The #1 New York Times bestseller that has all America talking--with a new afterword on expanding your range--as seen on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, and more.

The most important business--and parenting--book of the year. --Forbes

Urgent and important. . . an essential read for bosses, parents, coaches, and anyone who cares about improving performance. --Daniel H. Pink

Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world's top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see.

Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.

An innovative psychotherapist tackles the overlooked stage of Quarterlife--the years between adolescence and midlife--and provides a fascinating guide on how to navigate and thrive--rather than just survive--these odd years (PureWow).

Quarterlife is an insightful, revealing look at the messy and uncharted paths to wholeness, and a powerful tool for anyone navigating early adulthood.--Tembi Locke, New York Times bestselling author of From Scratch

I'm stuck. What's wrong with me? Is this all there is? Satya Doyle Byock hears these refrains regularly in her psychotherapy practice where she works with Quarterlifers, individuals between the ages of (roughly) sixteen to thirty-six. She understands their frustration. Some clients have done everything right graduate, get a job, meet a partner. Yet they are unfulfilled and unclear on what to do next. Byock calls these Quarterlifers Stability Types. Others are uninterested in this prescribed path, but feel unmoored. She refers to them as Meaning Types.

While society is quick to label the emotions and behavior of this age group as generational traits, Byock sees things differently. She believes these struggles are part of the developmental journey of Quarterlife, a distinct stage that every person goes through and which has been virtually ignored by popular culture and psychology.

In Quarterlife, Byock utilizes personal storytelling, mythology, Jungian psychology, pop culture, literature, and client case studies to provide guideposts for this period of life. Readers will be able to find themselves on the spectrum between Stability and Meaning Types, and engage with Byock's four pillars of Quarterlife development:
- Separate: Gain independence from the relationships and expectations that no longer serve you
- Listen: Pay close attention to your own wants and needs
- Build: Create, cultivate, and construct tools and practices for the life you want
- Integrate: Take what you've learned and manifest something new

Quarterlife is a defining work that offers a compassionate roadmap toward finding understanding, happiness, and wholeness in adulthood.

Consciousness, the last great mystery for science, remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion?

Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, whilst also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The #1 New York Times bestseller that has all America talking: as seen/heard on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Morning Joe, CBS This Morning, The Bill Simmons Podcast, Rich Roll, and more.

The most important business--and parenting--book of the year. --Forbes

Urgent and important. . . an essential read for bosses, parents, coaches, and anyone who cares about improving performance. --Daniel H. Pink

Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world's top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see.

Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.

The author of The Defining Decade explains why the twenties are the most challenging time of life and reveals essential skills for handling the uncertainties surrounding work, love, friendship, mental health, and more during that decade and beyond.

There is a young adult mental health crisis in America. So many twentysomethings are struggling--especially with anxiety, depression, and substance use--yet, as a culture, we are not sure what to think or do about it. Perhaps, it is said, young adults are snowflakes who melt when life turns up the heat. Or maybe, some argue, they're triggered for no reason at all. Yet, even as we trivialize twentysomething struggles, we are quick to pathologize them and to hand out diagnoses and medications.

Medication is sometimes, but not always, the best medicine. For twenty-five years, Meg Jay has worked as a clinical psychologist who specializes in twentysomethings, and here she argues that most don't have disorders that must be treated: they have problems that can be solved. In these pages, she offers a revolutionary remedy that upends the medicalization of twentysomething life and advocates instead for skills over pills.

In The Twentysomething Treatment, Jay teaches us:
-How to think less about what if and more about what is.
-How to feel uncertain without coming undone.
-How to work--at work--toward competence and calm.
-How to be social when social media functions as an evolutionary trap.
-How to befriend someone and why this is more crucial for survival than ever.
-How to love someone even though they may break your heart.
-How to have sex when porn is easier and more available.
-How to move, literally, toward happiness and health.
-How to cook your way into confidence and connection.
-How to change a bad habit you may not know you have.
-How to decide when so much about life is undecided.
-How to choose purpose at work and in love.

The Twentysomething Treatment is a book that offers help and hope to millions of young adults--and to the friends, parents, partners, teachers, and mentors who care about them--just when they need it the most. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to find out how to improve our mental health by improving how we handle the uncertainties of life.

