From the New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World comes the first major book to use cutting-edge science and investigative reporting to explain the lure of malignant conflict in our private and public lives—and to reveal how we can escape it.

When we are baffled by the insanity of the other side, it usually means the conflict itself has taken over, exerting a power all its own. As Ripley shows, high conflict operates differently from regular conflict. All over the world, similar forces trigger its dynamic—from humiliation to group identity to charismatic “conflict entrepreneurs.”

To find out how people can escape high conflict, Ripley takes us inside the lives of real people. Gary Friedman, a world-renowned conflict expert, enters local politics and finds himself getting sucked into disputes in his own town—despite everything he knows. Curtis Toler, a former gang leader, gets transfixed by a vendetta in Chicago that turns out to be part myth, part truth. We accompany both men as they find ways to extract themselves from the traps of high conflict, without giving up what they hold dear. And we learn what it looks like to inoculate a place against high conflict altogether, through a left-leaning synagogue in New York City whose members learn to lean into conflict with curiosity—and open their homes to rural conservative Christians living in a different version of America.

High Conflict shows what it takes to short-circuit the feedback loops that lock people into perpetual showdowns. When that happens, conflict becomes necessary and good, instead of destructive. This is a book we need to help ourselves and each other during these polarized times.