Griffiths believes that we force very young children into too much independence at a time when all they want is intimacy (she particularly deplores Ferberization, or controlled crying), and that we then exert too much control over older children who yearn only for freedom (she is dismayed by standardized testing). She questions the hierarchical nature of most adult-child relations, and demonstrates that in many cultures and across much of history, children have been given a much broader right of self-determination. She is fanatical about the importance of the great outdoors, and believes that all children need the kith of woods, sea and sky. She laments the enclosures movement of the 15th to 19th centuries that eliminated most common agricultural rights.Concerned that so many children today require treatment for psychological ills, she proposes space and freedom as the cure.She makes an eloquent, loosely Marxist argument that children’s play has been overtaken by commercial interests, so that imagination gets upstaged by sophistry. She objects to the way the nuclear family excludes the wider penumbra of people who stand to love any child, describing all the advantages of a “well villaged” child who may belong “to the street or the commons as much as to the home.” She lauds the idea of childhood as a quest that is precious regardless of its destination. And she regrets the fact that too many children are cut off from their daemon — their true calling — by a dreary pragmatism and a rigid, unresponsive education system.

— Andrew Solomon on Jay Griffiths’ book “A Country Called Childhood”

Books, books, books.

1. Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. The best collection of advice columns I’ve read. People wrote to the “Dear Sugar” online column (the author of which was revealed to be Cheryl Strayed of Wild fame) with some pretty tricky questions about their personal life, career, sex, family, and so on, and she delivered just the right mix of encouragement, tough love, and concrete tips for action. There’s a story of guy who overhears his friends talking shit about him. There’s a woman who wants to write a book but is overcome with self-loathing and anxiety about being a woman in what she perceives is a man’s game. Strayed tells her, “Don’t write like a man. Don’t write like a woman. Write like a motherfucker.” One questioner expresses insecurity over her “useless” English degree. Srayed concludes her answer thusly:

I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English and/or creative degree you’ll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh.

2. Mindful Work: How Meditation is Changing Business from the Inside Out by David Gelles. My friend David Gelles of the New York Times has written a solid book on how companies around the world are institutionalizing meditation practices in their offices. His timing couldn’t be better. I suspect many managers, wellness directors, and executives will be picking up his book to learn how to support employees on a quest to be more mindful and to learn why it’s beneficial to the corporate bottom line to set aside time for employees to meditate. More generally, David also offers some nice reflections on his own practice and a summary of the academic literature on the how meditation shapes our brain which will be helpful to anyone getting up to speed on the basics. The book will be published March, 2015.

3. The Sports Gene by David Epstein. A wonderfully researched and engagingly written book about genetics and athletics. It makes you not only re-think a lot of what you thought you knew about sports performance, but also questions assumptions about achievement in general. I recently met David and he’s already become one of my favorite people. Below the fold are my highlighted paragraphs from his book.

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