How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character
by Paul Tough

Unless your definition of children includes college students, the second word of the title is a misnomer. This book is about how young people, from infants to college students succeed. Perhaps a bit more subtly and more accurately, Tough's book describes how adults in various organizations, from NGOs to schools organize teaching and mentorship to assist young people to develop the traits that may allow them to succeed in today's society. The book describes approaches to developing character in young people so that they can succeed against the odds stacked against them. It describes mentoring of young mothers to help them raise children who can succeed against a backdrop of poverty. It describes a middle school chess team from Brooklyn that succeeds in national competition against teams from much higher socio-economic schools. Tough describes several schools that have been built from the ground up to instill 'character' in the students with the idea that the schools don't necessarily select a priori for kids who will be successful. Rather most of the schools are set in impoverished areas. One school was rather rich; there the problem was kids from families so rich, the kids were overprotected and never learned how to pick up the pieces after a failure. This part of the book harkens somewhat to Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath.

This book is something you want to read if you have a baby in the house. Spoiler alert: the answer is to hug and hold your baby. None of letting your kid cry himself out in the crib so he learns how to comfort himself. Pick him up and hold him. My explanation: then the kid doesn't learn how to cry. They learn to comfort themselves by always being comfortable. Don't let the kid practice being out of control. Let your kid practice always being in control; that's how you raise a kid who can handle herself when she grows up. 

But this book has also affected how I advise grad students. The problem for rich kids is overprotection. So rather than tell my grad students everything, it's important to let them figure things out for themselves. 

The book isn't perfect. But I'm glad its not perfect. If it were perfect, it would be too late; everyone would know this stuff, and we wouldn't need to learn this stuff. 

I highly recommend How Children Succeed to everyone. If this doesn't affect how you deal with other people, then you're not in a situation where you deal with other people ever. If you're that lone hermit, fine, don't read this. But everyone else should read this book today.