Wednesday, September 30, 2009

NurtureShock on The View, Fresh Air, and in The Daily Beast

Several big hits this week - we're told the Fresh Air interview is running today (we will try to come back later with a link.) The hosts of The View talked about NurtureShock for several minutes yesterday, here's that link. And esteemed literary critic John Marshall writes about our interview on The Daily Beast.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

NurtureShock in the news

Before Po and I both head back on the road this week (me in the New York City area, Po in Sacramento and St. Paul/Minneapolis – please come!), a quick update –

Following up on its earlier great review, in this week, San Francisco Chronicle's Top Shelf / Recommended Reading column has NurtureShock at the top of its nonfiction recommendations, proclaiming: "'Mythbusters' for anyone who has a child - or was one." (Thanks, Gallery Bookshop!)

Swellbeing twittered: "My MUST read book of 2009: Nurtureshock" while Po and I were guests of KUER's RadioWest.

We've also been really interested in the continuing conversation about Newsweek's excerpt of our race chapter. We were honored to have our Newsweek colleague Raina Kelley call it "brilliant," while other venues as varied as Inside Catholic, ("fascinating") and The Guardian of Trinidad took their turns to reflect on it.

But some of the reaction took a surprising turn – as Rush Limbaugh and other conservative Republicans falsely claimed that we'd written a liberal attack on anti-Obama Republicans. We flatly disagree: theirs is a willful misrepresentation of our article, and an unforgivable distortion of the findings we reported in it.

Our chapter/excerpt is apolitical, and its findings apply regardless a family's political persuasion. For more of our response, check out this week's issue of Newsweek – you can also read it online.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Dr. Albert Mohler on NurtureShock

Dr. Albert Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary - the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention. He's one of the intellectual leaders of the evangelical movement, and he also hosts a daily radio show, which I had the pleasure of being on yesterday. This appearance was important to Ashley and I, because we think there's a false dichotomy out there between science and faith as they relate to kids. In fact, modern science has a lot of guidance to offer about the moral development of children. When our work was first published in New York magazine, Dr. Mohler was one of the first to tell Christian parents to listen up.

On the show yesterday, Rev. Mohler called NurtureShock "a phenomenal book," "the kind of counterintuitive thinking we desperately we need," "fascinating," and credited it for "tremendous gains in understanding of our children and ourselves."

-Po

NurtureShock - Today's Round-up

Today, Guy Kawasaki has an in-depth Q&A with Ashley, while the Seattle Examiner has a Q&A with both of us, since Po's in Seattle, with a few events around town (check the schedule and please come!)

Suite 101 gave NurtureShock a lovely review ("The book... entertainingly shares the science.... Lively prose, personal stories and sharp analysis make NurtureShock a winning book."
While the Washington Post's Petula Dvorak used our Newsweek excerpt to help her make sense of discussing race in her family, as well as a few current events.

Monday, September 14, 2009

NurtureShock Latest

We've had some wonderful reactions to NurtureShock and the adaptation of our piece in Newsweek that we had to share.

The book was "enthusiastically recommended!" by Love2Learn.net. Impressed by our "staggering amount of evidence," Joana of The Symposium concurred with: "I strongly recommend and encourage any person who has even the slightest day to day contact with children to pick up a copy of this book." Today's Adventure proclaimed: "Shocking, insightful, entertaining. Read it!" She's Going Bananas said that the Newsweek excerpt was a "must read" that stopped her in her tracks.

Metroreader opined: "Every so often a book is published that dominates the conversation on a particular topic and changes the conventional wisdom. NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman is such a tide-changing tome. It will set parents’ (and others’) tongues wagging for years to come. . . . I think I am a better parent for having read NurtureShock and you will be too!"

We always love it when booksellers are excited about the book, so we were delighted to see Green Apple Books conclude that "what they’ve found will surprise, entertain and enlighten you. . . . This is a book that, if you are a parent, will quite literally change your life and maybe that of your children."

But I do admit that my favorite post came from LibraryQueue; she reported that her three-year-old saw the cracked-egg cover and replied with a concerned, "Uh-oh, Mommy! Your book is broken!"

Also, today, SharedBook is going live with three chapters of the book; there, you can add comments to the text and even order a printed version of the annotated copy. FYI, it's still a bit of a work-in-progress: there are some functionality issues that we hope that they can work out, and, unfortunately, the software doesn't work with Safari, so you'll have to use Explorer or Firefox to get to it. Hachette Book Group also has an on-line excerpts of the book (click on the "Open Book" link).

