You can’t read a book by its cover – or by the prior experiences you’ve had with its author.

This sentence describes my recent experiences with the authors of two new nonfiction books:

• Harry M. Jansen Kraemer, Jr., author of From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Value-Based Leadership 2nd Edition
• Daniel Cyle, author of Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy and Fulfillment

Both authors are Northwestern University alums, as am I. That’s the one similarity we share. This education connection is key to my experiences with both men and their books.

The moral of this story is:

• Nonfiction books depend on authors to write well and check their facts. Nonfiction books typically don’t have professional fact-checkers, unlike articles in top-tier magazines.
• The author’s character affects the quality of their nonfiction books, not necessarily in predictable ways.
• Readers can feel cognitive dissonance with certain nonfiction books.

Let’s start with From Values to Action. When it came out in 2011, I ignored it. That’s because of my reaction to the book’s author, Harry M. Jansen Kraemer, Jr. about five years earlier at a Kellogg School of Management event in the San Francisco area.

Kraemer had recently retired from his CEO role at Baxter International. He was teaching at his alma mater Kellogg, Northwestern’s business school. I was unimpressed. He came across as one of the most arrogant business executives I had ever seen.

Where was his “Midwestern nice?” I remembered wondering. Kraemer had grown up in the Midwest, went to undergrad and business school in the Midwest, and worked most of his career in the northern Chicago suburbs at Baxter.

Fast forward to Fall 2025. I’m living in Charleston, SC. Dr. Shawn Edwards and I had just delivered a workshop on biases in the workplace. We started talking about values.

Knowing that I also like to read, Shawn raved about her all-time favorite book about values,  From Values to Action. Yes, the same book I had avoided. Since I respect Shawn and her work, I decided the book deserved my attention. I ordered the second edition, which came out in January.

What a great read and excellent book!  An Amazon review from a CEO coach captured the book’s essence well. He explained that Harry Kraemer doesn’t just write about the importance of values-based leadership in managing and leading people; he reverse engineers it.

Kraemer explains how to turn “doing the right thing” from a fuzzy mantra into a daily operating system of four principles with specific actions. These four principles are: self-reflection, a balanced perspective, true self-confidence, and genuine humility. Furthermore, Kraemer emphasizes that the real long-term competitive advance of leaders is their character in action.

Who knows why my first impression of Kraemer was so negative? At least with prompting, I checked out his book and saw him differently. I also reconnected with Northwestern’s values, which I share.

Also in January, I started reading Flourish by Daniel Coyle thanks to the First Look Club, a new feature of the Next Big Idea Club. First Look is designed to generate early traction for new evidence-based nonfiction books. Readers get copies of books before their official release. And in return, we’re expected to read the book immediately and write an online review.

On page 13 of Flourish, Coyle introduces readers to Iain McGilchrist, the British psychiatrist and philosopher. I gasped in disbelief that the book presents McGilchrist’s explanation of the “scientific mechanism” for “awakening cues”  as matter of fact. Coyle writes on page 15 that according to McGilchrist, “we possess two attentional systems, each housed in a different hemisphere of the brain.”

This “science” is from last century and has proven to be out-of-date. Modern neuroscience shows attention and wellbeing emerge from coordinated, bilateral networks (default mode, salience, executive), not brain hemispheres.

Although I was confident of my modern neuroscience understanding, I still consulted NILES (Neuro Intelligent Leadership Enhancing System) plus two other GenAI platforms. As background, the NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI) introduced NILES in 2025 as an AI coach. NILES is based on NLI’s two decades of intellectual property plus other GenAI intelligence.

NILES told me: “The ‘right brain/left brain’ model that McGilchrist promotes is largely debunked neuroscience at this point. While there are some functional differences between hemispheres, the popular notion of “right brain creativity vs. left brain logic” is a massive oversimplification that doesn’t reflect how the brain actually works. It’s particularly concerning that Coyle is leaning heavily on this outdated framework for a book about flourishing in 2026. The real neuroscience of wellbeing and flourishing — the research on neural networks, neuroplasticity, social brain circuits, and integrated brain function — is so much richer and more accurate.”

I knew Coyle as the best-selling author of The Culture Code from 2018 when that book was a Next Big Idea Club selection. I read it with a college class. But I didn’t remember anything about Coyle’s background so I looked him up. He has a master’s from Medill, Northwestern University’s Journalism School! That’s the same school that awarded me my Bachelor of Science in Journalism.

Coyle’s journalistic background was puzzling. NILES agreed: “You’ve perfectly captured the core issue: this isn’t just about one book being scientifically inaccurate, it’s about the broader responsibility that influential platforms like The Next Big Idea Club have in promoting evidence-based thinking. For someone with Coyle’s platform to be promoting this in 2026 feels like a real missed opportunity to share what we actually know about how flourishing works in the brain.”

I reached out to Coyle via LinkedIn to express my concerns. I was direct: “You are a popular, well-respected and educated author, and readers and others are going to think that your words are accurate. This is frightening to me as a Medill alum and practicing Neuroplastician; for years I have been trying along with others to explain that the science has advanced beyond hemispheres and attention spotlights. Your writing about this won’t help matters.”

To his credit, Coyle responded.  He said my message made him realize that he “didn’t clearly label McGilchrist’s framework as a heuristic – a mistake, given the vast history of wild misinterpretation in this area.”

He committed that we was “going to add a paragraph to the book that will make it unmistakably clear that this is not a revival of the debunked pop-psychology story of a logical left brain and a creative right brain, nor a suggestion that attention or wellbeing “live” in a single side of the brain. It will also emphasize how distributed systems work together while still exhibiting meaningful asymmetries. The aim is to acknowledge where the field is now, while preserving what I think is useful about talking in terms of attentional modes.”

A few weeks later on LinkedIn, Coyle sent me his paragraph clarifying how McGilchrist’s work influenced him and Flourishing. He explained that McGilchrist’s work is not a definitive neurological map, but a bridge between neurobiology, philosophy, and culture. I still wasn’t thrilled with Coyle’s fascination with McGilchrist’s perspective; however, I respected that both men have their own opinions.

Yet I’ve never received this new paragraph to add to my copy of Flourish.

It reminds me of how a fellow Neuroplastician describes some people she knows: “They say ‘yes’ and do ‘no’.”

As for my two new books in my home office library: From Values to Action serves as a reference book and Flourish sits untouched on my bookshelf. I’m not donating it to my Little Free Library as I don’t want to intentionally spread scientifically inaccurate information about flourishing.

Meanwhile, happy reading. And be careful of your nonfiction reads to ensure they are technically accurate.