From Facebook’s COO and Wharton’s top-rated professor, the #1 New York Times best-selling authors of Lean In and Originals: a powerful, inspiring, and practical book about building resilience and moving forward after life’s inevitable setbacks.
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 eye-opening 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 us. Even after the most devastating events, it is possible to grow by finding deeper meaning and gaining greater appreciation in our lives. Option B illuminates how to help others in crisis, develop compassion for ourselves, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities, and workplaces. Many of these lessons can be applied to everyday struggles, allowing us to brave whatever lies ahead. Two weeks after losing her husband, Sheryl was preparing for a father-child activity. “I want Dave,” she cried. Her friend replied, “Option A is not available,” and then promised to help her make the most of Option B.
We all live some form of Option B. This book will help us all make the most of it.
“An intimate, personal book about how Sandberg coped with the devastating loss of a spouse, how she helped her children through the tragic loss, and how she helped herself rebuild her confidence, compassion to herself and capacity to find joy in the aftermath of the sudden death of her husband. But within Option B there are lessons for leaders who want to make organizations more resilient, help employees recover from a loss—or crisis—and create workplaces that are more prepared to deal with failure.” —Jena McGregor, The Los Angeles Times
“A remarkable achievement: generous, honest, poignant. Option B reveals an aspect of Sandberg’s character—her impulse to be helpful. This is a book that will be quietly passed from hand to hand, and it will surely offer great comfort to its intended readers. . . . The candor and simplicity with which she shared all of it is a kind of gift . . . Helpful, moving.” —Caitlin Flanagan, The New York Times
“Like her debut volume, Sandberg’s Option B is an optimistic book, even if one riven with sorrow. She argues that after adversity and loss, there is an opportunity for ‘post-traumatic growth.’ Thus the book is in part a moving memoir.” —Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
“With Option B, Sandberg has taken her cause even further, moving workday anguish over setbacks such as divorce, disease, and death from solo crying jags in the office parking lot to company hallways, conference rooms, and boardrooms. Co-writing with TED Talk superstar Adam Grant, she weaves her family’s story of loss with data on recovery from tragedy and with anecdotes from others facing cancer, disability, or mental illness.” —Sarah Frier, Bloomberg Businessweek
“Admirably honest. . . . Sandberg shares a great deal of herself and what she has learned. At its core the book helps those who have been felled by despair: a guide both for those who have directly suffered loss and for those who are close to people who have. Its optimistic thesis is that adversity can change people for the better. They can ‘bounce forward’ after a tragedy and become more resilient.” —The Economist
“Sandberg’s new book is not an easy read. Well, in a sense, it is: The pages fly by. But the book is tough, full of the raw, painful emotions that followed the sudden loss of her husband when he was just 47 years old. What followed was, for Sandberg, a process of figuring out what life could look like when it wasn’t at all the life she had planned. . . . Option B [has] advice for people who are grieving. But it’s also a book for nearly everyone—people who may not know what to say or do in the wake of a tragedy. It’s also a deeply optimistic book, framed around the question, what’s next?” —Rebecca J. Rosen, The Atlantic
“I recommend this inspiring book to everyone around the world. None of us can escape sadness, loss, or life’s disappointments, so the best option is to find our Option B.” —Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize winner
“Sheryl writes about her own heartbreaking experience with a rare honesty. Then she and Adam translate her personal story into a powerful, practical guide for anyone trying to build resilience in their own lives, communities, and companies. It’s hard enough to resonate with readers. It’s even harder to help them take concrete steps toward a better future. Option B does both.” —Bill and Melinda Gates, co-chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
“Thoughtful, insightful, and compelling. Both individually and collectively, we all need to understand the power of rehabilitation, recovery, and redemption if we are to overcome adversity. This incredible book doesn’t avoid the loss and tragedy we all sometimes encounter, but it is animated by a resolve that is both inspiring and instructive.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative
“Option B is as hopeful as it is heartbreaking. Here are stories of sometimes unimaginable pain and loss, but also of how human beings nonetheless have the capacity to endure and even thrive. This book is not just an absorbing read. It also provides lessons that everyone needs to learn.” —Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal
“Illuminating, original, and deeply inspiring, Option B is one part riveting memoir, one part heal-your-heart boot camp, one part stories of others who learned to thrive in the face of profound loss: a practical, vital contribution to the literature on loss and resilience.” —Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild
“A memoir of the loss of a husband and finding a path forward beyond the grieving process. Sandberg was living a life with all of the fulfillments one could hope for . . . However, no amount of professional accomplishment could prepare her for the sudden passing of her husband, after which she had to figure out how to carry on as a mother of two, and make the shattered pieces fit back together. This moving book is the result. Writing with Grant, a highly rated professor at Wharton, Sandberg explores how to weather the storm of grief, applying concrete skills—in addition to more complex theories of psychology about how to find meaning in life-changing circumstances. Going deeper and broader, the authors look at different factors that can stunt recovery after a loss. The challenges of moving forward are immense; this accounting of Sandberg's resilience does for the process of grieving what her previous work has done for women in the workplace. A book that provides illuminating ways to make headway through the days when there doesn’t seem to be a way forward.” —Kirkus
“Sandberg and Grant’s helpful and hopeful new book affirms ‘there’s no one way to grieve and no one way to comfort.’ For those who have suffered a tragedy, this book provides helpful advice in the form of case studies, expert commentary, coping mechanisms, and, most of all, hope, expounding upon ‘the capacity of the human spirit to persevere.’ Sandberg draws on her own pain around the sudden death of her husband, and shares what she has learned about resilience with a tone that is raw and candid. Her experiences led her to ask how others have dealt with and survived such adversity. Grant shares his perspective and knowledge as a psychologist. Both authors show how positive outcomes, such as strengthened relationships and a greater sense of gratitude, can be gleaned from awful situations. Those suffering as well as those seeking to provide comfort should find both solace and wisdom in this book, which observes, ‘Resilience is not a fixed personality trait. It’s a lifelong project.’” —Publishers Weekly
