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for neighboring:
“At a time when so many of us feel isolated and sucked into mindless hours online, Katherine Goldstein’s Neighboring shows a hopeful way out, with deep reporting, engaging storytelling, and practical strategies. This is the book we need right now.”
— Brigid Schulte,
“Katherine’s work has profoundly changed how I think about, and prioritize, community. She identifies how systems and social hierarchies keep us divided, and makes showing up in real life feel doable even for introverts, even for perfectionists. Neighboring is a celebration of the quiet radicalism of a potluck party — and it’s a book we all need now more than ever.”
— Virginia Sole-Smith,
“An essential, approachable, and fun ‘couch-to-5k’ for building the social connections we all crave.”
— Eve Rodsky,
“In a culture obsessed with individual solutions to loneliness and burnout, Katherine offers something far more powerful: a roadmap back to each other. Neighboring is the essential guide for how we can rebuild the communities and villages we all need to thrive.”
— Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, MD,
“My most-anticipated book of 2027.”
— Garrett Bucks,
early praise
bestselling author of Fair Play
award-winning journalist and bestselling author of Over Work and Overwhelmed
NYT-bestselling author of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture
bestselling author of Real Self-Care
author of The Right Kind of White
for neighboring:
“At a time when so many of us feel isolated and sucked into mindless hours online, Katherine Goldstein’s Neighboring shows a hopeful way out, with deep reporting, engaging storytelling, and practical strategies. This is the book we need right now.”
— Brigid Schulte,
“Katherine’s work has profoundly changed how I think about, and prioritize, community. She identifies how systems and social hierarchies keep us divided, and makes showing up in real life feel doable even for introverts, even for perfectionists. Neighboring is a celebration of the quiet radicalism of a potluck party — and it’s a book we all need now more than ever.”
— Virginia Sole-Smith,
“An essential, approachable, and fun ‘couch-to-5k’ for building the social connections we all crave.”
— Eve Rodsky,
“In a culture obsessed with individual solutions to loneliness and burnout, Katherine offers something far more powerful: a roadmap back to each other. Neighboring is the essential guide for how we can rebuild the communities and villages we all need to thrive.”
— Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, MD,
“My most-anticipated book of 2027.”
— Garrett Bucks,
early praise
bestselling author of Fair Play
award-winning journalist and bestselling author of Over Work and Overwhelmed
NYT-bestselling author of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture
bestselling author of Real Self-Care
author of
The Right Kind of White
about the book:
If you want community but aren’t sure how to find it, you’re not alone. If you’ve joined a group only to have it fizzle out, struggled to move beyond casual acquaintance, or found hosting daunting, it’s easy to conclude that tightknit networks of support are for people with more outgoing personalities, lots of extra time, and better luck.
In Neighboring, journalist Katherine Goldstein has good news: community building is a skill you can learn, no matter your circumstances. Drawing on interviews, years of research, and her own experience, Goldstein offers concrete advice for practicing the small, warm acts of “neighboring” that expand our social worlds over time. She walks readers through getting to know their “nearbys,” building a village around caregiving, and finding belonging in houses of worship and workplaces. Along the way, she offers a Deep Casual playbook for prioritizing connection over perfection, and permission for all of us to do less—less cleaning our homes before people come over, less hyper-intensive parenting, less worrying about what other people will think—so we can show up more for the relationships that matter.
There are structural reasons Americans are spending more time alone, but this is not another book theorizing about the loneliness crisis. Packed with compelling stories, self-reflective exercises, and refreshingly doable advice readers can use right away, Neighboring is a hands-on guide to building a life rich in connection.
You don’t need more friends. You need community. A practical guide to building stronger connections with the people around you, one neighbor at a time.
about the book:
If you want community but aren’t sure how to find it, you’re not alone. If you’ve joined a group only to have it fizzle out, struggled to move beyond casual acquaintance, or found hosting daunting, it’s easy to conclude that tightknit networks of support are for people with more outgoing personalities, lots of extra time, and better luck.
In Neighboring, journalist Katherine Goldstein has good news: community building is a skill you can learn, no matter your circumstances. Drawing on interviews, years of research, and her own experience, Goldstein offers concrete advice for practicing the small, warm acts of “neighboring” that expand our social worlds over time. She walks readers through getting to know their “nearbys,” building a village around caregiving, and finding belonging in houses of worship and workplaces. Along the way, she offers a Deep Casual playbook for prioritizing connection over perfection, and permission for all of us to do less—less cleaning our homes before people come over, less hyper-intensive parenting, less worrying about what other people will think—so we can show up more for the relationships that matter.
There are structural reasons Americans are spending more time alone, but this is not another book theorizing about the loneliness crisis. Packed with compelling stories, self-reflective exercises, and refreshingly doable advice readers can use right away, Neighboring is a hands-on guide to building a life rich in connection.
You don’t need more friends. You need community. A practical guide to building stronger connections with the people around you, one neighbor at a time.
About Katherine
Katherine Goldstein is a journalist, speaker, and consultant. A Better Life Lab at New America fellow and former Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Vox, and NPR.
Her book, Neighboring: How to Build Community You Can Count On (Penguin Random House), comes out April 6, 2027. It draws on nearly a hundred interviews and years of research to
propose deeply practical solutions for how to rebuild our connection skills and strengthen our relationships in neighborhoods, family life, houses of worship, workplaces and more.
She speaks at Fortune 500 companies and national conferences on connection as a competitive advantage and how companies can build the infrastructure for engagement and collaboration that can increase their AI adoption effectiveness and ROI.
She is the creator of The Double Shift newsletter and media platform, a former Harvard Extension School instructor, and her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation.
About Katherine
Katherine Goldstein is a journalist, speaker, and consultant. A Better Life Lab at New America fellow and former Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Vox, and NPR.
Her book, Neighboring: How to Build Community You Can Count On (Penguin Random House), comes out April 6, 2027. It draws on nearly a hundred interviews and years of research to propose deeply practical solutions for how to rebuild our connection skills and strengthen our relationships in neighborhoods, family life, houses of worship, workplaces and more.
She speaks at Fortune 500 companies and national conferences on connection as a competitive advantage and how companies can build the infrastructure for engagement and collaboration that can increase their AI adoption effectiveness and ROI.
She is the creator of The Double Shift newsletter and media platform, a former Harvard Extension School instructor, and her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation.