I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy

3.1/5 ( ratings)

The author of To the End of June explains the purpose and practice of the transformative emotion while elucidating the myths, science, and power behind it.

Empathy has become a gaping fault line in American culture. Pioneering programs aim to infuse our legal and educational systems with more empathic thinking, even as pundits argue over whether we should bother empathizing with our political opposites at all. Meanwhile, we are inundated with the buzzily termed "empathic marketing" --which may very well be a contradiction in terms.

In I Feel You, Cris Beam carves through the noise with a revelatory exploration of how we perform empathy, how it is learned, what it can do--indeed, what empathy is in the first place. She takes us to the labs where the neural networks of compassion are being mapped, and the classrooms where children are being trained to see others' views. Beam visits courtrooms and prisons, asking how empathy might transform our justice system. She travels to places wracked by oppression and genocide, where reconciliation seems impossible, to report on efforts to heal society's deepest wounds through human connection. And finally, she turns to how we, as individuals, can foster compassion for ourselves.

Brimming with the sensitive and nuanced storytelling that has made Beam one of our most respected journalists, I Feel You is an eye-opening affirmation of empathy's potential.

"[Beam's] exceptional intelligence, equally evident in her thinking and her writing, shines light on empathy from extraordinary angles . . . Her clear goal is to empower readers with the knowledge to enact the complicated and varied forms of empathy necessary to navigate modern times." --Booklist, starred review