High Conflict

by Amanda Ripley (Simon & Schuster, $28) There’s a big difference between healthy conflict and what Amanda Ripley calls high conflict, said Jonathan Marks in The Wall Street Journal. High conflict is an ugly divorce or U.S. politics since 2016. It’s when both sides see the other as an enemy that needs to be defeated. Ripley, a journalist, argues that a slide into high conflict is natural, and she “reports engagingly on, among other figures, a Chicago gang leader turned peacemaker.” She also has ideas on how to break out of war mode.