18 Books to Watch for in April 2011
From hard-boiled detective fiction like Edward Conlon's Red on Red to the social science breakthroughs in Tina Rosenberg's Join the Club, April's got something for everyone.
18 of 18
Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World
By Tina Rosenberg
402 pages;
W. W. Norton & Company
Here are some things we know peer pressure can cause: smoking, driving
drunk, buying stuff we don't need. Here are some things Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Tina Rosenberg has seen peer pressure do:
increase math performance among minority students, help prevent the
spread of HIV, contribute to the demise of Serbian dictator Slobodan
Milosevic's repressive regime. In her smart and earnest book, Join the Club
(Norton), Rosenberg, a MacArthur "genius" grant recipient, debunks the
popular notion that peer pressure is always bad and argues that by
helping people find positively persuasive cohorts, we can change the
world. One unforgettable example: a stop-smoking campaign in Florida
that convinced teenagers it was more rebellious and cool to confront the
tobacco companies than to use their products. "Peer pressure is a
mighty and terrible force—so powerful that, for the vast majority of
people, the best antidote to it is more peer pressure."
— Sara Nelson
Published 03/24/2011