Friday, September 11, 2009

San Francisco Chronicle Raves

calling NurtureShock "fascinating," "groundbreaking," "compelling," and "riveting." We would have happily taken any one of those. Read the review here.

Also a nice take on the book at the Baby Toolkit blog, especially finding some help in the material in The Sibling Effect.

Discuss "Why White Parents Don't Talk About Race" at Salon.com

Thanks to a very intelligent summary of our chapter and additional commentary by Amy Benfer, there's a thoughtful discussion of the issues and challenges for parents at Salon.com. Check out Amy's piece, "The Color-Blind Myth" and its comments.

I was also on CNN with Campbell Brown last night talking about the material.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

NurtureShock debuts at #10 on the New York Times Bestseller list

Thanks, readers, for such a strong initial boost for our book! In our first official week of sales, (some sales were triggered prior to publication date because of the All Things Considered feature), we came in at #10 on the Nonfiction list. Thanks again!

Saturday, September 05, 2009

A Bookseller Explains "NurtureShock"

Here's a nice video from a bookseller at Barnes & Noble in Minnesota explaining the book.

Friday, September 04, 2009

Financial Times raves about NurtureShock

While CBS News has a short Q&A with both of us, which you can take a look at, don't miss the Financial Times review: "engaging... startling.... This is a funny, clever, sensible book. Every parent should read it."

Five Great Audiobook Experiences

For fans of audiobooks, I have two original audio essays at Audible.com right now. One - available right now - is about Five Great Audiobook Experiences, (or Audible experiences); the other will be up next week. It's a fascinating little science essay, "Some Strange Things About Kids IQ."

The NurtureShock audiobook is there at that same link too. Shout out to Dennis Kao, the producer who worked on the recording with me.

-Po

Today's Media Hits

KQED San Francisco, an hour with Dave Iverson.



The MojoMom podcast with Amy Tiemann.


Here's the link to the page for last night's terrific Nightline episode. From that page you can watch the video.

Stanford Magazine review: "The authors pull the bottom Jenga block out from under a towering number of assumptions modern parents hold about child-rearing"

CBSNews.com also did a Q&A with us.

NurtureShock is "brilliant" -Washington Post's Brian Reid

We were interviewed about NurtureShock by Brian Reid, of the Washington Post's On Parenting blog; that piece will run next week.

But as a lead-in to that, today, Reid wrote, in a post entitled, "NurtureShock: Blinding me with Science," that the book is "brilliant" and "fascinating."

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Nightline Tonight and Campbell Brown Part 2

On ABC's Nightline tonight, anchor Cynthia McFadden and I go down to Stanford to visit Dr. Carol Dweck and recreate her seminal experiments on 5th graders - some being praised for their effort, some being told they're smart. If you've known about this science and wanted to see those experiments in action - see kids crumble or concentrate, on camera - this is the episode to watch.

Also tonight on CNN, Part 2 of my chat with Campbell Brown is available to watch here.

Po on CNN's Campbell Brown

Po was a guest on last night's Campbell Brown (it was originally to air on Monday, but breaking news meant the segment got bumped until yesterday – so sorry if you were looking for it earlier in the week.)

NurtureShock is a Barnes & Noble pick of the week and gets more great reviews....

NurtureShock is a Barnes & Noble pick of the week.

The San Francisco Weekly says NurtureShock is "required reading" for the fall.

Stanford Magazine says: "the authors pull the bottom Jenga block out from under a towering number of assumptions modern parents hold about child-rearing."

And AV Club writes: "If NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children can actually be classified as a parenting book, it may be the least touchy-feely one ever. The new work by Po Bronson, the New York Times bestselling author of the career book What Should I Do With My Life?, delights in showing that most parental intuition and supposedly common knowledge about child rearing is just bullshit, and he has the facts to prove it. Much like in his previous work, he’s entered a genre known for emotional cheese, and produced a book that’s hard to put down and easy to take seriously.... The science is well explained and studded with examples, so it never seems dry or dumbed-down. The facts are the real strength behind the narrative, which adeptly contextualizes strange truths."


Wednesday, September 02, 2009

The Daily Beast Recommends NurtureShock

Declaring that, in the book, "precious parenting myths [are] debunked," the Daily Beast recommends NurtureShock to its readers, including the book in its latest "week's hot reads" section.