Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected

This is a vibrant, readable foray into the potential and the proper place for surprise in our lives. Authors Renninger and Luna, founder and head of the culture department at LifeLabs New York respectively, prove both knowledgeable and personable guides. Through their animated narrative, we learn to see the world with fresh eyes, learning, for instance, of surprise’s possible evolutionary basis in the “fight or flight” instinct. Perhaps the book’s most appealing aspect is its lively presentation, which sprinkles the pages with inventive terms, from the Struggle Sandwich to the Surprise Seesaw, and visual components that clearly illustrate verbal concepts. Chapters are also punctuated by helpful “cheat sheets” that give synopses of the surprises therein. In a world that often seems keen on eliminating the unexpected with predictive technologies, this book suggests that an element of surprise might prove all the more necessary. As such, this entertaining, smartly packaged book leaves readers with a full set of practical tools geared toward making everyone surprise-seekers in their own lives. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown. (Apr.)