For decades now, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a more fundamental matter, one he had often meditated on in The New Yorker: How do masters learn their miraculous skill, whether it was drawing a museum-ready nude or baking a perfect sourdough loaf? How could anyone become so good at anything? There seemed to be a fundamental mystery to mastery. Was it possible to unravel it?

In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up--of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection--as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness. Gopnik's simplest and most invigorating lesson, however, is that we are surrounded by mastery. Far from rare, mastery is commonplace, if we only know where to look: from the parent who can whip up a professional strudel to the social worker who--in one of the most personally revealing passages Gopnik has ever written--helps him master his own demons.

Spirited and profound, The Real Work will help you understand how mastery can happen in your own life--and, significantly, why each of us relentlessly seeks to better ourselves in the first place.

In this landmark text of anthropology, Franz Boas profiles various groups of primitive peoples, analyzing their hereditary characteristics, morphology, language and cultures.

Brimming with incisive analysis and fascinating interpretations of early man, Boas begins by acknowledging the sheer diversity of peoples in the world. The variation in language, physical appearance, cultural mores and traditions are extraordinary, with differing behavioral standards and practices unique to each. Though dealing with a formidable subject of global scope, the author proceeds with determination and intellectual rigor, demonstrating how geographic disparity, variations in climate, and divergent psychology resulted in distinct cultures.

Famous for challenging existing views, including those of eugenics and white supremacy, The Mind of Primitive Man became a foundational text of modern anthropologic science. Its well-argued topics, rooted in the author's voracious study and experience, contradicted existing theories and assumptions of nature versus nurture, and the relationship between environment and human intelligence. For his part, Boas held out hope that anthropology would form a role in education, increasing tolerance for the differences between cultures, and acknowledgement of the value all have contributed.

Who am I? How do I fit in the world around me? This revealing and innovative book demonstrates that each of us discovers what is true and meaningful, in our lives and in ourselves, through the creation of personal myths. Challenging the traditional view that our personalities are formed by fixed, unchanging characteristics, or by predictable stages through which every individual travels, The Stories We Live By persuasively argues that we are the stories we tell. Informed by extensive scientific research--yet highly readable, engaging, and accessible--the book explores how understanding and revising our personal stories can open up new possibilities for our lives.

What are the origins of creativity and how can we develop it - whether within ourselves or in others? Not only does Playing and Reality address these questions, it also tackles many more that surround the fundamental issue of the individual self and its relationship with the outside world. In this landmark book of twentieth-century psychology, Winnicott shows the reader how, through the attentive nurturing of creativity from the earliest years, every individual has the opportunity to enjoy a rich and rewarding cultural life. Today, as the 'hothousing' and testing of children begins at an ever-younger age, Winnicott's classic text is a more urgent and topical read than ever before.

Children's temperament is a central individual characteristic that has significant implications, directly and indirectly, for their social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and health outcomes, through its evocative and moderating effects on other social and contextual influences. Accounting for these contextual influences is critical to articulating the role of temperament in children's development. This Element defines temperament and describes its roots in neurobiological systems as well as its relevance to children's developmental outcomes, with a focus on understanding the influence of temperament in children's social and environmental contexts. It covers key developmental periods, situating the contribution of temperament to children's development in complex and changing processes and contexts from infancy through adolescence. The Element concludes by underscoring the value of integrating contextual, relational, and dynamic systems approaches and pointing to future directions in temperament research and application.

Introduction to Human Development and Family Studies is the first text to introduce human development and family studies (HDFS) as inextricably linked areas of study, giving students a complex yet realistic view of individuals and families. Pioneers of research paradigms have acknowledged that the family is one setting in which human development occurs. Moreover, in many academic programs, the lines of these two disciplines blur and much work is inherently multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. This book helps to fortify an understanding of HDFS and subareas within it.

Vignettes from current HDFS students as well as new professionals, an overview of the lifespan stage(s) within the family context, a wide description of research methods and applications, current policy issues relevant to the area, and discussions of practice/careers coupled with strategies for pursuing specializations or careers in the area are hallmarks of this textbook. Introduction to Human Development and Family Studies is essential reading for students new to the major and minor wanting to know:

• What is HDFS?
• Who are the people involved in HDFS?
• Why is HDFS important?
• How does theory and research inform work in HDFS?
• What does the pursuit of being an ethical professional require?
• What are the key areas in HDFS?

