Lending Library

Chair’s Book Club Selection: Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we're right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding and attacking one another is breaking... everything.

Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us, and discovered the most eye-opening tool we're not using: our own curiosity.

In this timely, personal guide, Mónica, the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt—broken conversations among confounded people. She shows you how to overcome the fear and assumptions that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is not just different from yours, but opposed.

Drawing from conversations she's had, organized, or witnessed everywhere from the echo chambers on social media to the wheat fields in Oregon to raw, unfiltered fights with her family on election night, Mónica shows how you can put your natural sense of wonder to work for you immediately, finding the answers you need by talking with people—rather than about them—and asking the questions you want across the divides you want, curiously.

Learn more or join the Chair’s Book Club and get access to virtual events and discussions!

Check out a copy of Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times from the Philanthropy Southeast Lending Library