cover image The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World

The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World

Nilofer Merchant. Viking, $27 (304p) ISBN 978-0-525-42913-5

Merchant (11 Rules for Creating in the #SocialEra) encourages her readers to embrace their uniqueness in this self-help guide for would-be innovators. She begins by asserting the importance of identifying one’s purpose, or what she calls “the dent,” and then tells her readers how to find theirs. Her examples of people who found their dent include Kim Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code, and Zach Walls, a former Eagle Scout who helped end the Boy Scouts’ anti-LGBT prohibitions. Next, Merchant encourages her readers to find “co-denters,” those people who can help you amplify your message. Finally, she urges readers to galvanize others to act, using as an example Holocaust survivor Leo Bretholz , who started the movement that resulted in French railway company SNCF paying $60 million in reparations to Holocaust survivors. Elsewhere, Merchant asserts that trust is rewarded, pointing to the management style of PatientsLikeMe. The website solicits input from people with rare diseases and then shares the information they provide with physicians and researchers, maintaining transparency with patients about how their information is used and how the company makes money throughout the process. Merchant delivers an inspiring message about the power of believing in one’s dreams. (Sept.)