One Nice Thing

A few years ago, Debbie Tenzer was feeling overwhelmed by all the crises in the news. But rather than give in to despair, she thought, Maybe I can’t solve our big problems, but I know I can do something. She realized that helping doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive or time-consuming. You can help simply by doing one nice thing. So that’s what she vowed to do, one day a week. Not every day–she says she’s not that nice–but once a week was a promise she could keep. So she started a website, DoOneNiceThing.com, and each week she posted an easy way to help people around town or across the globe. Good news traveled fast, and now Debbie is the leader of a worldwide kindness movement with fellow Nice-o-holics in ninety countries. They’ve sent . . . • cans of food to food banks and schools • notebooks to soldiers who will give them to Afghan children • gifts to foster children whose birthdays are overlooked • and much more Do One Nice Thing has many new, easy ideas for small deeds that anyone can do (and includes explicit information on how exactly to execute the ideas, so you don’t have to go digging for information or resources). There’s even a chapter of nice things you can do in minutes without leaving your desk. Join Debbie and her army of Nice-o-holics, and give the world some help–and some hope. Best of all, the more help you give, the more hopeful you’ll feel. And before you know it, you won’t be able to stop.

In her quest for kindness, Eliza comes up with a small plan to make a big difference. In this rhyming book, we get to witness Eliza and her friends learn the power of positivity.

Internet trolls live to upset as many people as possible, using all the technical and psychological tools at their disposal. They gleefully whip the media into a frenzy over a fake teen drug crisis; they post offensive messages on Facebook memorial pages, traumatizing grief-stricken friends and family; they use unabashedly racist language and images. They take pleasure in ruining a complete stranger's day and find amusement in their victim's anguish. In short, trolling is the obstacle to a kinder, gentler Internet. To quote a famous Internet meme, trolling is why we can't have nice things online. Or at least that's what we have been led to believe. In this provocative book, Whitney Phillips argues that trolling, widely condemned as obscene and deviant, actually fits comfortably within the contemporary media landscape. Trolling may be obscene, but, Phillips argues, it isn't all that deviant. Trolls' actions are born of and fueled by culturally sanctioned impulses -- which are just as damaging as the trolls' most disruptive behaviors. Phillips describes, for example, the relationship between trolling and sensationalist corporate media -- pointing out that for trolls, exploitation is a leisure activity; for media, it's a business strategy. She shows how trolls, "the grimacing poster children for a socially networked world," align with social media. And she documents how trolls, in addition to parroting media tropes, also offer a grotesque pantomime of dominant cultural tropes, including gendered notions of dominance and success and an ideology of entitlement. We don't just have a trolling problem, Phillips argues; we have a culture problem. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things isn't only about trolls; it's about a culture in which trolls thrive.

A New York Times bestseller! “These days, it seems more important than ever for books to show young people how to act with thoughtfulness, civility, and kindness.” —The New York Times Book Review When Tanisha spills grape juice all over her new dress, her classmate wants to make her feel better, wondering: What does it mean to be kind? From asking the new girl to play to standing up for someone being bullied, this moving story explores what kindness is, and how any act, big or small, can make a difference—or at least help a friend. With a gentle text from the award-winning author of Sophie's Squash, Pat Zietlow Miller, and irresistible art from Jen Hill, Be Kind is an unforgettable story about how two simple words can change the world. One of Chicago Public Library's "Best of the Best Books 2018"

A memoir in essays that expands on the viral sensation “The Crane Wife” with a frank and funny look at love, intimacy, and self in the twenty-first century. From friends and lovers to blood family and chosen family, this “elegant masterpiece” (Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger) asks what more expansive definitions of love might offer ​us all. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE GUARDIAN, GARDEN & GUN "Hauser builds their life's inventory out of deconstructed personal narratives, resulting in a reading experience that's rich like a complicated dessert—not for wolfing down but for savoring in small bites." —The New York Times “Hauser’s wry, introspective investigation of their assumptions about love will likely free readers to examine their own personal narratives as well ... ‘The rare happy ending I appreciate is one that makes room for the whole painful fact of the world at the same time it offers the reader some joy,’ they write. The Crane Wife embraces this philosophy again and again as Hauser excavates their past loves and losses, thoughtfully examines them and declares the pain of love to be worth the risk.” —BookPage Ten days after calling off their wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, they realized they'd almost signed up to live someone else's life. Hauser releases themself from traditional narratives of happiness and goes looking for ways of living that leave room for the unexpected, making plenty of mistakes along the way. They kiss Internet strangers and officiates at a wedding. They reread Rebecca in the house their boyfriend once shared with his ex-wife and rewinds Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story to learn how not to lose yourself in a relationship. They think about Florence Nightingale at a robot convention and grief at John Belushi’s rock and roll gravesite, and the difference between those stories we’re asked to hold versus those we choose to carry. Told with the late-night barstool directness of your wisest, most bighearted friend, The Crane Wife is a book for everyone whose life doesn't look the way they thought it would; for everyone learning to find joy in the not-knowing; for everyone trying, if sometimes failing, to build a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a new sort of home, to live in.

Nice is the secret ingredient to a better life. It makes us happy. It may even be what makes us civilized—when we say thank you, shake hands, send flowers, we’re doing the nice things that bring people together. ?A compulsive and chunky book for lovers of trivia, popular history, customs, and culture—and a perfect gift to say “you’re nice”—The Book of Nice is an entertaining, quirky compendium of those signs, traditions, and expressions that we so often take for granted, yet turn out to be quite fascinating. It’s about why we cover a yawn (originally to prevent evil spirits from entering our bodies, now to hide the impression that something’s boring us). About holiday traditions—it’s thanks to Guy Lombardo’s December 31 broadcast in 1929 that we now sing “Auld Lang Syne” on New Year’s Eve. About customary offerings—the wedding cake evolved out of the Roman use of wheat as a symbol of fertility (and it’s much tastier than bits of grain). And about those simple yet essential niceties—how Thomas Edison championed an obscure term, “hello” (if Alexander Graham Bell had gotten his way, we’d all be saying “ahoy”). Why not put a little nice in your day?