Option B
After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. "I was in 'the void," she writes, "a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe." Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to recover and rebound from life-shattering experiences. We are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It is a muscle that everyone can build. Option B combines Sheryl's personal insights with Adam's research on finding strength in the face of adversity. Beginning with the gut-wrenching moment when she finds her husband, Dave Goldberg, collapsed on a gym floor, Sheryl opens up her heart -- and her journal--to describe the acute grief and isolation she felt in the wake of his death. But Option B goes beyond Sheryl's loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships including illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere and to rediscover joy. Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside
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What you might want to know about Option B
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
After her husband Dave died on a treadmill, Sheryl Sandberg writes with Adam Grant about facing loss and rebuilding when Plan A is gone. Part memoir, part research on resilience and recovery.
Option B blends memoir with nonfiction research. Sheryl Sandberg co-wrote it with Adam Grant after her husband's sudden death in 2015. The book combines her personal grief with research on resilience.
No. Option B is independent of Lean In, with a different focus (resilience after loss vs. workplace gender equity). Either can be read on its own.
Option B was written by Sheryl Sandberg, published in 2017 by Knopf.
Option B is 240 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Option B takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
Option B is a standalone novel by Sheryl Sandberg, not part of a series.
Option B is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
