Talking Across the Divide: How to Communicate with People You Disagree With and Maybe Even Change the World
by Justin Lee

Book description from Amazon: America is more polarized than ever. Whether the issue is Donald Trump, healthcare, abortion, gun control, breastfeeding, or even DC vs Marvel, it feels like you can’t voice an opinion without ruffling someone’s feathers. In today’s digital age, it’s easier than ever to build walls around yourself. You fill up your Twitter feed with voices that are angry about the same issues and believe as you believe. Before long, you’re isolated in your own personalized echo chamber. And if you ever encounter someone outside of your bubble, you don’t understand how the arguments that resonate so well with your peers can’t get through to anyone else. In a time when every conversation quickly becomes a battlefield, it’s up to us to learn how to talk to each other again.
In Talking Across the Divide, social justice activist Justin Lee explains how to break through the five key barriers that make people resist differing opinions. With a combination of psychological research, pop-culture references, and anecdotes from Justin’s many years of experience mediating contentious conversations, this book will help you understand people on the other side of the argument and give you the tools you need to change their minds–even if they’ve fallen for “fake news.”

Why does the nominator think this would be a good book for the Campus Read?
As we’ve seen over the last few years, the polarization in our country has grown to dangerous levels. This book is all about learning how to talk with and learn from others with differing views, values, etc. I think if we as a campus read this book: we would be building a community on campus and locally that knows how to communicate and work through tough conversations; we would be creating an environment where conversations between diverse people could flourish and that would in turn encourage and cultivate social engagement; and our community would be better equipped to think critically about the issues facing our city, county, state and country.

One of the events that would work very well connected to this book would be a Conversation Cafe (or perhaps a series of cafes) where people would have the chance to engage in conversations in a format that encourages and supports exactly the kind of conversing and listening we all need to be doing.

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