A collection of books about love on a pink background

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Reading lists

Books to help you be better at love

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The best audiobooks of 2021

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Audiobooks to help you understand other people

The Gifts of Imperfection

In hardback for the first time, this tenth-anniversary edition of the game-changing #1 New York Times bestseller features a new foreword and brand-new tools to make the work your own.

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She is also a visiting professor in management at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. Brown has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy, and is the author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers: The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness and Dare to Lead, which is the culmination of a seven-year study on courage and leadership. With Tarana Burke, she co-edited the bestselling anthology You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience and the Black Experience. She hosts the Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead podcasts, and her TEDx talk, "The Power of Vulnerability", is one of the top five most-viewed TED talks in the world with more than 50 million views. Her Netflix special, The Call to Courage, is the first filmed lecture by a researcher on the streaming service. Brown lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie.

In hardback for the first time, this tenth-anniversary edition of the game-changing #1 New York Times bestseller features a new foreword and brand-new tools to make the work your own. 
 
 For over a decade, Brené Brown has found a special place in our hearts as a gifted mapmaker and a fellow traveller. She is both a social scientist and a kitchen-table friend whom you can always count on to tell the truth, make you laugh and, on occasion, cry with you. And what's now become a movement all started with The Gifts of Imperfection, which has sold more than two million copies in thirty-five different languages across the globe. 
 
 What transforms this book from words on a page to effective daily practices are the ten guideposts to wholehearted living. The guideposts not only help us understand the practices that will allow us to change our lives and families, they also walk us through the unattainable and sabotaging expectations that get in the way. 
 
 Brené writes, "This book is an invitation to join a wholehearted revolution. A small, quiet, grassroots movement that starts with each of us saying, 'My story matters because I matter.' Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance."

Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

Dare to Lead

Research professor and TED talk phenomenon Dr Brené Brown reveals how to choose courage over comfort, so we can step up, make a difference and dare to lead.

With Dare to Lead, Brené brings decades of research to bear in a practical and insightful guide to courageous leadership. This book is a road map for anyone who wants to lead mindfully, live bravely, and dare to lead.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook, founder of LeanIn.Org and OptionB.Org

Brené visited Pixar to talk with our filmmakers. Her message was important, as movies are best when they come from a place of vulnerability, when the people who make them encounter setbacks and are forced to overcome them, when they are willing to have their asses handed to them. It is easy to sit back and talk about the values of a safe and meaningful culture, but extraordinarily difficult to pull it off. You don’t achieve good culture without constant attention, without an environment of safety, courage, and vulnerability. These are hard skills, but they are teachable skills. Start with this book.

Ed Catmull, president, Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios

Whether you’re leading a movement or a start-up, if you’re trying to change an organizational culture or the world, Dare to Lead will challenge everything you think you know about brave leadership and give you honest, straightforward, actionable tools for choosing courage over comfort.

Tarana Burke, senior director, Girls for Gender Equity, founder, the Me Too movement

We asked Brené to bring her work on courage and vulnerability to our Air Force base. This is a tough audience, many of them with significant combat experience. Within five minutes, you could have heard a pin drop. Brené cuts through the noise and speaks to what makes us human and makes the mission happen. Dare to Lead is about real leadership: tenacious, from the heart, and full of grit.

Brigadier General Brook J. Leonard, United States Air Force

Brené is Google Empathy Lab’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. She has profoundly inspired our product leaders to design in and embrace vulnerability, rather than engineer it out. It’s a critical and transformative act to bring your alive, messy, wholehearted human self to work every day. Dare to Lead is the skillful and empowering Jedi training we have all been waiting for.

Danielle Krettek, founder, Google Empathy Lab

Applying the principles from Dare to Lead to my work as a principal has transformed the way I show up with parents, students, and colleagues, and how I lead. Brené’s words, stories, and examples connect with our hearts and minds, and her actionable approach gives us the tools to be braver with our lives and our work.

Kwabena Mensah, PhD, assistant superintendent, Fort Bend ISD, Principal of the Year, Katy ISD and Texas Alliance of Black School Educators

Brené truly gives it all away in Dare to Lead. Courage is a set of teachable skills, and she teaches us exactly how to build those muscles with research, stories, examples, and new language. The future belongs to brave leaders, and she’s written the ultimate playbook for daring leadership.

Scott Harrison, founder and CEO, charity: water

In her #1 NYT bestsellers, Brené Brown taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. 
 
Leadership is not about titles, status and power over people. Leaders are people who hold themselves accountable for recognising the potential in people and ideas, and developing that potential. This is a book for everyone who is ready to choose courage over comfort, make a difference and lead. 
 
When we dare to lead, we don't pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don't see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it and work to align authority and accountability. We don't avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into the vulnerability that’s necessary to do good work. 
 
But daring leadership in a culture that's defined by scarcity, fear and uncertainty requires building courage skills, which are uniquely human. The irony is that we're choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the same time we're scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines can't do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection and courage to start. 
 
Brené Brown spent the past two decades researching the emotions that give meaning to our lives. Over the past seven years, she found that leaders in organisations ranging from small entrepreneurial start-ups and family-owned businesses to non-profits, civic organisations and Fortune 50 companies, are asking the same questions: 
 
How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders? And, how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? 
 
Dare to Lead answers these questions and gives us actionable strategies and real examples from her new research-based, courage-building programme. 
 
Brené writes, ‘One of the most important findings of my career is that courage can be taught, developed and measured. Courage is a collection of four skill sets supported by twenty-eight behaviours. All it requires is a commitment to doing bold work, having tough conversations and showing up with our whole hearts. Easy? No. Choosing courage over comfort is not easy. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and work. It's why we're here.’

