariel struggles with the pressures of taking AP classes and coping with a domineering boyfriend. As the girls' individual stories progress, the truth…
As an author, I write both serious nonfiction and literary fiction. As a journalist, I have lifelong associations with The Atlanticand the Washington Monthly.I didn’t plan it, but four of my nonfiction books make an extended argument for the revival of optimism as intellectually respectable. A Moment on the Earth(1995) argued environmental trends other than greenhouse gases actually are positive, The Progress Paradox(2003) asserted material standards will keep rising but that won’t make people any happier, Sonic Boom (2009), published during the despair of the Great Recession, said the global economy would bounce back and It’s Better Than It Looks (2018) found the situation objectivity good on most major issues.
Nussbaum, a philosopher at the University of Chicago, is among the great minds of our era. In this book she shows – admittedly, at a slow pace – that ability to forgive is essential to individual love, political justice, and the smooth running of society. Today’s politics and social media cultivate recriminations, downplay the moment in which we forgive. Nussbaum describes a better way.
Anger is not just ubiquitous, it is also popular. Many people think it is impossible to care sufficiently for justice without anger at injustice. Many believe that it is impossible for individuals to vindicate their own self-respect or to move beyond an injury without anger. To not feel anger in those cases would be considered suspect. Is this how we should think about anger, or is anger above all a disease, deforming both the personal and the political?
In this wide-ranging book, Martha C. Nussbaum, one of our leading public intellectuals, argues that anger is conceptually confused and normatively pernicious.…
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