A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Physician and former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy connects loneliness and social disconnection with physical health, mental health, workplaces, families, and civic fragmentation. Drawing on research, public-health experience, and stories, he explores attention, service, relationships, community design, and the conditions that help connection grow.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
It validates loneliness as more than private inadequacy and places connection within health and public life. Travelers can use the book to recognize patterns and consider small relational practices without reducing belonging to church attendance or extroversion. Its role is broad public-health orientation, best paired with resources that give greater weight to structural exclusion, disability, poverty, and community power.
Good starting place if…
Loneliness or social disconnection is central to your question and you want humane, practical orientation grounded in public-health evidence.
Know before you begin…
Population-level associations do not diagnose an individual or prove a single causal pathway. The book's practical emphasis may understate structural barriers such as racism, disability, poverty, unsafe family systems, geography, and caregiving. Connection is not always safe or available, and the book is not individualized mental-health treatment or crisis support.