Readers! If you pre-ordered your Kindle edition of Our Worst Strength, check your Library! It’s there! Woohoo!
If not, there is no better time than the next seven days - May 17-23 to help the cause. This is a critical week for Amazon sales and early reader reviews! Heck, you can buy a Kindle AND a paperback and really help me!
FREE SIGNED EDITION - I will be offering signed copies to the first five folks who buy a copy on Amazon and submit a review as a verified purchaser. Just e-mail a screenshot of your review once it is live.
Here’s the new book trailer to inspire you -
Riffing on the Limits of Individualism as a Way of Life
w/
Michael and I sat down last week to place our books into friendly thematic conversation. If you know folks who read YA fiction, please get his book - The Crew - as a summer reading gift! It’s extremely polished and reads super quick.
Here are just some of the topics we engage with in our book-to-book conversation!
Teen-agers’ thirst for community and wisdom
The lack of structured transitions in adulthood
Why it’s so hard to find adult mentors in America
The limits of figuring out big life decisions by yourself
The crucial role of therapy in a society without extended family intimacy
Addiction’s ravages in American life and how individuals fall through the cracks
The ironic power of traumatic experiences to strengthen our resilience
Warning: the guy on the left swears. Michael is polite.
Here is one of my favorite sections from our conversation - on the fracturing of extended family ties and the possibility of a reversal with younger generations…
Michael: the part [in your book] about not respecting the wisdom of elders anymore, for example, and the fracturing of families into small groups and how…we don't have the same sense of large family units making decisions together that we did have a hundred years ago, even to some degree, maybe 50 years ago, much more so than we have now. And I think that's really true. I see pros and cons with that, but I get your overall point that we've lost this sense of a familial safety net.
James: And I don't think that we can get the genie back in the bottle with that topic because there are too many forces driving people away from their families… Although I'll say that I do see signs amongst non-white Generation Z folks who are disproportionately immigrant children. There seems to be a different approach to assimilation that's emerging. I don't know if it'll pan out historically; it doesn't. Historically, these people just become as alienated as anybody else, but they're more self-aware than immigrants a hundred years ago. So they may decide that ‘pulling up my roots and just wandering all over the country for work and abandoning all these relationships’ may not be a good thing…”
Hey, if two confirmed hyper-individualists from comfortable backgrounds like Michael and I are saying, ‘Hold on,’ perhaps America really does have a problem with adulting.
We can do better.
Ooo, this looks like I'll be a lot of fun!! Looking forward to hearing it! ^o^
Just finished listening while bike riding and omg it was so good! Agreed with so many points you both said, as well as had some relatable once, particularly the one where you mentioned being 31 and having to reach out to your parents for help because you had nobody else. 😅
Wouldn't mind more of those!
Have a good weekend!