The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone

Braving the Wilderness

When we stand alone, we find ourselves. This is a book about true belonging, not fitting in, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Rising Strong.

Thanks to Brené Brown I learned how to be vulnerable… a life changer

Brené Brown is an important thought leader of our times … a deeply inspiring book

Stories, beautifully told, of learning to belong because you know, enjoy, admire, and forgive yourself.

A timely and important new book that challenges everything we think we know about cultivating true belonging in our communities, organizations, and culture, from the #1 bestselling author of Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection. 
 
‘True belonging doesn't require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are.’ Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives – experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame and empathy. In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarisation. With her trademark mix of research, storytelling and honesty, Brown will again change the cultural conversation while mapping out a clear path to true belonging. 
 
Brown argues that what we're experiencing today is a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other. She writes, ‘True belonging requires us to believe in and belong to ourselves so fully that we can find sacredness both in both being a part of something, and in standing alone when necessary. But in a culture that's rife with perfectionism and pleasing, and with the erosion of civility, it's easy to stay quiet, hide in our ideological bunkers, or fit in rather than show up as our true selves and brave the wilderness of uncertainty and criticism. But true belonging is not something we negotiate or accomplish with others; it's a daily practice that demands integrity and authenticity. It's a personal commitment that we carry in our hearts.’ Brown offers us the clarity and courage we need to find our way back to ourselves and to each other. And that path cuts right through the wilderness. Brown writes, ‘The wilderness is an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it's the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.’

How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Daring Greatly

**Now on Netflix as The Call to Courage** 
 
'She's so good, Brené Brown, at finding the language to articulate collective feeling' Dolly Alderton 
 
Every time we are faced with change, no matter how great or small, we also face risk. We feel uncertain and exposed. We feel vulnerable. Most of us try to fight those feelings - or feel guilt for feeling them in the first place. 
 
In a powerful new vision Dr Brené Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability, and dispels the widely accepted myth that it's a weakness. She argues that, in truth, vulnerability is strength and when we shut ourselves off from vulnerability - from revealing our true selves - we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives. 
 
Daring Greatly is the culmination of 12 years of groundbreaking social research, across every area of our lives including home, relationships, work, and parenting. It is an invitation to be courageous; to show up and let ourselves be seen, even when there are no guarantees. 
 
This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly.

A wonderful book: urgent, essential and fun to read. I couldn't put it down, and it continues to resonate with me'

Brené writes with wisdom, wit, candor and a deep sense of humanity. You should read this book. I double dare you

The brilliantly insightful Brené draws upon extensive research and personal experience to explore the paradoxes of courage. I can't stop thinking about this book

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

In an age of constant pressure to conform and pretend, Daring Greatly offers a compelling alternative. Dare to read this book!

Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup

The world needs more guides like her who are showing us a wiser way to our inner world. Daring Greatly is all the navigation you'll need

**Now on Netflix as The Call to Courage** 
 
Every time we are introduced to someone new, try to be creative, or start a difficult conversation, we take a risk. We feel uncertain and exposed. We feel vulnerable. Most of us try to fight those feelings - we strive to appear perfect. 
 
In a powerful new vision Brené Brown challenges everything we think we know about vulnerability, and dispels the widely accepted myth that it's a weakness. She argues that, in truth, vulnerability is strength and when we shut ourselves off from vulnerability - fromrevealing our true selves - we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives. 
 
Daring Greatly is the culmination of 12 years of groundbreaking social research, across every area of our lives including home, relationships, work, and parenting. It is an invitation to be courageous; to show up and let ourselves be seen, even when there are no guarantees. 
 
This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly.

Rising Strong

A powerful new book from Brené Brown, the international bestselling author of Daring Greatly, on how to have the courage to embrace fear, failure and vulnerability to create a life you love

A mind-blowing, life-changing read … gets to the heart of life

An inventive approach to self-help and healing from an author who has helped countless readers change their lives.

Brené Brown is the master of hope, of believing things could be all right as well as finding ways to try and make them better.

'Thanks to Brené Brown I learned how to be vulnerable… a life changer' Miranda Hart 
 
The physics of vulnerability is simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. This is a book about what it takes to get back up and how owning our stories of disappointment, failure, and heartbreak gives us the power to write a daring new ending. Struggle can be our greatest call to courage and Rising Strong, our clearest path to deeper meaning, wisdom and hope.

Brené Brown

Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
In her latest book, five-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr Brené Brown, writes, "If we want to find the way back to ourselves and each other, we need language and the grounded confidence to both tell our stories, and to be stewards of the stories that we hear. This is the framework for meaningful connection." 
 
 In Atlas of the Heart, Brown takes us on a journey through eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary skills and an actionable framework for meaningful connection, she gives us the language and tools to access a universe of new choices and second chances - a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heart-breaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection. 
 
 Over the past two decades, Brown's extensive research into the experiences that make us who we are has shaped the cultural conversation and helped define what it means to be courageous with our lives. Atlas of the Heart draws on this research, as well as on Brown's singular skills as a storyteller, to show us how accurately naming an experience doesn't give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding, meaning and choice. 
 
Brown shares, "I want this book to be an atlas for all of us, because I believe that, with an adventurous heart and the right maps, we can travel anywhere and never fear losing ourselves."

Brené Brown

Books by Brené Brown

Articles featuring Brené Brown

Books to help you be better at love

The best audiobooks of 2021

Audiobooks to help you understand other people

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