Using groups to achieve our goals

Issue 6: On the ingredients that make book clubs successful; a new book about self-regulation; what happens if you de-activate your Facebook account; and our offer to visit your classroom

This week we received the final proofs for our book, The Power of Us. This exciting milestone got us reminiscing about how we embarked on the journey of writing a book together in the first place.

Jay remembered that it all began in 2015 when Dom recommended a book to his neighborhood book club and it didn’t go well…

The more we thought about it, the more excited we became about writing our own book about groups and identities. And as we wrote the book we thought about the ingredients that make book clubs—and other groups—successful and allow us to achieve our goals:

1. The first thing is that human are social animals—we evolved in small groups in which we shared stories with one another. Long before the printing press and even before humans could write, our ancestors developed oral cultures based around narratives and myths, told and retold across generations. A book club feels natural because it harkens back to the social environment in which our brains evolved.

2. The second ingredient is …