A few years ago, Adam Gopnik, a longtime writer for The New Yorker and three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, started thinking about all the things he wasn't good at. He couldn't dance the foxtrot or bake a brioche. Well into his 50s, he still had no idea how to drive a car. To make matters worse, when he looked around, he saw people who could do these things — often with great skill. How, he wondered, did they do it? How do any of us get good at the things we're good at? And how do some of us become next-level masters? To answer those questions, Adam set out to master the skills he lacked, and he has written up the results in a profound little book, "The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery."

"To be alive is to battle stuckness." So declares NYU professor Adam Alter in his new book, "Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most." Adam has spent years studying why we get stuck — in dead-end jobs and creative cul-de-sacs — and, crucially, how to go from inertia to success. --- What if Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink hand-picked the eight best books of the year and delivered them to your doorstep? We know that sounds too good to be true, but it's precisely what you'll get when you sign up for a hardcover subscription to The Next Big Idea Club!