Gossip (with Joel Kim Booster, Beth Stelling and Jake Cornell)

How do you spark a trend that spreads like wildfire, or turn a product into the latest must-have item? You create a social epidemic. The Tipping Point explains how social epidemics — spreading ideas, messages, behaviors, and products — function like viruses, growing gradually until they reach a critical mass (the tipping point) and explode.

Three factors can be adjusted to tip an idea to a social epidemic: the messenger, the message itself, or the context of the message. Learn how Paul Revere’s midnight ride, Sesame Street, Airwalk skate shoes, and crime reduction in New York City began as ideas and tipped to become movements.

In 1976, an Irish schoolboy nicknamed “Bono” answered a call to join a new band. Ten years later, that band—U2—was a global sensation. As U2’s singer, Bono leveraged his fame to become a voice for activist groups fighting poverty, hunger, and the AIDS epidemic. At the same time, he started a family while pushing U2 to explore new styles of music. Bono’s memoir, Surrender, tells the story of his life and U2’s success, while also discussing Bono’s Christian faith and how his childhood affected who he’d become.

In this guide, we’ll cover U2’s rise to stardom, their period of self-reinvention, and Bono's career as a political activist. We’ll also provide historical context for Bono’s early days, the music industry, and U2’s shifting critical reception. We’ll look at the pros and cons of celebrity activism, as well as how Bono’s thoughts on Christian faith compare with those of contemporary religious writers.

Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming delivers candid reflections on the life of the first African-American first lady. Offering a window into her personal evolution, Michelle details how ambition, hard work, and embracing her authentic story helped her journey from her family’s Chicago working-class neighborhood to a 47th-floor law office, then to the White House and beyond.

Becoming provides insights into Michelle’s self-determination: She pushed herself to excel in Ivy League classrooms and achieve a prestigious career by age 26, then mustered the courage to swerve off that path in search of greater fulfillment. It details her relationship with Barack—a love story of two opposites—and their challenging quest to navigate family and political life. Through it all, we witness a woman who perpetually strives to become a better version of herself.

In Confidence Man, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman explores the remarkable public life and career of real estate developer, reality TV star, and former President of the United States Donald Trump.

Haberman's book explores the people, experiences, and environments that shaped the singular personality that would define his presidency, focusing on his prowess as a consummate showman and salesman and his deep-seated desires for fame, attention, dominance, power, and leverage over others.

In this guide, we’ll explore:

• Trump’s career as a real estate developer and public symbol of capitalist success
• His second act as a right-wing firebrand and promoter of conspiracy theories
• His victory in the 2016 presidential election
• His presidency and attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election

Throughout this guide, we’ll supplement Haberman’s account with commentary from outside sources to both support her critical portrayal of Trump’s life and career, as well as to bring in perspectives that offer a more favorable view of the 45th president.

A Promised Land is Barack Obama’s memoir of his early political career and the first two years of his presidency. Obama takes us on his journey from relative obscurity as a biracial kid from Hawaii to becoming a transformative figure as the nation’s first African-American president. At every step of his career, Obama was guided by a deep faith in the fundamental unity of Americans; the potential and promise of America; the necessity of compromise and seeking common ground; and above all, the power of the democratic system to heal our divisions and effect real change for ordinary people.

Think about all of the images, objects, and stories you’re confronted with throughout the day—from memes, to advertisements, to flags waving in the wind. In Mythologies, 20th-century French philosopher Roland Barthes says that all of these contain subtle messages that subconsciously shape the way we view the world. He calls these messages myths.

According to Barthes, Myths occur when society’s dominant institutions—the government, the advertising industry, or Hollywood, to name a few—imbue an image, object, or phrase with meaning. By creating these associations, the dominant social institutions create and reinforce cultural beliefs and values that are unconsciously adopted by the masses. Mythologies aims to open our eyes to these manipulations and teach us how to avoid them.

In this guide, we’ll discuss Barthes’s theoretical framework behind myth, examine some of the examples he gives from 1950s French culture, and consider whether they’re still present in contemporary culture today.

Do you want to learn to get more out of the novels you read? Are you interested in learning how authors communicate through literary devices like symbols, archetypes, and allusions?

How to Read Literature Like a Professor is a crash course in the art of reading intelligently. In this book, you’ll learn how to identify common literary conventions and gain the skills necessary to analyze them like a professor would. You’ll discover why Goose had to die in Top Gun and why sex scenes aren’t always about sex in literature.

Elite colleges and universities in the US typically accept less than 10% of applicants, but their influence stretches far beyond this small group. In Excellent Sheep, author and former Yale professor William Deresiewicz makes the case that these institutions’ influence is negative. He argues that they’re so selective and profit-oriented that they contribute to social inequality and deprive students of high-quality learning.

In this guide, we’ll examine two problems with elite US colleges and universities and explain why Deresiewicz claims they harm both society and students. Then, we’ll explore solutions by describing how governments, schools, and parents can collectively overhaul US higher education—and how today’s students can make the most of their college years in the meantime. As we explore these ideas, we’ll fact-check the author’s claims by providing both supportive evidence and counterexamples. We’ll also discuss ways in which some elite US schools have changed since the publication of Excellent Sheep in 2014. Furthermore, we’ll supplement the author’s ideas with actionable steps.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis examines the spiritual and social decline of the Appalachian white working class through the life story of its author, JD Vance. Growing up in a post-industrial Ohio town, Vance encountered the symptoms of community and familial dysfunction—drug and alcohol abuse, unstable marriages, lack of education, and evasion of hard work—that underscore the failing values of the culture from which he came.

Although Vance eventually escapes the poverty and dysfunction of his roots, attending college and Yale Law School, he finds that even economic mobility can never permanently erase the social markers of his hillbilly upbringing.