Jessica Nordell

I won this in a give-away a long time ago, and neglected to follow up a with a review. My bad, as I really enjoyed it. It's a straightforward account of the state of the science of bias and ways to combat bias. It starts with a thorough discussion of unconscious bias and its pervasive effects throughout society, and then covers the history of efforts to educate and inform to reduce bias. I learned a great deal of the sometimes counter-intuitive findings on education, and ways to improve. I attended an unconscious bias training at my workplace earlier this year and found myself contributing much to the conversation because of this book, and I even got to recommend it to the instructor when she asked.… (more)

This was quite good. Written by a journalist but super grounded in a whole bunch of social science research. I like the framing of first showing how bias works and then examining some bias-countering practices that have actually worked in areas like education, policing, the workplace, and healthcare. I read this via audio and highlighted key passages in the ARC that I was fortunate enough to receive from LibraryThing. The author narrates and doesn’t necessarily have that pro narrator style, but I enjoyed (might be bc she’s apparently from the very same part of Wisconsin where I grew up, so probably her slight regional accent spoke to my soul. :) There were some really beautiful turns of phrase in this, too, which kind of would catch me off guard, but in a good way.… (more)