Brendan Stern

Alfred Tennyson claims the New Year is a whisper that we will be happier. Others rhapsodize it is a 365-page book waiting to be written. For me, it is an ideal time to think about the best non-fiction I read last year and then write down my personal thoughts and lessons I’ve learned from each, with a particular focus on possible applications to deaf people. Because, you know, I am not an elephant. If I forget my son’s birthday and to take out the recycling bin regularly, I should take notes after reading relevant stuff scarier/funnier/more thought-provoking than fiction.

So, here is a non-scientific list of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in 2018. I have five, of course, because this is 5tern.com, I have never heard of a “Best of” list with four or six, and you don’t have time for ten. In no particular order, here goes: 

BELICHICK. The biography of Bill Belichick, the current head coach of the New England Patriots, highlights the truism in the NFL that “if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”

An entertaining – yet unlikely – claim in the book is how Bob Colbert stole play calls in the NFL as an advanced scout with expertise in reading lips. How, you may wonder? By having coached football at Gallaudet, the “university serving the deaf and hearing-impaired.” 

Really? I’ve studied, played, coached, and taught at Gallaudet for 18 years. The only stuff I can read is inane stuff like non-fiction books and people’s lips, as long as they do not have mustaches.

(Note to biographers: speechreading is a difficult skill requiring rigorous training. Spending time with deaf people and squinting your eyes through binoculars is hardly enough.)

As a sports fan who has long wondered about the secret of sustained success of teams like the San Antonio Spurs, the book was illuminating. It nailed home that intelligence, preparation, and toughness are undervalued despite being as important as jumping high and running fast.

Despite being a Giants fan, I will root for the Patriots in the Super Bowl next week out of begrudging admiration, thanks to Ian O’Connor’s brilliant insights into the greatest football coach who’s ever lived. 

EDUCATED. Tara Westover’s lyrical memoir about growing up in the southeastern mountains of Idaho with paranoid, anti-science, survivalist parents and going on to graduate from Harvard and Cambridge is not only a remarkable story in and of itself. (Her father tried to discourage her brother from attending college by lecturing, “There’s two kinds of them college professors. Those who know they’re lying, and those who think they’re telling the truth.” After thinking about it for a while, I have concluded that I am both kinds.) It is also powerful reading for many who leave home for an education and then view their family and community across a cultural valley.     

THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND.  Why is this generation the most depressed, anxious, self-righteous, and suicidal ever? According to Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, it is because we believe a “great untruth” that children are fragile. And then, with the best intentions, we more than ever shield them from independent decision-making, scrapes, and potentially problematic situations. The book makes me think of how parents often host a “Trick or Trunk” event where trick or treating is done on Halloween night from parked car to parked car in the school parking lot. And the booming popularity of AAU basketball has rendered pick-up games, in which kids draft teams and call their own fouls, rare. In both instances, we’re denying kids the valuable opportunity to roam and explore and do wrong and mediate conflicts on their own.

“Resilience” is a buzzword nowadays, but how do we develop it? According to Haidt and Lukianoff, it can be created by exposing our youth to “normal” stresses and tensions (as opposed to extreme ones) that will allow them to develop toughness. Think of the immune system, for instance, which requires exposure to germs at a young age to develop the necessary capacity to fight them later. Contrary to the popular trend of eliminating peanuts at schools and in children’s diets, doctors now recommend that kids are exposed to food containing peanuts almost immediately after birth to harden the immune system and avoid life-threatening allergies later on. Psychological resilience is not that different in that it requires independent exposure to open-ended challenges “early and often.”

This makes me wonder about the Deaf community. Are our deaf students at deaf schools exposed to sufficient stress and tension? Should we continue to prepare the road for our leaders of the future by seeking a comfortable environment whenever possible, or should we prepare our children for the road with a more holistic approach?

I do not claim to know the answers. Still, the socio-psychological benefits, costs, and risks of prizing self-esteem and ease over experience and accommodation should be considered and debated. For that alone, the book is a must-read for parents, educators, and Deaf people alike.

FACTFULNESS. This uplifting yet grounded book pokes holes in this age’s simplistic, pessimistic, hysterical thinking with clear, unpretentious, fact-based advice. In one of my favorite chapters, Hans Rosling asks us to assume that our categories are misleading and to challenge them by looking for differences within and similarities across groups, which is something we do not do quite enough with ‘Deaf people’ and the ‘Deaf community.’ 

In another, Rosling points out that sweeping explanations and vivid solutions are *too* attractive because of the human tendency to want to seem knowledgeable and valuable. We often try to explain and solve particular trends and issues with general assertions at the expense of complexity and truth.

Well-intentioned activists in the Deaf community will explain critical issues by pointing at language deprivation, for instance, and Hearing and Spoken Language advocates by bringing in majoritarian culture. This inclination is what Rosling terms “the single perspective instinct.” (Or what English philosopher Gilbert K. Chesterton called “the clean and well-lit prison of one idea.”) He advises that we resist the temptation to see every problem as a nail when handed a hammer. Instead, we should step back and use our toolbox rather than a single tool. In all, I cannot recommend this book enough. (And hey, Bill Gates and Barack Obama agree with me.) 

BORN A CRIME. Trevor Noah, writing about his childhood dealing with apartheid in South Africa, is a masterful storyteller. He challenges stereotypes and preconceptions with colorful anecdotes that entail laughter and serious thought about growing up different in a strange world.

A significant takeaway from the book is racism and colonialism are fraught legacies that are neither easily understood nor undone and must be dismantled with care.

Another thought-provoking point is, as he argues, fluency in specific languages is a hierarchical force equated with intelligence and competence. This, wrongly or not, defines who we are to people.

I now watch The Daily Show at every opportunity for Noah’s incisive humor and profound wisdom.

What about you? Have you read these books? If so, what did you think? Any recommendations for 2019? Hit me up and let me know.