Incredibly user-friendly both on the page and online, the text also features the following resources:

• Chapter Summaries where the main points of each chapter are pinpointed at the end of every chapter for review and study.
• Key Terms listed and defined within the margins of every chapter, a complete Glossary at the end of the text, and Flashcards online for additional review and study.
• Challenge: Integration section at the end of each chapter that underscores concepts from the chapter and draws connections between content presented in other chapters.
• Journal Questions to encourage reflection about the content and encourage thinking about some of the content coupled with students' own experiences.
• Suggested Resources that lists relevant websites, books, articles, and video links for further study.
• A Closer Look at Applied Experiences Appendix outlines the internship process and shows how the internship experience can be meaningful and useful, and a Consuming Research Appendix that focuses on what it means to be a consumer of research, the knowledge and skills consumers need, and considerations for transitioning from a consumer of research to a producer of research.

This highly influential work--now in a revised and expanded third edition incorporating major advances in the field--gives clinicians, educators, and students a new understanding of what the mind is, how it grows, and how to promote healthy development and resilience. Daniel J. Siegel synthesizes cutting-edge research from multiple disciplines, revealing the ways in which neural processes are fundamentally shaped by interpersonal relationships throughout life. And even when early experiences are not optimal, building deeper connections to other people and to one's own internal experience remains a powerful resource for growth. Professors praise the book's utility in courses from developmental psychology and child development to neuroscience and counseling.

New to This Edition
*Incorporates findings from a huge body of recent research; over 1,000 citations added.
*Revisits and refines the core hypotheses of interpersonal neurobiology.
*Chapter on the experience of belonging and the development of identity.
*New or expanded discussions of behavioral epigenetics, the default mode network of the brain, social neuroscience, cultural and gender issues, theory of mind, the Wheel of Awareness contemplative practice, the science of consciousness, and more.

Theories of Development introduces students to the most influential theorists who have contributed to our understanding of how we develop as individuals. The book focuses on the theorists who have built upon the developmental tradition established by Rousseau, along with other theorists, including ethologists and psychoanalysts, who share a developmental outlook. It also considers theorists in the environmental/learning theory tradition and discusses the practical implications of all theorists' work.

This edition has been thoroughly updated throughout, and now includes:
- A new chapter comparing treatment approaches to autism
- Greater attention to Erikson's theory of identity formation and how it pertains to gender issues
- New thoughts on cultural factors in Piaget's theory
- Biographical material on Jane Goodall, Howard Thurman, and Albert Einstein that illustrate developmental processes

Demonstrating how we might view the world differently at various stages of life, Theories of Development is a must-read for all students of psychology and education.

For decades now, Adam Gopnik has been one of our most beloved writers, a brilliantly perceptive critic of art, food, France, and more. But recently, he became obsessed by a more fundamental matter, one he had often meditated on in The New Yorker: How do masters learn their miraculous skill, whether it was drawing a museum-ready nude or baking a perfect sourdough loaf? How could anyone become so good at anything? There seemed to be a fundamental mystery to mastery. Was it possible to unravel it?

In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking down and building up--of identifying and perfecting the small constituent parts of a skill and the combining them for an overall effect greater than the sum of those parts. For another, mastery almost always involves intentional imperfection--as in music, where vibrato, a way of not quite landing on the right note, carries maximum expressiveness. Gopnik's simplest and most invigorating lesson, however, is that we are surrounded by mastery. Far from rare, mastery is commonplace, if we only know where to look: from the parent who can whip up a professional strudel to the social worker who--in one of the most personally revealing passages Gopnik has ever written--helps him master his own demons.

Spirited and profound, The Real Work will help you understand how mastery can happen in your own life--and, significantly, why each of us relentlessly seeks to better ourselves in the first place.

I Am Resilient! Sid the Skunk's Superb Skills in Mental Toughness: A Kid's Guidebook is part story and part workbook based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help children develop resiliency skills. Sid the Skunk learns how to manage his stinking thinking through mindfulness and coping strategies. This book was designed for use in classrooms to promote mental wellness, as an adjunct to therapy, and as an aide to parents to use with their children struggling with emotional control.