the 3rd lap podcast book club

For anyone who has ever had trouble staying motivated while trailblazing towards badassery, You Are a Badass Every Day is the companion to keep you fresh, grateful, mighty, and driven. 

In his thought-provoking memoir, Turning White, Emmy Award-winning TV broadcaster Lee Thomas shares the physical and mental battle he is waging with vitiligo a skin disorder that is literally turning him white.

Professor László Barabási gives us a trailblazing book that promises to transform the very foundations of how our success-obsessed society approaches their professional careers, life pursuits and long-term goals.

For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare - poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes.

Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

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Guillotine traverses desert landscapes cut through by migrants, the grief of loss, betrayal’s lingering scars, the border itself―great distances in which violence and yearning find roots. Through the voices of undocumented immigrants, border patrol agents, and scorned lovers, award-winning poet Eduardo C. Corral writes dramatic portraits of contradiction, survival, and a deeply human, relentless interiority. 

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

This reissue of Grace Paley's classic collection―a finalist for the National Book Award―demonstrates her rich use of language as well as her extraordinary insight into and compassion for her characters, moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again. Whether writing about the love (and conflict) between parents and children or between husband and wife, or about the struggles of aging single mothers or disheartened political organizers to make sense of the world, she brings the same unerring ear for the rhythm of life as it is actually lived.

From legendary playwright August Wilson comes the powerful, stunning dramatic bestseller that won him critical acclaim, including the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was intended to be a true autobiography, with the name of Alex Haley appearing not at all or as a ghost writer or as a mere contributor or assistant. However, with the assassination of Malcolm X having occurred in Harlem in New York City on February 21, 1965 just before this book could be published, it became necessary to reveal the important role of Alex Haley in creating this book.

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

In this powerful new book, bell hooks arrests our attention from the first page. Her title--We Real Cool; her subject--the way in which both white society and weak black leaders are failing black men and youth. Her subject is taboo: "this is a culture that does not love black males:" "they are not loved by white men, white women, black women, girls or boys. And especially, black men do not love themselves. How could they? How could they be expected to love, surrounded by so much envy, desire, and hate?"

Ms. Muschett was a 22 year old who thought she could make a difference through teaching. Little did she know that she would become wrapped up in the lives of her students and uncover flaws within our public school system. Join Ms. Muschett as she walks you through her first year of teaching in the Bronx. "Anyone who is considering becoming a teacher should read this before making their final decision"-S. Muschett

Our "thirty-is-the-new-twenty" culture tells us the twenty-something years don't matter. Some say they are a second adolescence. Others call them an emerging adulthood. Dr. Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist, argues that twenty-somethings have been caught in a swirl of hype and misinformation, much of which has trivialized what is actually the most defining decade of adulthood.

Is vulnerability the same as weakness? “In our culture,” teaches Dr. Brené Brown, “we associate vulnerability with emotions we want to avoid such as fear, shame, and uncertainty. Yet we too often lose sight of the fact that vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity, authenticity, and love.” On The Power of Vulnerability, Dr. Brown offers an invitation and a promise - that when we dare to drop the armor that protects us from feeling vulnerable, we open ourselves to the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives. Here she dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and reveals that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.

The 7 Habits have become famous and are integrated into everyday thinking by millions and millions of people. Why? Because they work!

With Sean Covey’s added takeaways on how the habits can be used in our modern age, the wisdom of the 7 Habits will be refreshed for a new generation of leaders.

They include:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world. She is. Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row. He's wrong. FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming. It is. The Twelve The eagerly anticipated sequel to the global bestseller The Passage, soon to be an epic drama on Fox from writer Elizabeth Heldens and executive producer Ridley Scott. The City of Mirrors Prompted by a voice that lives in her blood, the fearsome warrior known as Alicia of Blades is drawn towards to one of the great cities of The Time Before. The ruined city of New York. Ruined but not empty. For this is the final refuge of Zero, the first and last of The Twelve. The one who must be destroyed if mankind is to have a future.

Deeply scary and intensely unnerving, Iain Reid's debut novel is a tightening spiral of a story about a woman's uncertainty of her relationship with her boyfriend, Jake. After an uncomfortable and confusing trip to meet Jake's parents at their isolated farmhouse, reality unravels, and events spin out of control when Jake and "The Girlfriend" make an unscheduled stop at an abandoned high school.

Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, I'm Thinking of Ending Things is about doubt, psychological fragility, and the lengths we'll go to avoid the truth. 

Doro is an entity who changes bodies like clothes, killing his hosts by reflexor design. He fears no one...until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is a shapeshifter who can absorb bullets and heal with a kiss and savage anyone who threatens her. Together they weave a pattern of destiny unimaginable to mortals.

In 2013 Assata Shakur, founding member of the Black Liberation Army, former Black Panther and godmother of Tupac Shakur, became the first ever woman to make the FBI's most wanted terrorist list. 

Assata Shakur's trial and conviction for the murder of a white State Trooper in the spring of 1973 divided America. Her case quickly became emblematic of race relations and police brutality in the USA. While Assata's detractors continue to label her a ruthless killer, her defenders cite her as the victim of a systematic, racist campaign to criminalise and suppress Black nationalist organisations. 

This intensely personal and political autobiography reveals a sensitive and gifted woman, far from the fearsome image of her that is projected by the powers that be. With wit and candor, Assata recounts the formative experiences that led her to embrace a life of activism. With pained awareness she portrays the strengths, weaknesses and eventual demise of Black and white revolutionary groups at the hands of the state. 

A major contribution to the history of Black liberation, destined to take its place alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou. Foreword written by Angela Davis. 

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil-rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature. 

The Onion’s Baratunde Thurston shares his 30-plus years of expertise in being black, with helpful essays like “How to Be the Black Friend,” “How to Speak for All Black People,” “How To Celebrate Black History Month,” and more, in this satirical guide to race issues—written for black people and those who love them. Audacious, cunning, and razor-sharp, How to Be Black exposes the mass-media’s insidiously racist, monochromatic portrayal of black culture’s richness and variety. Fans of Stuff White People Like, This Week in Blackness, and Ending Racism in About an Hour will be captivated, uplifted, incensed, and inspired by this hilarious and powerful attack on America’s blacklisting of black culture.

In Smartcuts, Snow shatters common wisdom about success, revealing how conventions like "paying dues" prevent progress, why kids shouldn't learn times tables, and how, paradoxically, it's easier to build a huge business than a small one.

From SpaceX to The Cuban Revolution, from Ferrari to Skrillex, Smartcuts is a narrative adventure that busts old myths about success and shows how innovators and icons do the incredible by working smarter--and how perhaps the rest of us can, too.

Life, business, success . . . it's just like a nightclub. There are always three ways in.

There's the First Door: the main entrance, where 99 percent of people wait in line, hoping to get in. The Second Door: the VIP entrance, where the billionaires and celebrities slip through. But what no one tells you is that there is always, always . . . the Third Door. It's the entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door a hundred times, crack open the window, sneak through the kitchen--there's always a way.  

Whether it's how Bill Gates sold his first piece of software or how Steven Spielberg became the youngest studio director in Hollywood history, they all took the Third Door.

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Dr. Judy Mikovits is a modern-day Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant researcher shaking up the old boys’ club of science with her groundbreaking discoveries. And like many women who have trespassed into the world of men, she uncovered decades-old secrets that many would prefer to stay buried.

From her doctoral thesis, which changed the treatment of HIV-AIDS, saving the lives of millions, including basketball great Magic Johnson, to her spectacular discovery of a new family of human retroviruses, and her latest research which points to a new golden age of health, Dr. Mikovits has always been on the leading edge of science.

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. 

Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.

Bill Cooper, former United States Naval Intelligence Briefing Team member, reveals information that remains hidden from the public eye. This information has been kept in topsecret government files since the 1940s. His audiences hear the truth unfold as he writes about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the war on drugs, the secret government, and UFOs. 

Bill is a lucid, rational, and powerful speaker whose intent is to inform and to empower his audience. Standing room only is normal. His presentation and information transcend partisan affiliations as he clearly addresses issues in a way that has a striking impact on listeners of all backgrounds and interests. He has spoken to many groups throughout the United States and has appeared regularly on many radio talk shows and on television.

