Review_NONFICTION
48 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 8, 2021
Review_NONFICTION
intellectual adventure, one that’s well
articulated for readers looking for rig-
orous study. Illus. (May)Digital Body Language: How to
Build Trust and Connection No
Matter the Distance
Erica Dhawan. St. Martin’s, $28.99 (288p)
ISBN 978-1-250-24652-3
Building trust among remote work
teams is no small feat, advises executive
coach Dhawan (Get Big Things Done) in this
sharp, timely treatise on the importance of
translating body language to the digital
space. Nonverbal cues, she writes, make up
such a large part of communication that
learning to function without them is a new
skill: virtual employees face “widespread
misunderstanding and conflict,” which has
led to anxiety, distrust, and paranoia. To
counter this, Dhawan offers four laws of
digital body language: value visibly, com-
municate carefully, collaborate confidently,
and trust totally. She shows readers how to
make colleagues feel valued without hand-
shakes or in-person eye contact by, for
instance, avoiding multitasking during
meetings and sending emails in a rush;
navigate power plays that come in the form
of ambiguous digital communication such
as overly-formal or one-word answers (she
advises getting a second opinion when in
doubt); and manage generational differ-
ences (understanding preferences is key for
such decisions as when to use emoji).
Dhawan’s high-energy advice comes right
on time: “As we all know by now, video
meetings are far from perfect, with many
feeling decidedly uncollaborative... but
there are ways around this.” Anyone trying
to find their way through the new normal
of office life will learn something from this
real-world guide to respectful, productive
communication. (May)The Heart of Business:
Leadership Principles for
the Next Era of Capitalism
Hubert Joly, with Caroline Lambert. Harvard
Business Review, $30 (256p) ISBN 978-1-
64782-038-1
Joly, former CEO of Best Buy, debuts
with a striking call to action for managers
of companies large and small to “make
business and the world better places.” Joly
was at the helm of Best Buy from 2012 to
2020, a time when “Amazon was supposedaction or thought that is triggered auto-
matically by a particular stimulus,” and
isn’t tied to a specific goal. As he explores
why humans evolved to be so habit-
driven, Poldrack considers dopamine,
which is crucial in forming habits for its
impacts on brain plasticity; questions the
efficacy of mindfulness (now a “billion-
dollar industry”); and covers the forma-
tion of addictions, which he calls “habits
gone bad.” Poldrack’s study is strongest
when he describes experiments on inter-
rupting habit formation on a cellular
level, which can potentially help one shed
such undesirable behaviors as smoking
and overeating. (For instance, after
cocaine-addicted rats were given drugs
that block the formation of a protein that
is important for memory, they forgot that
a stimulus is associated with the drug.) A
plethora of diagrams, italicized key
terms (basal ganglia, subthalamic nucleus,
corticostriatal loops), and chapter sum-
maries, however, give the survey a text-
book-like quality. Still, this is a worthythe importance of plant names, noting
the temporary nature of labels. Hamer
frequently refers to the authors he’s
reading (Sebald, Bukowski, Rimbaud)
and his own poems, and writes in a lumi-
nous prose: Unopened daisies are “fields
of pearls straining... to blink open their
eyes”; peonies are “strong, closed baby-
hands reaching for the sun.” Such beau-
tiful descriptions come often, but the
effect is spoiled by Hamer’s unrelenting
man-of-the-earth posturing: he’s a
“tramp,” a “vagrant,” a “wildflower,”
and, by the end, it’s overpowering. Still,
gardeners and armchair philosophers will
find his musings strike a chord. (May)Hard to Break: Why Our Brains
Make Habits Stick
Russell A. Poldrack. Princeton Univ., $24.95
(240p) ISBN 978-0-691-19432-5
Psychologist Poldrack (The New Mind
Readers) sheds light on the neuroscience
and psychology behind habits in this
scholarly survey. A habit, he writes, is “an★ War on the Border: Villa,
Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and
an American Invasion
Jeff Guinn. Simon & Schuster, $28 (368p) ISBN 978-1-9821-2886-9G
uinn (The Vagabonds) brings the U.S.-Mexico
conflicts of the early 20th century to vibrant life
in this superior history. At the heart of the story
is Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary leader
whose forces killed American soldiers and civilians during
a cross-border raid in 1916. Villa had played a crucial
role in the 1914 ousting of Mexican president Victoriano
Huerta, only to become an adversary of Huerta’s successor,
Venustiano Carranza. Guinn documents how Germany
flirted with both Carranza and Villa, hoping that unrest
near the U.S. border would make it more likely that
President Wilson would stay out of WWI. The situation came to a head in
March 1916, when Villa launched an attack on Columbus, N.Mex., in an attempt
to provoke a military invasion of Mexico and create a political crisis for
Carranza. U.S. troops under the command of Gen. John Pershing entered
Mexico in pursuit of Villa, but the effort proved both financially costly and
unsuccessful. Villa ultimately retired, only to be assassinated in 1923, soon after
announcing that he might run for president. Guinn expertly mines primary and
secondary sources and stocks his fluid narrative with racist vigilantes, botched
assassination attempts, and risky military ventures. The result is a riveting
introduction to a lesser-known chapter in American history. (May)