Has success made you feel lonely and isolated?

Mia Birdsong is best known as a “family activist", whose work is centred around building and sustaining communities, especially in the American context, where individual ambition has pushed ideas of collective good to the background. In her new book How We Show Up (Hachette, $16.99, around ₹1,250), she explores ways of “Reclaiming Family, Friendship, And Community", as the subtitle puts it. Central to her findings is the counter-intuitive fact that the American Dream of success can often leave individuals lonely and isolated. The remedy, as she argues, is to invest in wider human bonds.

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