In 1988 Bill decided to "talk" due to events then taking place worldwide, events that he had seen plans for back in the early 1970s. Bill correctly predicted the lowering of the Iron Curtain, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the invasion of Panama. All Bill's predictions were on record well before the events occurred. Bill is not a psychic. His information comes from top secret documents that he read while with the Intelligence Briefing Team and from over seventeen years of research.

Accepting the increasingly widespread belief that industrialized culture inevitably erodes the natural world, Endgame sets out to explore how this relationship impels us towards a revolutionary and as-yet undiscovered shift in strategy. Building on a series of simple but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hoping for what may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.

In this bold and uncompromising book, George G. M. James argues that the "Greek philosophy" in which nearly all of Western culture has its roots actually originated in ancient Egypt Drawing on careful historical research and a radical rethinking of the conventional narrative of Greek history, James asserts that our celebration of the ancient Greeks as the creators of Western civilization and philosophy is misattributed. 

In fact, he argues, our praise rightfully belongs to the people of Africa. Furthermore, this massive intellectual and cultural theft has helped lend credence to the damaging notion that the entire continent of Africa has contributed nothing to world civilization.  James explorers documented connections between celebrated Greek philosophers and the influence of Egyptian thought, proposing other possible links between northern Africa and Greece as well. 

An important book for understanding the history of philosophy, culture, and race in the modern world, Stolen Legacy is not to be missed.

Birth of a White Nation is a fascinating new book on race in America that begins with an exploration of the moment in time when "white people," as a separate and distinct group of humanity, were invented through legislation and the enactment of laws. The book provides a thorough examination of the underlying reasons as well as the ways in which "white people" were created. It also explains how the creation of this distinction divided laborers and ultimately served the interests of the elite. 

The book goes on to examine how foundational law and policy in the U.S. were used to institutionalize the practice of "white people" holding positions of power. Finally, the book demonstrates how the social construction and legal enactment of "white people" has ultimately compromised the humanity of those so labeled. Jacqueline Battalora was born in Edinburg, Scotland and lived in Antwerp, Belgium for six years before her family relocated to Victoria, Texas. 

It was this experience of attending high school and middle school in Victoria that informed her understanding of race in America. While she is currently a lawyer and professor of sociology and criminal justice at Saint Xavier University, she is also a former Chicago Police officer. She holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has been engaged in anti-racist training since the mid 1990s.

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.

In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past―memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.

Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

Throughout her life, Elaine Welteroth has climbed the ranks of media and fashion, shattering ceilings along the way. In this riveting and timely memoir, the groundbreaking journalist unpacks lessons on race, identity, and success through her own journey, from navigating her way as the unstoppable child of an unlikely interracial marriage in small-town California to finding herself on the frontlines of a modern movement for the next generation of change makers.

Welteroth moves beyond the headlines and highlight reels to share the profound lessons and struggles of being a barrier-breaker across so many intersections. As a young boss and often the only Black woman in the room, she’s had enough of the world telling her—and all women—they’re not enough. As she learns to rely on herself by looking both inward and upward, we’re ultimately reminded that we’re more than enough.

Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Three eternal questions can help us into our power and use it judiciously:

• Who am I?
• What is real?
• How do I express love?

At each stage in our lives, we must ask these simple yet deeply profound questions. Finding the answers will open the door to the next stage in our development, and eventually lead us to our complete, truest selves. But as Don Miguel Ruiz makes clear, we suffer if we do not ask these questions—or if we fail to pay attention to their answers—because we either never act on our power or use it destructively. Only when power is anchored in our identity and in reality will it be able to be in synch with the universe—and be of true benefit to ourselves and to others.

The three questions provide a practical framework that allows readers to engage with Ruiz’s transformative message and act as a vehicle for overcoming fear and anxiety and discovering peace of mind. An essential guide for all travelers pursuing self-knowledge, understanding, and acceptance, The Three Questions is the next step in our unique spiritual metamorphosis.

In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.

The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police.

My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.

• Paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system.
• Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary

A penetrating examination of how we live and how to live better.

A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions on how to live. The narrator's relationship with his son leads to a powerful self-reckoning; the craft of motorcycle maintenance leads to an austerely beautiful process for reconciling science, religion, and humanism. Resonant with the confusions of existence, this classic is a touching and transcendent book of life.

This new edition contains an interview with Pirsig and letters and documents detailing how this extraordinary book came to be.