An excellent book, that comes to me at a particularly relevant time both for my personal life and the world at large. The idea behind the book is that some conflict is necessary and even good – the sort of conflict that allows us to air grievances and then move forward together. But sometimes conflict can become self-perpetuating, intractable, stuck in “us vs. them.” The sort of conflict you feel you can’t get out of, even if you want to. This, according to Ripley, is “high conflict.” It can be as small-scale as a divorce proceeding or as large scale as a generational civil war. And it can be incredibly difficult to get out of, sometimes requiring people to hit rock bottom or otherwise suffer. The best way to get out of high conflict is to prevent it from happening in the first place, and Ripley gives some tangible, practical suggestions for how to do so, nicely summarized in the appendix. They all make sense when you think about them, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy or instinctive. Things like active listening, avoiding oversimplification and embracing curiosity, taking time away from the conflict, and avoiding the people who perpetuate it (who Ripley calls “fire starters”). This is definitely one of the books I’m going to reference a lot moving forward, I can tell.